Friday, October 6, 2017: Puye Cliff Dwellings, Los Alamos

A beautiful sunny and warm day greets us in Santa Fe.  Today is Puye cliff dwellings and Los Alamos nuclear laboratory day.  After a particularly unremarkable breakfast across the street, we head north again on US84 turning off this time for Puya.

Puye is one of two cliff dwelling sites in the area.  The other is the better known Bandelier National Monument.  We chose Puye because it is run by the Native Americans and reputedly has a more indigenous outlook on the presentation.  The Puye cliff dwellings are on a plateau (mesa) with dwellings on the side of the cliff and up on top of the flat mesa.  We could tour either, or both.  Touring on top required climbing a long, steep wooden ladder and ascending "natural staircases".  At our age, we decided that the one hour cliff side tour would be more appropriate.  After waiting an hour for our tour to begin, our one hour tour actually took two hours.  It was great but it was a long time in the hot sun, without water, on the side of the cliff.  Here are some photos.
Now we are badly in need of lunch and hydration.  We find the Blue Window Bistro in downtown Los Alamos
where I consume the Cobb salad.
But before we actually reach Los Alamos, which itself is located on the top of a mesa, we stop a roadside overlook with an amazing view.
We first tour the Los Alamos History Center.  The atomic energy portions of Los Alamos are falling into ruin.  Should they be preserved as a relic of the most important event in the twentieth century?
Los Alamos was a boys school before being commandeered in 1943 for atomic research.  This is Fuller Lodge of the boy's school which functioned as a gathering, social place during the development of the atomic bomb.  Can you picture J. Robert Oppenheimer having drinks with his buddies in this room?
Statues of Oppenheimer and General Graves outside of Fuller Lodge.
The Bradbury Science Museum
houses replicas of "little boy" (a uranium bomb dropped on Hiroshima) and "fat boy" (a plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki).  This is fat boy.
Good night.  Tomorrow: Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument?

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