Monday - January 12, 1998: Los Alamos, NM to Farmington, NM
Remember Los Alamos!...or, how we learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.
We got up early enough as we'd hoped, but that still didn't keep us from running behind all day. What we must learn is that when the AAA Tour Book says "allow at least 2 hours" that we must remember to allow at least 4 hours since we're such slowpokes. None the less, running late all day, we made our appointed rounds in Atomic City. Those that we had hoped to do the day before.

We began this morning with a visit to Bandelier National Monument on the outskirts of the Los Alamos mesa. These are the old ruins dating back to 1300 or so, of the Anasazi people (which actually is a Navajo word meaning "people who are not us"). We climbed in and around the expansive system of old cave dwellings actually carved into the side of cliffs in the soft rock formed from the residue of one of the many volcanos that once dominated this part of the world. All the rocks have swiss cheese-like holes in them due to the way the lava cooled and eroded, so expanding those holes to make a dwelling, was not too difficult apparently. But what do we know, they are the people who are not us.

Incidentally, we finally got around to buying a "Golden Eagle Pass" to get us into any of the National Parks in the country for the next year since it seems like we keep going to so many over the last several months. Just a word or two about the National Park Service: It rules. Please support it.

From there it was up to the Bradbury Science Museum, which is run by the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Got the whole story of Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and how this little mesa was overtaken by the U.S. during WWII for the super-secret task of splitting atoms as soon as possible in order to make enormous bombs. All fascinating stuff, and a fitting way to wrap up our own personal Cold War Renaissance that we began for ourselves down in Alamagordo and White Sands a few weeks back (They figured how to make the bombs here in Los Alamos, then went down and blew 'em up at Alamagordo's Trinity site).

A few hours behind schedule, we enjoyed the scenic ride out of town through the desolate Navajo and Apache reservation areas - at night! But under a full moon, so got to catch some of the scenery as we crossed over the Continental Divide. And in the end, perhaps it was better this way since we had to smuggle a blonde Cherokee through the territory, and the last thing we needed was an inter-tribal incident...with people who are not us.