Bandelier and Los Alamos

One of the side trip days took us north and west to Bandlier National Monument and then on the Los Alamos. Bandelier is one of the numerous places that the Ancient Pueblo people built homes and huge building complexes between 600 and 1000 years ago, throughout the South West.

Bandlier was peaceful and very beautiful. We were very pleased to have a lovely walk through a valley, and then had the chance to climb up a number of ladders to get to a place where there was a powerful kiva there. We climbed (and climbed) and were then very grateful to have a chunk of time without anyone else around. You could feel the ancient spirits.

Although we noted that the fire danger was rate as extreme, we had not a clue that a few days later, this whole area would be engulfed in flames.

Our visit with Los Alamos was interesting, but in the end rather creepy. We spent a couple of hours at the main museum in town there, had the chance to see a fabulous movie about the town's role in WWII and the secret development of the nuclear bomb. It was super top secret, even people in nearby Sante Fe had no real idea what was going on there. Actually, some of the people were worked there had no idea.

One woman said when she asked what they were doing, she was given the official line that they were developing windshields for submarines;-) Seeing some actual bombs like the ones that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were very sobering.

A couple of hours were as much as we could handle, and we were both ready to leave. the whole area of the laboratory had these signs about explosives....scary!