Friday, 19 November 2021
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| today's route |
Google told me I couldn't get on I-25 at exit 242, that you can see right by Bernalillo. Google said I had to turn myself inside out and drive a whole bunch of extra miles out of the way. Google was wrong. I made a right turn onto US-550, drove a quarter of a mile, turned left and got on the highway.
I passed a sign telling me I could turn where it said, if I wanted to visit something called "Mormon Battalion Monument." I had to look that up, and I learned a battalion of Mormons marched south (I don't know from where) through this area to join the US forces in the Mexican-American War, and a monument was erected here to commemorate that. It doesn't make sense to me, but that's what all the online sources said.
I passed through the San Felipe reservation and the Santo Domingo reservation.
The highway felt like it was climbing up to Santa Fe, which it was: Bernalillo is at 5,052' and Santa Fe is at 7,198'. So an extra 2,000'.
Santa Fe
By the time I'd gotten into Santa Fe, I had the feeling all the houses I'd passed since Bernalillo were pretty much the same color. They're mostly made of adobe, and they're mostly some variation of that natural terra cotta shade. I generally think monochrome color schemes tend to be restful, and I felt that about these houses. But they can also be a little boring, and I felt that too about these houses. I would have liked to see at least one family decide that even shocking pink was a good house color.
At several points I saw signs telling me I was on the Santa Fe Trail Original Route.
And I saw a sign noting there was an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in Santa Fe during WWII. I can't find a photo of that sign online, but I did learn that from 1942 until 1945, more than 4,500 Americans of Japanese descent were held here. And I found two personal descriptions of this camp and the controversy about erecting the memorial. http://www.manymountains.org/santa-fe-marker and https://kathrynelim.com/santa-fe-internment-camp
Santa Fe's downtown streets feel as crowded as those in Taos, and for the same reason - they're narrow and the adobe buildings feel more hulking than I'm used to. I managed to find the capitol building, but the way the streets were configured, I couldn't get any angle for a photo. I found this one online.
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| New Mexico State Capitol |
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| zia |
Each of the building's 4 entrances looks like the one above.
It's a very attractive building, though I was a little frustrated that it was so heavily surrounded by plants and other buildings that I couldn't get any better view of it than the photographer did in that photo above. I also saw some really nice public art nearby. It looks like it'd be an interesting place to visit if you can find a parking place, but since I had trouble finding a place to drive in, I didn't even bother looking for a spot to park in.
Santa Fe, by the way, is the oldest capital city in the US., dating back to 1610 when the Spanish designated it as the capital for their Kingdom of New Mexico. When Mexico won the land along with its independence from Spain in 1821, the Palace that the Spanish had built in 1610 became the capitol for Mexico's Nuevo Mexico. And when the US claimed the land in 1846, that same building continued as the seat of territorial government. The Palace is now home to the state history museum and is the oldest public building in the US. I would love to have seen the building and visited the museum. Once again, I just didn't have time.
Back on the road
I passed signs for the Tesuque reservation, for the Pueblo of Pojoaque, and for San Ildefonso reservation.
All day I saw mountains, mostly tan and rounded with juniper dotted all over. And I saw lots of flat-topped mesas.
I passed a sign for Puye Cliff Dwellings, a National Monument, that are apparently on the road toward Española. The dwellings were likely used between 1300 and 1600 and are probably fascinating to visit. But that wasn't where I was headed now.
The road was climbing once again as I drove toward Los Alamos, which sits about 150' above Santa Fe. Despite the small difference in elevation, this road began a long upward constant series of s-curves, with a recommended speed of 25 mph. And I took that hint, not least because I was on the side of the road that didn't have a mountain attached to it. It was a fairly hair-raising drive and I was glad to get into town.
Los Alamos
Los Alamos, "Where Discoveries Are Made," they say.
We stopped at a nice park that wasn't far from an off-leash dog park. Unfortunately there were already 4 or 5 dogs in the dog park, so I kept mine in the regular park at a distance. We still had a nice walk in the grass around trees.
I found the Los Alamos Visitor Center/Manhattan Project National Historic Park and went to learn about this historic event. As it happened, the main thing I learned was that they were and are obsessed (to my mind) with secrecy. They have a smallish room that includes displays of information about the Manhattan Project, and there were two park rangers/volunteers who were very willing to answer questions. But they were insistent that I couldn't use any photos of their displays on my blog. None of that stuff "was in the public domain," they said. Which seemed really odd, considering the exhibits were being shown publicly, the door was standing wide open, and I didn't have to give a secret handshake or anything. But they insisted they themselves weren't allowed to use those photos on any of their materials, so I couldn't either. And I won't.
But they handed me a brochure - one of the usual brochures the National Park Service puts out for their properties - and I didn't think to ask if that was in the public domain because surely - surely - it must be since they handed it out to a member of the public.
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| NM-502 is the road to Santa Fe. Following that to NM-501 and then to NM-4 winds up on US-550, the road from Farmington down to ABQ. This map shows the overall area, and the numbers correspond to the descriptions below. |
The brochure had a 2nd map, this one of the historical sites in Los Alamos itself.
