My Uncle, a Life-Long Pilot, Finally Shares his 1991 Colorado River UFO Encounter (AI Image Recreation)
My uncle, now approaching his 80s, is a life-long pilot who also served in the Army as a pilot. He has been reluctant to share this story for over a decade, but he is finally willing to do so. He has reached a point in his retirement where he no longer worries about what others think and feels he has nothing to lose by telling the truth about his experience.
The following encounter took place one morning in 1991, in Colorado, along the Arkansas River.
My uncle went fly fishing early one morning, and had parked his truck near the precipice of the river bank. He describes parking about 30-40 feet above the surface of the water, and his truck was backed up near the edge of the bank. With the tailgate of his truck open, he was sitting enjoying his coffee, waiting for the first light to hit the water. This particular spot offered views stretching a couple miles in both directions.
Just before sunrise, something downstream caught his eye. It was a white, round object flying directly over the river. He watched it approach for a couple of miles, its form momentarily obscured by trees and hills. As it got closer, he could see the object very clearly.
He describes it as a smooth, pearlescent white, "skinny egg" shape, positioned vertically with the pointed end facing directly upwards. There were no visible seams, rivets, wings, or rotors. He told me that as a pilot, he was specifically looking for these details, but "it was just an egg!" He estimates the object was traveling at approximately 20 miles per hour, maintaining a consistent course about 20 feet above the water, directly in the middle of the river. He recalled it being about the size of a standard minivan.
At its nearest approach, the object was approximately 80 feet away from him. He watched in complete disbelief as it passed by his location. He mentioned that it was so close, he could have easily thrown a rock and hit it. Most unnervingly, the object was perfectly silent. He also described how the immediate environment around him went still and quiet; the wind and wildlife (birds and insects) momentarily went silent as the object passed.
My uncle watched the "egg" continue along the river at a consistent pace and height until it traveled behind a hill about a mile upstream and went out of sight.
He is still not perfectly comfortable sharing this story with anyone, but he said he was cool with me sharing his experience. He finally feels it’s ‘safe’ to share this story as his professional career is behind him. He says it was all he could think about, obsessively, for years after it took place and to this day has no clue what it was or “what it wanted”.