Sunday, we headed out early to go hiking in Bandelier to see the Cliff Dwellings. We made it to the visitor center in Whitehead to catch the shuttle which is the mandatory way of accessing the monument. The landscape is at the highest alert for fires. A massive one is raging to the east of Santa Fe and has been for a few days, but the prevailing winds blow all the smoke away, so we don't have to breathe the terrible smoke we can see feeding into the sky twenty miles or so away.
We took the shuttle and got off at the first stop which is called Frey trial where we hiked through scrub and then down a zig-zaggy path cut out of the side of the gorgeous tan and chalky sides of the canyon.
The material there is volcanic sediment that settled after the caldera exploded millions of years ago and it's peppered with little holes that the native Americans eventually enlarged to make their cliff-dwellings. We had a nice picnic lunch in the shade of some beautiful trees. These are part of the strip of green that colors the otherwise brown and scraggly landscape naturally irrigated by the creek that runs alongside the base of the cliffs and supplied the natives with sustenance. The cliff dwellings were interesting in that there were only a few of these with respect to the other mud and wood constructed housing closer to the creek. The people living in the hill must have been the hoity-toities of the village.
We left Bandelier, to drive about 15 miles through the canyon hills to Los Alamos. This is an interesting drive with lots of research posts lining the route. The town is really strangely configured, not surprising considering it's laid out by the same people who coined the terms SNAFU and FUBAR. One has to wonder at what must have been Oppenheimer's "WTF have we done?" moment" after Trinity, not so much because of the bomb's frightful power, but because he knew into whose hands it was placed.
We visited a museum that used to be the Boys Ranch but became a club house during the Manhattan Project, where everyone got to learn and see memorabilia from that strange and stressed time. We came away feeling a little tired emotionally as well as physically.
We had dinner at a rooftop restaurant in Santa Fe just down the street from the one we really wanted to go to (Cafe Pasquael's), but had some really good New Mexican tacos and a couple of Margaritas (well I did anyway, Ursula stuck to beer).
The next day we drove up to Taos to revisit the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. The scheduling is always a little contentious but we worked it out and went there first and then visited an eco-friendly housing community where we witnessed quite a few dust devils dancing across the scrub like real-life ghosts of the tasmanian devil from the road-runner.
We headed into Taos from there and walked around the plaza and Ushi found a painting she really liked. The kids got some other cool things: Aidan bought some gifts and Devin found a real page from one of the encyclopedias of Didero.
Our timing was off when we went to eat at the predetermined Orlando's (New Mexican cuisine again) because they didn't open until five and we were half an hour early. Aidan and I wanted to improvise and eat at the Taos Outback Pizza place, but Ursula and Devin wanted to stick with Orlandos. We decided to split up to stop the bickering (paradise our vacations, while fun, are not) and everyone was satisfied. After a little more shopping around the plaza purchasing a couple of hippy sticks and chocolate, we headed back to Santa Fe to try to catch what we'd hoped would be another beautiful sunset. We didn't get to see one because of cloud cover, but we also didn't lose Devin's sunglasses (inside joke).
Tomorrow Ursula and the kids want to visit some hot springs, while I stay back at the campsite and soak up a little bit of quiet and not running around time.
We took the shuttle and got off at the first stop which is called Frey trial where we hiked through scrub and then down a zig-zaggy path cut out of the side of the gorgeous tan and chalky sides of the canyon.
The material there is volcanic sediment that settled after the caldera exploded millions of years ago and it's peppered with little holes that the native Americans eventually enlarged to make their cliff-dwellings. We had a nice picnic lunch in the shade of some beautiful trees. These are part of the strip of green that colors the otherwise brown and scraggly landscape naturally irrigated by the creek that runs alongside the base of the cliffs and supplied the natives with sustenance. The cliff dwellings were interesting in that there were only a few of these with respect to the other mud and wood constructed housing closer to the creek. The people living in the hill must have been the hoity-toities of the village.
We left Bandelier, to drive about 15 miles through the canyon hills to Los Alamos. This is an interesting drive with lots of research posts lining the route. The town is really strangely configured, not surprising considering it's laid out by the same people who coined the terms SNAFU and FUBAR. One has to wonder at what must have been Oppenheimer's "WTF have we done?" moment" after Trinity, not so much because of the bomb's frightful power, but because he knew into whose hands it was placed.
We visited a museum that used to be the Boys Ranch but became a club house during the Manhattan Project, where everyone got to learn and see memorabilia from that strange and stressed time. We came away feeling a little tired emotionally as well as physically.
We had dinner at a rooftop restaurant in Santa Fe just down the street from the one we really wanted to go to (Cafe Pasquael's), but had some really good New Mexican tacos and a couple of Margaritas (well I did anyway, Ursula stuck to beer).
The next day we drove up to Taos to revisit the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. The scheduling is always a little contentious but we worked it out and went there first and then visited an eco-friendly housing community where we witnessed quite a few dust devils dancing across the scrub like real-life ghosts of the tasmanian devil from the road-runner.
We headed into Taos from there and walked around the plaza and Ushi found a painting she really liked. The kids got some other cool things: Aidan bought some gifts and Devin found a real page from one of the encyclopedias of Didero.
Our timing was off when we went to eat at the predetermined Orlando's (New Mexican cuisine again) because they didn't open until five and we were half an hour early. Aidan and I wanted to improvise and eat at the Taos Outback Pizza place, but Ursula and Devin wanted to stick with Orlandos. We decided to split up to stop the bickering (paradise our vacations, while fun, are not) and everyone was satisfied. After a little more shopping around the plaza purchasing a couple of hippy sticks and chocolate, we headed back to Santa Fe to try to catch what we'd hoped would be another beautiful sunset. We didn't get to see one because of cloud cover, but we also didn't lose Devin's sunglasses (inside joke).
Tomorrow Ursula and the kids want to visit some hot springs, while I stay back at the campsite and soak up a little bit of quiet and not running around time.
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