Stop 8 - Galup, New Mexico

We're here. Although still in New Mexico we racked up over 300 miles again. This was partly due to the fact that being in Santa Fe we were aware that we were only 50 miles off track from Los Alamos in the North. We were also aware of the fact that Los Alamos is (in)famous for being the place that the Atom Bomb was developed - the very ones that landed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So we thought we shouldn't miss the opportunity to visit when we were so close. So a 100 mile detour began the day. It was worth it! We all learnt a lot. And the place retains a mystique too. It is situated up high in the mountains. Beautiful vistas but so out of the way and hardly signposted. It's as if its still a secret. And there are definitely things still going on there! One give away is that the little place has its own airport. Who are they flying in and out? Whoever they are they are paid well because Los Alamos is an affluent place. It has two major banks in it and yet it is a tiny Mexican village on top of a mountain! It is a village populated by the most gifted scientists and academics - truly a fascinating place. An ideal place for testing bombs!

The science facility that sits up in the town displays the history of the Atomic bombs created there and of the work that is still going on today - not in making bombs but as custodians of the current stockpile.
The bomb below is an exact replica of the one dropped on Hiroshima. It was called "Little Boy" and here photographed with it are two other little boys.

 The one dropped on Nagasaki was nicknamed "TheFat Man" so called for Winston Churchill:

There is something very eerie about a monument to such a catastrophic event but without getting into the politics of it I can understand the point about deterrence as a justification for both the history and the present focus on atomic weapon development,
We could have stayed in Los Alamos for hours. It really was interesting in a very spooky way. However we had a journey to make and had to return to Santa Fe before travelling on to Galup.

So off we went again. Beautiful scenery to begin with and many videos taken again. I will have to show all of these when I get home!

But the journey down through Algodones, Bernalillo and into Albuquerque was less attractive than hitherto. It was essentially just a busy road through busy towns. Bernalillo was quite interesting for its scale and the presentation of its buildings but apart from that it was not much to write home about. Personally I think that travelling the Santa Fe loop is well worth the effort but having dropped down from Santa Fe I would recommend getting on to the I-40 at that point rather than completing the pre 1937 route in its entirety. As I say the loop down and back was a pretty dull affair with some mildly interesting buildings thrown in.

That's the Bernalillo court house. The police looked busy too. There were car accidents happening all around us. This one just in front as we approached an intersection, which held up traffic for a while. Looked like they were cutting someone out as we were eventually called through.

As I say busy, uninteresting and unpleasant. The one thing that did please us was that as we left Alburquerque we crossed the Rio Grande - a famous river which we stopped to look at for a while!

Beyone this point things really improved again as the scenery again became nothing less than magnificent. We drove through Armijo, Parajito and Los Padillas and then traversed the Isleta Reservation. We were now getting into genuine Indian territory. Through Bosque Farms, Parelta and Valencia and again over the Rio Grande into Los Lunas. From there we drove to Mesita and towards Laguna, negotianing "Dead Man's Curve" (a huge 359 degree turn!) around one of the now many red mountains. We drove on past Paraje and Budville and through Villa Cubero.  Here we came across the Villa Cubero Trading Post in which Hemingway actually wrote part of "The Old Man and the Sea". Amazing eh?

From here it was on through San Fidel and into Grants. We learned that there are huge swathes of old lava flows here. You can see it all over the place. They are called "malpais" and in the early days did hinder travel along here, which is why 66 is routed as it is to skirt them.

 It was onwards through the larva through Milan, Bluewater and Prewitt, to Continental Divide and thence to Galup where we are now fed and watered and ready to settle down for the night. Its 10.30 pm here as I write this (we are now another hour behind UK as we have shifted a time zone and are now in what is called locally "mountain time") and Pand and the boys are all fast asleep. After a hard day's driving its blogging for me!
I am aware of the relative lack of phtos of the road scenery today. Quite simply it was either too dull or so fantastic that it had to be videos I'm afraid!

Tomorrow we will leave New Mexico and enter Arizona. Its a stage of the trip to which we have been really looking forward and we hold high hopes.  I'll try and put a full suite of photos in for that. It'll be an early start again I think. Arizona here we come. Next post from there tomorrow night.