It is a long way to Los Alamos from Phoenix, almost 10 hours depending on traffic. Therefore we do not have any stops planned, we want to drive directly Los Alamos stopping only to get some food or use the toilet. Our plans get delayed quite a bit as we exit Arizona as the interstate is completely blocked due to a truck that overturned on the highway. Luckily there is a frontage road that allows us to avoid most of the 2+ hour blockage, phew.
We arrive late in the evening at the hotel and after check in we are ready to go to sleep as we have quite a full program the next day.
In the morning it is time for breakfast, which is quite filling, before we split up one of us is going to the training while the other one will explore Los Alamos.
The exploration starts near the hotel on the Canyon Rim trail. My plan is to find a few caches here and also start an interesting collection adventure with prizes offered by the Los Alamos Nature Center.
The trail here is surprisingly paved probabil for bikes. This makes for easy going while catching glimpses of the secret area of the Laboratory across the ridge.
As I find caches I also discover that next to the official trail is an abandoned roadway that was moved for unknown reasons a few feet to the north where the road now passes next to the trail. And then I arrive at our turnaround point, a really long bridge, that has the information I need for the Nature Center scavenger hunt.
Returning I watch the many small planes landing at the airport right across the road and the beautiful moon in the sky and soon I am back at the parking lot ready to drive to the downtown area.
The next stop in my exploration is the downtown areas and I park near Ashley Pond for my walk. Today Ashley Pond is very scenic with some beautiful colors on the surrounding trees.
I walk around the pond enjoying the great weather and the fall colors and watching the pigeons using crane statues as a resting place in the middle of the lake.
Next I pass next to Fuller Lodge which has an Art Gallery that I enter before continuing on towards the Los Alamos History Museum.
Before entering the museum I explore outside a bit more, there are some interesting Anasazi Ruins right in the middle of the city. Nearby is Hans Bethe House, but when I try to enter it I find out it is part of the history museum so back to the museum I go to buy an entrance ticket.
On the way back I pass Romero cabin, one of the last examples of unmodified homestead cabins on the Pajarito plateau. It was built in the 1910s and moved to the current location in 1985. You cannot enter it however interestingly I see a young deer buck passing right next to it, this is in the middle of Los Alamos!
Funnily the guy at the entrance cannot tell me if they are open the next day, really weird, so the decision is to visit today. The main building of the museum is relatively small and shows the history of Los Alamos spread across multiple rooms. A couple rooms are dedicated to the Los Alamos Ranch School which existed here to “train” and educate young boys and provided, involuntarily, many of the buildings for the Nuclear Research program. During WW2 the government used eminent domain powers to take over the whole area, against the wishes of the school owners, to built the secret research city.
Security was very tight in the area with no one civilian knowing the city existed, for example all post was delivered to a PO Box in a nearby city, which also made it easier to censor obviously.
The rest of the museum is dedicated to the days of developing the nuclear bomb and afterwards with lots of interesting historic information and photos. I learn a lot about the complex relationship between Oppenheimer, the other scientists and the military as I pass the different exhibits.
I now return towards Fuller Lodge, the former main building of the Ranch School which is now fronted by the two main people involved in building the nuclear bomb, Oppenheimer and Colonel Groves.
With the museum ticket I can enter also the historical part Fuller Lodge. The main hall where the dinner was happening is quite grand and impressive and I can imagine how the students were appropriately impressed and cowed. The rooms at the were the sleeping rooms for the supervisors and afterwards they were used as lodging for visitors to the Nuclear Laboratory.
Part of the experience at the Ranch School was to learn to hunt and I assume that is where the deer headpiece on top of the entrance is coming from.
The last house included as part of the museum ticket is the Hans Bethe House. Bethe was one of the main contributors to the creation of the nuclear bomb and subsequently spoke unsuccessfully in favor of Oppenheimer at his hearing. The house is furnished in a middle of last century style with some interesting old electronics. The kitchen though looks surprisingly modern, I guess there weren’t that many changes since then.
There are fewer exhibits here but an interesting one is the one showing that houses were allocated on a points system based on tenure, family and rank. The basic housing was quite bad actually and there was a real constraint on the number of houses available in the early years.
Near the Bethe house is the Oppenheimer House however it can’t be yet visited as it was only recently bought and needs to be consolidated and restored. Still it is interesting to see, even if only from the outside, the small house in which the leader of the project lived.
All of these houses and the museum sit on the famous Bathtub Row so named because initially these were the only houses with running water and consequently bathtubs. This has changed since then :).
