Hey hey USA - 23rd October - Valles Caldera and Los Alamos

We drove the camper with the heating in the cab blasting out, on the road through to Los Alamos. This passes through the Valles Caldera, a beautiful stretch of high plateau which was formed when a volcano erupted around 1.25 million years ago. The area is  a supervolcano like Yellowstone and it last erupted around 130,000 years ago. It still however produces hot springs and fumaroles. The highest peak overlooking it is the Redondo Peak at 11,253ft  but the main valley is still over 8,000 ft.

It looks cold in the pictures and it was freezing and rather bleak. We drove up to the visitor centre which was open but there were few places to walk and a back country road that you can use to drive right through the centre of the Park was shut for the winter. There was still evidence of fire damage from huge fires that occurred in 2011 and 2013. They now operate prescribed burns.

We drove on to Los Alamos and were amused when we were stopped on the main road at a sentry box by an officer toting weapons. We were asked to produce our drivers' licenses which caused him to scratch his head. We then showed him our passports and were firmly told that we could not carry on driving up that road and would have to take a byway, which actually turned out to be more scenic. Apparently the road goes past the present day military research labs and foreign nationals are out of bounds!

Alan had been really looking forward to seeing Los Alamos and after lunch we went to the Bradbury Science Museum, where I was slightly preoccupied with finding somewhere to stay for the next few nights. The museum is mainly about the science and production of nuclear weapons and is quite nerdy and hard work if you are thinking about something else. Also there is little reference to the dreadful destruction caused in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Today that would be considered a war crime.

There is a walking tour of the sites in the town where the people lived when the Manhattan Project was created in the 1940's, and so we spent the rest of the afternoon occupied with that.

Alan standing in from of statues of Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves

This is the Fuller ranch It was built in 1928 as a boy's school but in 1942 it was purchased by the Manhattan Project to be used as a dining hall, headquarters and community hub for staff.

The fire cache was built in the 1920's to house fire fighting equipment for the Ranch School.

The walking trail is marked out by doves in the pavement!

Pine cones outside Oppenheimer's house.

Robert Oppenheimer's house which he used while he worked on the Manhattan Project. The houses of the senior scientists were on 'Bath Row' so called because they had superior bath tubs.

Just the place to go for a day out!

The Ice House Memorial. In this building, formerly used to store ice, the engineers assembled the first atomic device known as 'the Gadget'.

At the end of the day we drove out of town to an  area where we thought we might get some views. We were rewarded by a glimpse of some mule deer.

Alan had booked the Comfort Inn in Los Alamos for the night, a rather dour looking block. Unfortunately they were in the middle of replastering their lobby. I think any other place would have shut down, but they had soldiered on requiring us to choke on clouds of dust before getting to our room. We though we would get a Chinese take away but had forgotten about the short hours of New Mexican restaurants and everything seemed to have shut at 7.00pm, so we got some sandwich stuff out of the van and survived on that. Not what I had envisaged.