Day 9: Santa Fe, Bandelier, Los Alamos, Taos.

- May 13, 2014

Blue skies in Sante Fe.

Let's go for a ride and see what the day brings.

Bandelier. National monument was our first visit for the day. It is in the Frijoles Canyon in the Pajarito Plateau, formed by volcanic eruptions of the Jemez volcano. The pink rock is tuff formed from compacted volcanic ash.

Ancestral pueblo people used tools to enlarge natural openings in the cliff face and constructed stone dwellings on the warmer South side of the canyon. The earliest settlements date to the mid 1200's.come along for the walk along the main trail.

We rode on to Los Alamos and visited the Bradbury Science Museum. The three main sections of this museum include the history of the Manhattan Project, current research and defence.

If you are interested in the Manhattan Project you can watch the film 'The town that Never Was' on the the link. I was especially interested in the displayed photographs and personal stories or men and women involved in the project.

The Manhattan project calculators . Women entered masses of data manually. The link shows the evolution from these machines to computers and the impact on scientific discoveries.

The Los Alamos national Laboratory undertakes research and development in national security, space exploration, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, geoscience, supercomputing and has an annual budget of $US2.2bn. Some of the work is described in the displays in the science section in the museum but you can take a peek at LANL innovations.

We would have easily spent more time here. But the road calls.

These distant clouds look as if they are beyond our route.

But as we ride alongside the Rio Grande river and get near to Taos we discover that...

Oh no, we haven't avoided the rain,

Or the snow.

Beyond Taos the road to Las Vegas NM would take us through some mountains. In these conditions it would be hazardous. We decide to stop at Taos and a wonderful warm welcome from CC made us feel at home.