Adam Carnal, a deputy in Crawford County, Mo., wasn't sure what he would find when he pulled over a flying saucer on Interstate 44 late last month. The vehicle had committed a lane violation, he said, and he wasn't sure if it was allowed to be on the road in the first place.
As Carnal approached, he recalled the top of the cockpit lifting to reveal two people sporting green, alien-like glasses. The driver raised a hand and gave Carnal a Vulcan salute, the famous gesture from the TV series "Star Trek."
The traffic stop was one of four that lifelong alien-enthusiast Steve Anderson experienced during his multiday drive from Indianapolis to the Roswell UFO Festival in New Mexico. After being pulled over twice in Missouri and two more times in Oklahoma, he said, he was also welcomed to Roswell by officers who knew he'd be arriving, awaiting his lunar landing in the parking lot of his hotel.
Anderson, 67, told The Washington Post that he has loved aliens since he was 8 years old, when he said he witnessed his first flying saucer. He recalled looking up at the daytime sky when he spotted a saucer hovering, observing him. Anderson said it quickly moved side-to-side, and then jetted away. The memory stuck with him, and about a decade ago, inspired him to seek out a UFO-themed car.
"I thought, how cool would it be to get to ride in a flying saucer?" he said. "So since I don't have the technology to make one that flies, I built a driving saucer."
Anderson bought a tiny 1991 Geo Metro and rang up Dennis Bellows, a mechanic friend who had built a few other cars for him. Anderson asked Bellows if he could transform the Geo into a flying saucer, like the kind in old sci-fi movies.
The car's bubble-shaped top — adorned with an antenna — took an extra bit of ingenuity. Bellows ultimately warmed pie slices of plexiglass to form the contraption.
Anderson first attended the Roswell UFO Festival last year, sans space cruiser, but decided to bring the vehicle to this year's event. He and his friend Marilyn Dicks, a longtime UFO Festival attendee who'd flown to Indianapolis from her home in Florida, set out for New Mexico on June 28 — and were pulled over for the first time by Carnal later that same day .