Partial cloud, warm
138 miles
I arose at 8.15, and collected a complementary ``bear claw'' pastry from the lobby of the motel. However there was no juice on offer, so I went to the next-door filling station to buy some.
I had decided to spend the morning in Santa Fe and then head back to Los Alamos for the afternoon before returning to Albuquerque. I went into the town centre, spent a while in a souvenir shop, passed the unprepossessing-looking 109 East Palace Avenue (the office to which new arrivals to Los Alamos reported), then went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum.
O'Keefe was born in up in Wisconsin in 1887, and as a young artist spent time in New York, where she met her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. She first came to New Mexico in 1929, and moved there permanently a few years after Stieglitz's death in 1949. She lived and worked in Abiquiu, fifty miles northwest of Santa Fe, until she died in 1986. The museum featured many of O'Keefe's paintings, along with a selection of Stieglitz's photographs.
By the time I was done at the museum it was still not yet 12.00, and I still had plenty of time remaining on a parking meter. I decided to get a quick bite of lunch in Santa Fe before leaving, and had a croque monsieur at a crèperie at La Fonda hotel.
I left Santa Fe at 12.40 and headed back to Los Alamos to visit the town's second museum, the Los Alamos Historical Museum, which concentrated on the wartime history of the laboratory and the town.
The town of Los Alamos has its origins in a ranch built in 1911, which was later bought out by a businessman named Ashley Pond, who reopened it as a boys' school in 1918. This school consisted of a number of timber buildings, some of which still stand. Nearby a pond was constructed, which was inevitably after the school's founder.
J. Robert Oppenheimer visited the area during the 1930s, and remembered it in 1942 when required to help select a secluded location for a small but top-secret laboratory. After a series of visits from the military, the school was served with a notice of closure, and was handed over to the army in February 1943. By this time it was evident that the establishment would be far larger than originally planned.
The main school buildings were converted to provide the essential facilities of the small town, while the masters' houses became the homes of the top officials. Far more luxurious than the temporary residences hurriedly erected elsewhere, these became known as ``Bathtub Row''. The whole community was highly isolated -- water was scarce, three telephone lines served the entire site until 1945, and all contact with outsiders was strictly controlled, with all mail being censored and incoming mail merely addressed to a box number in Santa Fe.
The locals had known that something secretive was going on on the ``Hill'' but were surprised at the truth finally revealed on August 6th 1945. One or two people had doubted the official story a few weeks earlier regarding the huge explosion on the Alamagordo Bombing Range, but had not connected it with Los Alamos, some two hundred miles away.
The museum did not neglect to cover the effects of the work done at the laboratory -- one wall was taken up with a series of photographs showing the devastation at Hiroshima, and accounts of the effects of the bomb. A back room was devoted to the portrayal of nuclear power in popular culture in the immediate post-war era, very different to that of today.
I then embarked on a historic walking tour around the town, starting with the old school buildings, then crossing the road to Ashley Pond. A sign warned of unsafe ice, which numerous ducks were happily ignoring. I then took a walk past the ruins of a thirteenth-century pueblo building and down Bathtub Row, at the end of which stands the house formerly occupied by Oppenheimer. The route then took me back to the Bradbury Science museum. I had a look around some of the exhibits I had not seen the previous day, such as a 1970s Cray supercomputer, and a film on ``stockpile stewardship'', that is, management of the USA's considerable but ageing nuclear arsenal to prevent accidental detonations while ensuring they will work if required.
I returned to the car and decided to take the scenic route back to Albuquerque, leaving Los Alamos to the west. This took me up a winding road around Pajarito Mountain, where smoke ahead had me wondering whether there was a fire in the woods. I soon found the real cause, however, an elderly vehicle towing a trailer slowly up the hill and producing copious quantities of black smoke as it did so. Unfortunately the road offered no safe opportunity to overtake, so I held well back in order to have some cleaner air to breathe.
Over the pass, the road entered the open expanse of Valle Grande, part of a geologically recent volcanic caldera over fifteen miles across. The route continued through the scenic Jemez Mountains and through the busy Jemez Pueblo before reaching a more major road. Turning right would have taken me to Cuba, though not the land of Fidel Castro, while the left turn took me back to Bernalillo and interstate I-25.
The view as I drove into Bernalillo was impressive, with the vast Sandia range in the evening light forming a stunning backdrop to the flat landscape of the Rio Grande valley. I took the turning back towards Albuquerque and returned to Central Avenue to look for a motel for my last night in the state. I chose the historic El Vado, which claims to be the most authentic Route 66 motel in town. The buildings were of adobe, with most rooms having adjoining carports, a welcome touch to protect them from the heat of the intense desert sun. The rooms however left a little to be desired in terms of cleanliness.
I spent quite some time sorting stuff out and repacking for the next day's flights, then decided to head into the Old Town area for dinner. Unfortunately I had left it too late to get dinner in the plaza area, but I found a slightly upmarket restaurant named ``Seasons'' nearby, where I had a Caesar salad followed by a sirloin steak with onion rings, mashed potatoes and mushrooms.
On the walk back to the motel, I spotted an unusual vehicle. The Hummer is a huge environmentally-unfriendly SUV derived from the USA's standard military vehicle (``HumVee''), and someone had evidently decided that it was insufficiently enormous and that a stretched version was called for. I sorted out a few more things, cleaned the bathroom sufficiently to make it usable, and went to bed around midnight.