RACHEL, Nev. – In the early morning dark in the Nevada desert Friday, one of about 100 people visiting the entrance gate to Area 51 landed in handcuffs.

“We arrested one guy for indecent exposure out of Canada at the gate,” Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee told the USA TODAY Network.

The man, the sheriff said, urinated near the gate.

Authorities detained a woman for “investigative purposes,” but – all in all – the “storming” of Area 51 turned out to be a manageable affair.

'It’s not as bad as we thought'

“It’s a relief that it’s not as bad as we thought it was going to be,” Lee said.

The sheriff of rural Lincoln County has spent the past eight weeks navigating a struggle with the unknown – the presiding force driving thousands of people to Nevada for events tied to the viral “Storm Area 51” Facebook event intended as a middle-of-the-night joke that quickly evolved into a spectacle that captured the attention of seekers all over the country.

In the tiny town of Rachel, a town of about 50, Alienstock on Friday night is expected to draw as many as 2,500 people – a number much lower than what authorities anticipated.

“My nightmare was the 30,000 people,” Lee said. “I truly thought we were going to have bumper to bumper.”

Not much happens at the 'UFO Capital of the World'

The self-proclaimed "UFO Capital of the World," Rachel is on State Route 375, dubbed in 1996 the "Extraterrestrial Highway."

Rachel is the closest habitation to Area 51 – a military facility inside a classified test and training range that inspires conspiracy theories.

On a normal day, what happens along the highway that cuts through Rachel is no mystery: Not much.

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“There’s times at night you can take this road almost all the way to Tonopah and never pass a vehicle,” Lee said. Thursday, when Alienstock kicked off, that changed. “It was steady vehicles one after the other after the other yesterday and last night.”

Even so – with more than 100 law enforcement officers patrolling the festival – Sheriff Lee is finding it easier to forget his nightmare.

He’s optimistic the spectacle will dissolve come Saturday.

“Hopefully,” Lee said, “people will start migrating back up.”

Follow Ed Komenda on Twitter: @ejkomenda