| Submitted by: Evelyn C. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 14 February 2005 |
|
 |
|
At home Mark gives me breakfast in bed the 27th of every month since we were married on the 27th (of August). Here it consisted of handing me the water bottle.
Real breakfast was at El Taoseno, popular with the residents (judging from the number of Taos plates in the parking lot--New Mexico license plates indicate the county where they were issued). There was a sign on the door saying that it would be closed tomorrow for cleaning; I didn't notice, but Mark said it needed it. The food was okay, though. People out here must drink their coffee black more than back east, since they always ask if you want cream before bringing it (and half the time it's non-dairy powdered creamer anyway).
We drove counter-clockwise (widdershins, for all you Britons) around the 'Enchanted Circle,' starting by driving east 31 miles on US 64. This goes through some areas that must have had brilliant foliage a week or two ago, but by now most of the leaves had fallen off the trees. Still, there were occasional bright slashes of yellow across the landscape where some stand of trees was still holding on to autumn.
We drove through Palo Flechado Pass at 9107 feet and then stopped briefly at the D.A.V. Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Angel Fire. The Visitors Center was closed or we might have asked why they chose to have a Christian chapel rather than a neutral one. It was originally build by the Westerphall family as a memorial to their son, but I would have expected that when the D.A.V. adopted it, it would have grown to include Jews and other non-Christians as well.
We left the Enchanted Circle and continued east on US 64 for 24 miles to Cimarron. Cimarron was once a rootin'-tootin' Wild West town full of gunfights and other excitement; the dining room ceiling in the historic St. James hotel has twenty-two bullet holes in it and that's just since they put up the most recent ceiling in 1903. Now Cimarron is a sleepy town of 888 people whose major social spot is probably the local video store. The St. James Hotel is there, having been recently renovated and re-opened as a hotel. It's also for sale, indicating a possible lack of business. There are three rooms on the first floor open as exhibits of typical rooms: the Bat Masterson Room, the Pancho Griego Room, and the Jessie [sic] James Room. Somehow I doubt the electric blanket in the Jessie James Room is authentic to his period.
Returning over the same US 64 to the Enchanted Circle, we continued clockwise through Bobcat Pass at 9854 feet and Red River, your archetypal ski town with pseudo-Alpine store fronts. This was in, not surprisingly, the Red River Valley, though whether it is the same one as in the song I can't tell.
We continued around NM 38 and NM 522 for another 45 miles, then took US 64 west for a short side trip to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, which is the second highest bridge in the national highway system at 685 feet above the river bed. (No, I don't know what the highest is.) We parked the car and walked across the bridge, which was quite unnerving--685 feet is a long way down.
By the time we returned to the main road and then Taos, it was 2 PM. This was partly from the trip to the bridge, but mostly because we had to drive somewhat slower on these roads than on the main roads we had been driving. So we decided to skip Taos Pueblo (having seen two other pueblos) and drop in to the Kit Carson Museum in the short time remaining before we had to leave.
The Kit Carson Museum is pretty much what you would expect: memorabilia from Kit Carson as well as other objects from his era. The two items worth noting might be that the museum was restored by the Masons (of which Carson was a member) and that there was an exhibit for the New Mexico Trappers Hall of Fame. The concept, at least to Easterners, may seem a bit strange. They included various types of traps, with a prominent note that steel-jawed leg traps are now illegal in New Mexico. (By the way, a referendum to ban them in Arizona just failed, another example of why I prefer New Mexico.)
Rather than take the main road back to Santa Fe, we took what is called the High Road, east 15 miles on NM 518, west 5 miles on NM 75, and south 32 miles on NM 76. This took us through high forested mountains and picturesque villages such as Truchas (where THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR was filmed) and Chimayo. Chimayo is known somewhat for its weavers but more for El Santuario de Chimayo, the only miraculous shrine in the United States. Vince Staten, in UNAUTHORIZED AMERICA, calls it the Shrine of the Discarded Crutch because the side chapel walls are hung with crutches et al that people have left there.
We rejoined US 84/285 south and got into Santa Fe just in time to join rush-hour traffic. At least George Bush wasn't in town.
We checked in to the Motel 6 (a bit run-down, with an out-of-focus television and a somewhat flakey heating system) and had dinner at Tortilla Flats, recommended by both the desk clerk and someone on the Net, but not much different than the Chi-Chi's chain at home.
Oh, earlier I mentioned video stores. Maybe it's the lack of any other entertainment, but it seems like every tiny town--meaning a corner with a gas station and a trading post or general store--has a video rental store or videos in the general store, frequently with a name like 'Video Casa.'
While I'm digressing, I need to comment on the Official Sound of this tour. On our Southeast Asia trip, it was the sound of Steve's lens cap falling on the ground. On this trip, it's the camera, lens cap, and binoculars hanging around Mark's neck clacking together while he walks--sort of a shake, rattle, and roll. (I'm sure Mark has included comments about me in his log.) And the Official Phrase is, 'What are my options?' This was first asked at Walnut Canyon by Mark as we prepared to climb back up the 185 feet. My answer? 'March or die.'