The Bradbury Science Museum was not named for Ray Bradbury, as I'd speculated, but instead for Norris Bradbury, who directed the lab after Robert Oppenheimer. To give you an idea of the folks at this visitor center, they didn't even crack a smile when I said that about Ray Bradbury. Granted they'd probably heard a million people say that, but surely - in a public relations position - it rates a smile?
And finally, the brochure had these before-and-after photos.
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| During the war - reminds me of photos I've seen of Washington, DC during the war. |
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| After the war - though this photo was apparently taken when some event was going on. |
As I understand the situation, the information from the visitor center exhibits is public - as I said no one made me swear an oath of secrecy to view them. I just can't show you the photos of them. So here's some information that I saw at the exhibits but don't see in the brochure.
Many of Germany's most talented scientists had fled the country before WWII. Robert Oppenheimer was born in the US to parents who had left Germany at an earlier time. He trained as a physicist, and recruited some of these immigrant physicists to this project. There was some fear that Germany was trying to develop an atomic bomb, and the Manhattan Project was an attempt to get there before they did. As it turned out, the Germans weren't working on this - or at least not very hard - but we didn't know that.
It was called the Manhattan Project because the engineering work was originally located in lower Manhattan. As the project grew and got moved around, the name just stuck. It was just a piece of luck that the name helped disguise the nature of the project. NYC's Columbia University was of enormous help in researching and developing methods of obtaining uranium-235 for the weapons.
To develop the project, the US needed areas with large tracts of federal land where the access could be controlled. They ended up with a number of sites across the country, the main ones being at Hanford, WA, Oak Ridge, TN, and here at Los Alamos. Oppenheimer knew about this area, having been here earlier for vacations and for his health.
The rangers told me about a book on Oppenheimer called American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. It won a Pulitzer. I was intrigued by the title - American Prometheus, the mythological Prometheus having stolen fire from the gods to give to humans.
The staff at the Los Alamos lab came first from those already in the army that were technicians and scientists; later people with these skills were recruited directly into the army to work on this project. They ended up with about 1,800 of them. After the war, most of them returned to college to get their degrees, having already studied at "Los Alamos University" with some of the world's best scientists. Of that group, 5 were awarded Nobel prizes.
All these folks agreed to join a top-secret project. They were told to arrive in Santa Fe, and from there they and their families were transported secretly to Los Alamos. In 1943, about 1,000 people lived here. By the end of 1944, there were 5,500, with the average age of 25. In 1943 alone, more than 80 babies were born there (with their birth certificates showing the location as P.O. Box 1663.
That post office box was the address for all the civilians here, and Sears Roebuck complained about being asked to send 400 catalogs to the same address. All mail, coming and going, was monitored, as were all telephone calls. The ranger told me the driver's licenses - even for the civilians - didn't have names on them, but instead had numbers in place of names. What a strange way to live.
I took these photos outdoors at that pond you saw in the photos above, so I'm sure they're considered public domain.
I made these as legible as I could. I think if you can enlarge them a bit, you'll be able to read them. I had trouble with the sun's angle.
And, because these too were outdoors, I'm including these photos.
I asked the rangers about the road to Valles Caldera and Bandolier, and they both suggested I might want to wait till another time for that trip. They pointed out what I already knew - that those places were nearly 3,000' higher than Los Alamos which might be a problem if I had altitude sickness. They said the road went straight through the laboratory grounds and guards often wanted to search RVs, just in case. They said there was at least one hairpin turn on that road where tractor-trailers sometimes got stuck. When that happened the entire road was closed down until a tow truck could come down from Colorado.
None of that sounded like a game-changer to me, but all that combined with my continued vague feeling of unwellness made me decide this was indeed a trip to postpone for a more propitious time.
Back on the road
The drive back the way I came was easier because this time I had the mountain on my side. And the highway department posted a sign warning that the twisty windy steep road I'd traveled up was a 7% grade going down. I also saw deer and elk warning signs that I hadn't seen on the way up.
I passed a balanced rock on the way down that I'd noticed on the way up. But this time I had the advantage of the rock being on my side of the highway, so I saw a sign for Camel Rock. Which is what this was. There's a photo and explanation for it at this website. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/camel-rock Despite what this web page says, I don't think this rock looks all that much like a camel. But it does look like a balanced rock, which I find a lot more interesting than putative rock camels.
Traffic was being routed into one very narrow lane on each side of I-25. For miles I was having to drive mostly in what would usually be the shoulder, and having to run over those indentions they put in the road to tell you not to drive on the shoulder. It was fairly miserable driving. And what I found the highway department doing was building Jersey barriers in the road. Actually building them themselves using what looked like a wire frame and concrete coating. I thought those things were pre-fab and just set in place as needed. Maybe so, but these guys were building them. I had time to watch them while the traffic was stopped or slowed way down. Is it cheaper to do this? Did they just run out of the prefab ones? Why would a highway department do this? On a Friday afternoon when traffic is most likely to be heavy? I'm telling you - New Mexico and I have really different ideas about road practices.
I was sorry for the things I missed seeing but glad to have seen those I did. Once again I found myself wishing I could spend a lot more than one month here because of all there is to see.
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