With two finds in the scavenger hunt it is time to visit the Nature Center. The person at the ticket counter is quite nice and the gift for two finds is interesting enough that I decide to try to find three more on the hiking trails near the nature center and return. But first I visit the nature center exhibits which are quite good with a focus on reptiles and fishes.
Unfortunately there is a rowdy birthday party going on in a separate room and the children are running around like crazy and screaming which makes watching the wildlife at the feeders uncomfortable. At least the sound proofing seems to be very good as they chipmunks and the birds don’t seem to hear the shouting children inside.
After watching quite a few species of birds parade at the window it is time to hit the trails from the nearby trailhead. Three points to reach in two hours, easy?
I am really lucky that I downloaded an app with all the trails and the scavenger hunt locations previously as the trail system here can be quite confusing. It can be well marked and then suddenly you hit an intersection with no idea where to go. A small map from time to time would have helped enormously.
First I go down a canyon to a major intersection on my map which in real life is difficult to distinguish as it is on a stone plateau with no cairns pointing the multiple trails leaving the interesection.
However in the end I solve the puzzle and hurry along one of the trails that crosses a small bridge and the proceeds along a canyon rim towards the scavenger hunt location.
The views in the canyon are spectacular especially given the fall colors. I am really happy that I was able to catch the fall colors here, it is rare we can do that in Arizona.
Soon I am at the long bridge over the canyon which holds the scavenger hunt location and after getting the required information and passing the bridge for fun it is time to return to the intersection.
From it it is time to descend into the canyon on a sometimes precarious but beautiful trail. I now pass through the trees I have seen from above and it is a very scenic portion of the hike.
At the bottom I find easily the needed information and continuing on for a bit a find a very serious fence, not sure if it is a military area or not but prudence prevails and i decide to return back to the intersection.
After finding the third scavenger hunt item and enjoying the beautiful views over the plateau I return to the nature center with a half hour to spare before they close. We laugh a bit around, I mark where I have been on the tracker they have and then I receive the item for 5 scavenger items found and it is time to find something to eat.
I am really quite hungry by this time so I buy some tacos from a nearby restaurant. They are exceptionally good or I am quite hungry and I spent the rest of the day waiting for my better half to come from the training, which is about one more hour :). We both share our impressions of the day and then it is time to go to sleep as we are quite tired from learning and hiking respectively.
There was a reason for all the hurry on Saturday and the many things I have done. On Sunday the weather is forecasted to be rainy (and it is) and the history museum may or may not be closed, not even they knew it. So on Sunday, the day I have to check out while the other half of the team is at the training, there isn’t a lot to do but sit in the car or lobby of the hotel while the rain is falling outside. The only open attraction is the Bradbury Science Museum and that is only at 12 so the morning is spent waiting for noon to come to enter the museum.
It seems I am not the only person to do that as the museum is quite disproportionately full compared to the history museum. There is also a bit of overlap with the history museum but also enough new information to make it worthwhile, especially as it is free to enter.
There are exhibits and a movie about the heyday of Los Alamos as a secret laboratory but there is also focus on the new scientific achievements that were developed here.
A small section is also dedicated to the original people on the plateau, with some Anasazi pottery and objects. In addition it also describes the wildlife on the plateau which is quite interesting.
The largest section is dedicated to the nuclear bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interestingly they are given here similar importance, usually the Nagasaki exhibit is just an afterthought.
There is a section about modern nuclear safeguards with a panel also about the war in Ukraine, it is interesting that it has been updated so recently.
As I exit the museum I get a call that the training is ending and there is an adhoc trip planned to a nearby Wildlife Rescue Center. And spouses and friends are invited so I return to the training location to pick up the rest of our team and then we drive to the nearby Wildlife Rescue Center. It is a behind the scenes tour which is quite interesting as we see first the just rescued animals and those used to humans and learn how they are rescued and treated.
Then we move to the outside area, it has an impressive numbers of buildings where they house the rehabilitating birds and mammals while they recuperate while hopefully not getting used to human handlers.
The last section we see is the one with educational animals. These are those that cannot be returned to the wild either due to injuries or being too used to humans and therefore are used as an educational exhibit. These can be quite fun as you can interact a bit with them and each has a little story and likes or hates some of the keepers.
Afterwards it is time for the long drive to Aztec on backcountry roads. The drive is quite beautiful and we really are thinking of returning some time to explore it more in depth but today we drive straight to Aztec, with this portion of the trip described here.
