June 14: SW Road Trip Day 36: Los Alamos to Abiquiu

At dawn, Amy runs the Rim Trail. We breakfast at the hotel’s buffet. After loading the car and checking out of the hotel, we drive to the Rim Trailhead 1.5 miles up the road and walk some more of the trail taking up about where Amy turned back.

Rim Trail

This path ends up downtown. We explore, soaking up the atmosphere. Los Alamos seems a vibrant, diverse place. A pleasant change from other New Mexico towns which have lots of shuttered buildings and failed businesses. Of course, there is a lot of crucial Government work going on here. And because of that work there are a lot of well-paid scientists and engineers in this town of 12,000.

We happen upon the Lodge, one of the first buildings built for the Manhattan Project and the Social Center of that project. In front of the Lodge are full-sized statues of Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves.

Oppie and General Groves

The Lodge

We continue our walk around the town and find this view of North Los Alamos across Acid Canyon.

North Los Alamos

We turn south and find ourselves in front of the Bradbury Science Museum, named for the first peace-time director of Los Alamos National Labs.

Bradbury Science Museum

We spend the next hour in the museum, seeing a couple of short films and viewing lots of exhibits, including the Manhattan Project and today’s mission for Los Alamos. Since 1963, the USA, UK and USSR have agreed to refrain from testing nuclear weapons. Today, Los Alamos National Lab uses scientific methods to determine that weapons in the USA's stockpile will work without actually testing them. The LANL also consults in verifying that other signatories are living up to their end of the treaty and also in assisting decommissioning obsolete nuclear weapons in other parts of the world (think the plot line from the Bond film The World Is Not Enough).

One of the more interesting exhibits was a timeline of the supercomputers developed and/or used at Los Alamos. It is a most enjoyable visit. I recommend it highly to any Science Nerd or History Buff.

We head back to the Rim Trail and our car and head for Abiquiu, 45 minutes away.   During the drive, mostly through natural, undeveloped land, we haven’t found any restaurants, so we eat lunch at the Inn’s Abiquiu Café. The patio is really comfortable. It is shaded and there is a little breeze. The south side of the patio is lined with bird feeders and there are frequent visits from several hummingbirds.

The Abiquiu Inn

After lunch, the room isn’t quite ready so we relax on the Inn’s porch. It is really hot. After another half hour, our room is ready and we move in to our home for the next two days. After a half hour of rest, we take a quick drive up the road to see what else is here and find The Frosty Cow. Ice cream tastes so much better when it is hot.

There is no other viable option for dinner besides driving 10 miles back to Espaniola, so we have dinner at the Café. We share a grilled cheese sandwich and the rib eye steak. We already had our treat in the afternoon, so we skip dessert and call it a night. Tomorrow will include a tour of Georgia O’Keeffe’s winter home, which is about a mile up the road from here.