Daily Narrative    The day started in the wonderfully rational weather of Santa Fe.  It was around 75 degrees at 9:00am and beautifully sunny.  We uploaded a few pages and headed off for Los Alamos.  Los Alamos is historically the birthplace of most things nuclear, including the nuclear bombs that we dropped on Japan in World War II.  We had read that they had a great museum, which they, in fact, did.  We browsed the museum, watched a demonstration on thermo-acoustics, and saw a neat little film on Los Alamos' early days as a "secret city".  The history of Los Alamos as a officially non-existent city during the invention of the atomic bombs was very interesting.  We left Los Alamos, as usual, the long way around and eventually found the extraordinarily scenic Route 126, west of Los Alamos and ending in Cuba (sounds like a long road...).  For a chunk it was very "unimproved" windy dirt road that reminded us of the old road to Kennicott back home.  It began in a very wooded area and then broke out onto a beautiful grassy plain in the bottom of an extinct volcano.  There was also a brief thunderstorm as we were driving through 126 and the mud that was kicked up gave the bus a mobile version of that "fauxdobe" look we saw in Santa Fe.  We were very pleased.  After leaving 126, we headed across the northern New Mexico desert for Aztec.  Our goal was to spend the night at the Aztec Ruins National Monument.  This turned out to be a pretty poorly researched goal, as the ruins offer no camping and close at 6:00pm.  We got there a little after 6:00.  Initially our hope had been to visit the Mesa Verde ruins in southern Colorado, but the Mesa Verde park is currently on fire.  So, with target one on fire and target two a dud, we aimed west for the backup target of the Grand Canyon which will come tomorrow.  We made a fortunately uneventful wrong turn in Shiprock and moved on through Gallup, finally coming to a stop at Homolovi Ruins State Park in Arizona for the night.

---

Daily Pictures

Morning in the Ranchos De Santa Fe Campground, just east of Santa Fe	We are big fans of the lumpy geography
At the Los Alamos Bradbury Science Museum, an actual size mock-up of "fat boy", the bomb that leveled Hiroshima	A life size replica of "thin man", the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki
A (non-functional) guided missile	An example of the tubes they use to lower nuclear devices into holes in the desert to test fire them in.  The round item in the bottom would be the bomb
Yet another thematic community	Some burnt countryside from the recent Los Alamos wildfire
And a little new growth	The area was running over with these cool swiss cheese rocks
We stumbled on a particularly pretty piece of country road, SR 126, a dirt shortcut from Lake Fenton to Cuba	Lake Fenton
The road was a little bumpy, dusty and washboarded...	...and eventually very wet
It had all of the things that make Theresa happy...	...and a beautiful basin reminiscent of the Ponderosa

The bus, sporting it's new "fauxdobe" look	A "hillside" on the way to Aztec
We believe these plateaus are actually called "mesas"	A dry river bottom, we haven't seen more than a couple with any water since east Texas
Aztec, a funny welcome and a closed national monument	Moving on past Shiprock at dusk

Yep, seems like a number they  might have skipped over.  The sad thing? We accidentally took it into the night

---

Back To Road Trip Main Page