One of the nation’s premier cowboy events, the Lincoln County Cowboy Symposium, returns to the Ruidoso Downs Race Track every fall.

The Symposium – named one of North America's top 100 events by the American Bus Association - welcomes more than 20,000 visitors annually to celebrate all things Western: from cowboy poets, musicians, and chuck wagon cooks to horsemanship demonstrations, Western artists and vendors.

Highlights of the Symposium include the World Championship Chuckwagon Competition (featured on the Food Network's “All-American Festivals”), with prizes totaling $13,000; demonstrations of many different types of horse-related activities, including horsemanship with Craig Cameron, roping, and blacksmithing, and booths brimming with western arts and crafts; activities for the children, including dummy roping, stick-horse barrel racing, goat roping and a goat/sheep scramble; and live music around every corner, plus Friday and Saturday night dances.

The annual Great American Duck Race in Deming - offering a family fun-fest featuring fast duck race competitions, Duck Dances, a softball tournament, a carnival, hot air balloons, barbecues, parades, craft vendors and nonstop entertainment - is August 24-26, 2012.

The theme for this year's Great American Duck Race is New Mexico Centennial, Celebrating 100 Years.

Most Duck Race activities take place at or near McKinley Duck Downs (the Luna County Courthouse Park) unless otherwise noted:

The annual Festival of the Cranes offers something for everyone: from backyard birders to bird experts, from amateur photographers to pros.

Activities include refuge tours; bird, biology, geology and art workshops; keynote speakers; and much more. The Festival highlights the world-renowned Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, which is in its 72nd year of managing the refuge for the benefit of wildlife and their habitat.

Members of the Audubon Council of New Mexico, the Central New Mexico Audubon Society, the American Birding Association and the Friends of the Bosque Board will be on hand at the observation decks around the Bosque tour loops to assist visitors with questions and to share their birding expertise and scopes.

Lectures are offered for a variety of wildlife related subjects.  Lecture topics include photography, bird identification and wildlife painting. Workshops are conducted in the field or special facilities.

The Refuge is 57,331 acres located along the Rio Grande near Socorro, located at the northern edge of the Chihuahuan desert. The heart of the Refuge is about 12,900 acres of moist bottomlands - 3,800 acres are active floodplain of the Rio Grande and 9,100 acres are areas where water is diverted to create extensive wetlands, farmlands, and riparian forests.

In early July 1947, a mysterious object crashed on a ranch 30 miles north of Roswell. The Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) issued a statement claiming to have recovered a crashed “flying disk,” and an article ran on the front page of the Roswell Daily Record. The next day, however, the RAAF changed its statement to say that the object was a weather balloon. The statement sparked immediate controversy and has continued to be a topic of debate.

MainStreet Roswell, Roswell Parks and Recreation, Roswell Museum and Art Center, the Roswell Runners Club, and Roswell Lodgers Tax are inviting UFO enthusiasts and skeptics alike to join in the celebration of this “debate,” with the 65th anniversary of the Roswell Incident with the UFO Festival June 29-July 1, 2012.

Guest speakers, authors, live entertainment, a costume contest, a pet costume contest, parade, a low-rider and funny car show and contest highlight this family-friendly event.