Tuesday,
October 11, 2016
Started the
day off with breakfast again at the Sage Inn – they have all the usual hotel
breakfast fare including waffles. If you
want to pay $5 there is a nice guy there who will make an omelet to your liking
– with all kinds of ingredients.
Today we had
3 goals – Farmer’s Market, Los Alamos Manhattan Project Museum and Bandelier
National Monument. Writing this at 7 PM
I can say we accomplished all 3!
The Farmer’s
Market is very close to our hotel – the Rail Road area has undergone lots of
upgrades in recent years. The light rail
from Alburque comes in and there have been lots of galleries and shops
opened. The Farmer’s Market is open on
Saturdays and Tuesdays. It was very nice
with loads of veggies and food and crafts.
We bought some green chilies, some fingerling potatoes, and a loaf of
whole grain bread that looked awesome.
Also an apple tart. Some of the veggies were quite unusual and some were
just normal veggies but very nice looking. Jane was disappointed the few people
who were selling chili pepper ristas were making them too fancy – so passed
them by.
We headed
north towards Los Alamos – 4 lane road all the way. It is only about 20 miles north of Santa
Fe. Crossed the Rio Grande River again and began seeing lovely yellow on the mountains again. We found the Bradbury Science Museum
which has become a part of the National Park Service recently. They also have a driving tour with a few of
the original 1939-45 era buildings. We opted to tour the museum and it was very
interesting. They had two films one on
the history of the Manhattan Project and a second one telling about the role of
the Los Alamos Facility today. Well worth the time but not much in the way of
photos. Los Alamos was as remote and
secret an operation as Oak Ridge was. The people who lived and worked there
used a Box # in Santa Fe for their address and it even appeared on birth certificates
for infants born there!
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| Rio Grande |
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| The Mountains around Los Alamos |
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| Bradbury Science Museum |
We then
headed towards Bandelier National Monument – The GPS took us up a road and we
came to a number of guard stations – we were going to drive through the Los
Alamos National Laboratories. One of the
main roads in the area passes right beside the huge buildings and to drive down
the road you had to show ID and promise to take no photos for 5 miles. Interesting!
We finally
arrived at Bandelier to discover you had to take a shuttle into the park. We came in the park and were directed to the
Camp Ground Parking area nearby to wait for the shuttle. The main shuttle parking is in White Top a
town about 8 miles away and the shuttle runs every 30 milutes….so we ate a
great lunch of delicious bread, butter, cheese, some fruit and the apple
tart. We were just finishing when the
shuttle bus came by.
When we
arrived at the Visitor Center area we understood why they needed the
shuttle. There were probably 20 parking
places. We watched the movie, took about
a ½ mile walk down the canyon to see the ruins.
This Puebloan settlement was about 2,000 years later than Aztec and
Chaco. Some of the ruins and kiva were
on the canyon floor but the majority of the living dwellings were high on a
south facing wall. We went as far as the
kiva and ground structures but did not climb up to the wall dwellings. Many children and others were having a great
time climbing the ladders into the various cliff dwellings.
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| Bandelier National Monument |
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| Frioles Canyon |
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| Ben talks with Ranger |
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| Homes in the Cliffs |
We waited
about 5 minutes after our walk for a shuttle bus that whisked us back to our
van – good system because we did not ever wait more than a few minutes for a
bus.
Ben pulled
off the road on the way back to Santa Fe on an Indian Reservation and bought
gas for 10 cents less per gallon than in Santa Fe. Taxes maybe different?
We stopped
at one of the shops along the street selling the chili pepper ristas and Jane
bought what she had been wanting. We headed back to the Sage Inn to do some
research on where to eat dinner!
Trip
Advisor really recommended a winner tonight!
We were again not wanting more Mexican/Southwest food – sure hate not to
take advantage of Santa Fe but we just wanted something else. We headed to the best Chinese in town –
LuLu’s. Wow was the food great and to
make it even better we have enough for dinner tomorrow night too. We had Hot and Sour Soup; Beef Chow Fun which
is beef with wide rice noodles, onions, bok choy, and bean sprouts; and Orange
Beef. The Orange Beef was the best we
have ever had – real orange taste not little pieces of orange rind as is often
the case.
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| Orange Beef |
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| Beef Chow Fun |
Back to the Sage Inn and do a little packing so
we can leave early tomorrow a
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