Sorry, but your mom is right. The reality is that the base is very mundane. Secret, secluded....but very mundane. My coworker had to go there on a
trip I was supposed to go with (I ended up having to go to Thailand instead).
The cool thing is he was there for 4 days and didn't need to travel off-base for accommodations (which apparently would have sucked to commute and
would have taken hours out of his work day causing him to stay an extra day or so to finish the support call) They have some sort of apartment setup
or something (several units he said) for visiting engineers and sales jerks. He also said that security was VERY minimal once in the general area that
pertained to the project we were involved in. He even went so far as to describe it as "casual" and "kinda hilbilly like" in own words.
Other than him being bored off his ass (he had no internet out there on his laptop and there was nothing to do when he wasn't working) and asked
several of his contacts there about the goofy alien rumors (he is not into this stuff at all, so I'm sure it came to him to ask after an evening of
total boredom). He said they laughed at it. They find it funny that folks need to imagine all sort of silliness just because the base is far out of
the way and high security.
Alas, there is nothing alien out there, the place is boring. I have been to several classified project areas that were WAY more interesting than the
way he described this place. Shame, when it came up during the engineering meeting that one or two of us would have to go there for training and
evaluation (of a process we developed) I had my hopes up privately that this would have turned out way more interesting than it did.
We still joke about it from time to time. The general consensus was I got the better end of the deal because I go to travel to Thailand and actually
had some fun during my off hours