Bob picked me up from the airport on the 22nd and we drove to Bandelier National Monument. Once we hit SR4 the views were breathtaking. It was raining which made all the colors so vivid.
We stopped on the side of the road at Soda Dam. Soda Dam is a rock formation where the hot sulphur water has created a water fall and a cave like structure with a shallow pool of hot water inside.
The following day we woke up to more rain and waited for a break to go to The Visitor Center at Bandelier National Monument where we took a guided tour in the rain. Oh well, we are here.
The ranger said it is the first moisture that they have had since Dec 26th. that is nearly 6 months. They have lost 80% of their Pinyon trees due to the draught over the last 5 years. I can't imagine because there are trees and green all around us.
On the tour we saw a village, Tyonyi (pronounced Qu-weh-nee) it is a round structure in the center of the canyon. It consisted of rooms 3-5 deep, 2-3 stories high. The outer wall housed turkeys, the middle ones held their grain, and the inside ones were the living quarters.
After the tour with the guide, we continued on the Main Loop Trail. This place is amazing. There are so many ruins. In the cliff wall alone there are 1068.
The houses are made of ash from a couple of volcano's sometime around 10 million years ago. One was 600 times more powerful than that of Mt. St. Helen. It spewed ash up to 1000 feet deep here and deeper in other areas. It was 100 cubic miles of ash. This condensed ash is what made the rock walls.
The soft ash made it easy for the ancient Pueblo People to carve out rooms and carve out bricks to make stand alone housing. The rock walls have a look similar to swiss cheese.
We also climbed to Alcove House which is a Kiva that is still standing. He had to climb 4 ladders climbing up 140 feet. There were also 3 stories of structures built into the cave wall. These structures have collapsed but you can still see the holes from the Vega Poles. These were the support beams.
On Sunday we drove into Los Alamos to visit the Bradbury Science Museum. The town was built in 1942 to support the Manhattan Project which was responsible for designing the Atomic Bomb.
The first atomic bombs, Little Boy and Fat Man are on display here. These are the bombs that ended World War II.
We watched a movie called, Los Alamos, the town that never was. Los Alamos was a town that didn't exist. All the best researchers and scientists were brought here to work on the bombs. No one said the name, Los Alamos. It is interesting that the average age of the people working in this town was 25.
The people received their mail to a P.O. Box in Santa Fe. On the birth certificates of babies born at this time in Los Alamos, the box number shows as their place of birth. How strange is that?
Currently there is military security in the center of town as you near the Research Facility. The security is on both sides coming into town. There are 3 lanes of security. It felt like entering another country.
The research facility remains open to keep our nuclear weapons up to date and in working order since we can no longer do weapons testing. They also track any testing throughout the world and can pick up anything that has been released into the atmosphere.
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