Mileage today: 245 miles.
|
J.B.'s for breakfast, then north 16 miles on US 285 and west about 20 miles on NM 502 to Bandelier National Monyment. They were doing construction to improve NM 502, which delayed us somewhat, but the road probably needs it. On the edge of Bandelier we saw a group of three mule deer right beside the road. We've seen mostly cattle, sheep, and horses on this trip, but also a fair number of deer.
At Bandelier we took the self-guiding trail past the closest ruins (the 'Ruins Trail'). The only other possibility was to include the Ceremonial House, but this involved an additional hour and climbing up 140 feet on four wooden ladders. That's about the equivalent of four stories for each ladder. We decided the main ruins were quite sufficient and they provided us with the opportunity to climb ladders into them with ladders of a reasonable size. Climbing up into one of the caves carved out of the volcanic tuff and sitting there looking out over the canyon gives one such a sense of peace that one could stay there for hours.
But we didn't, although the two hours we spent did give us a little bit of everything: some ruins, some petroglyphs, and a nature trail. As far as animal life went, though, we saw more off the nature trail than on it. In addition to the mule deer mentioned earlier, there was a tarantula by the largest kiva and lots of birds living in and around the ruins. On the nature trail we saw a flicker (sort of like a woodpecker) and a squirrel with very long bushy ears. This is probably the best place for birdwatching we've been, except for the aviary at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which doesn't count.
In addition to the trails mentioned, Bandelier National Monument has several longer trails to other ruins. Since we're probably not in shape for an eight-hour hike, and since we're trying to do a bit of everything, we stuck with just the basic trail. However, we did take the long version of it rather than the abbreviated version. (This was also what we did at Sunset Crater.)
We had originally planned to go to Los Alamos first and then Bandelier, but one of our books said that photographing the ruins was best done with the morning sun, so we had switched the two. And a good thing it was, since it had been sunny at Bandelier but almost as soon as we left it clouded up and started raining, and continued to rain on and off for the rest of the day. Luckily Bandelier is our last scheduled outdoor activity of any length, so as far as weather, we've been very lucky--unusually so for us. Our Spain trip (worst rain and flooding in fifty years) and our Scandinavian trip (heat wave in the high 80s in Denmark, snow in Norway, cold rain on the fjord) are much more typical for us. Here we had the same temperature range as in Scandinavia, but we expected it.
We left Bandelier National Monument for Los Alamos but I managed to misread one of the signs and we drove west about 10 miles to Valle Grande, a giant volcanic caldera. At this point we realized we had made a wrong turn and went back, eventually finding our way to Los Alamos. Maybe the minimal signage is a hold-over from the days when Los Alamos was a top-secret site.
Any any rate, we arrived at the Bradbury Science Museum about 12:15 PM. And in answer to your first question, no, this is named after Norris E. Bradbury. We started with a twenty-minute film, 'The Town That Never Was,' about the Trinity project from December 2, 1942, when they achieved nuclear fission under the squash court at the University of Chicago, through the years of secrecy at Los Alamos, and up to July 16, 1945, and the explosion of the first atomic bomb and Oppenheimer's quote: 'I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.'
In fact, Oppenheimer's quote may be the only negative thing the museum says about the atomic bomb. Missing are any photographs of radiation victims--they do show the physical destruction of Hiroshima, but it looks no worse than Dresden. While I don't expect a heavy emphasis on the horrors of nuclear war, a little more balance might be in order. I should also mention that a lot of the work these days at Los Alamos National Laboratories (lanl.gov for those on the Internet) is totally unrelated to weapons research or even atomic research. For example, there is the Human Genome Project to map the entire human DNA. As an off-shoot of this, LANL also maintains the World Health Organization's database for AIDS viral sequencing, used to track the various strains and to focus efforts to find a vaccine. A lot of information about the current work is in a video called 'Los Alamos in the News,' which shows recent television news clips about LANL.
As you might suspect from the above, a much higher level of knowledge is expected of the visitor than at most museums. One of the explanatory videos at an exhibit on materials science had section headings of 'Material Boundary Tests,' 'Pressure Contour Mapping,' and 'Deformation of the Finite Element Mesh.' There were some exhibits that explained things on a more basic level, but it was all clearly aimed at a scientifically literate group. I suppose this lets out George Bush as a visitor since he just said Clinton couldn't possibly have studied the CAFE standards because they have square roots in them. The 'education President,' huh?
Naturally there were also historical tidbits mixed in with the science. For example, the secrecy led to everything having code names and even Los Alamos itself was kept a secret name. New arrivals were just told to check in at 109 East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe (now Tara Tucker Linens) and all mail was sent to P.O. Box 1663 in Santa Fe, which was also used on drivers' licenses and birth certificates. (In fact, driver's licenses didn't even list names, but just numbers, to the confusion of many state police when they stopped people. |
|
| Copyright © - "Evelyn C. Leeper" |
|
 |
| Other travelogues by the same author: |
|
|
|
