A Full Day in Santa Fe

 

On Tues. Jan, George, and I went to the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market and enjoyed seeing (and buying) fresh produce.   There were also flowers, bread, and some gift items.  It’s a very nice market and all the produce is grown by the vendors in the Santa Fe area.  There were lots of beans, fingerling potatoes, cukes, squash, some corn, big onions, etc., but no tomatoes. 

Then all of us went to lunch at Guadalupe Cafe which was fabulous.  I loved the Guacamole Chicken Enchilada, and George enjoyed his South Western Salad.  We walked down the street to see St. Miquel’s Church which was built in 1610 and also the Oldest House in Santa Fe.

We visited Canyon Road, an area of upscale galleries and saw some outstanding bronze statues, lovely flowers, and very attractive adobe buildings.  Our final destination for the day was the Georgia O’Keefe Gallery which was featuring O’Keefe’s abstract paintings.  We ended our day with George and George grilling steaks for dinner – a great ending to a great day.

Bandelier National Monument

 

On Monday we drove NW from Santa Fe to Bandelier National  Monument to see the ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings. We drove  about  fifty miles and climbed gradually eventually reaching nearly 8,000 ft .  The ancestral Pueblo people lived in a canyon at Bandelier about 700 years ago. The entire area is hundreds of feet deep in soft volcanic ash rock from a nearby extinct volcano. The people carved the volcanic rock into bricks to make buildings   that they attached to the canyon wall where there is a cave. We saw the foundations of the buildings and went in some of the rock caves, enjoying the cool day in spite of showers.  It is an amazing place, and we enjoyed seeing it and hearing about it from the rangers there.

Our plan was to visit the Bradbury Science Museum in nearby Los Alamos after visiting  Bandelier. As we were approaching Bandelier we began to see signs for “tech areas.” It soon became apparent that these areas with  buildings were part of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. On one ridge we saw a moderately sized radio telescope antenna that was pointed straight up at the sky. The tech areas were surrounded by barbed wire fences and each had a number.

We had thought that at Los Alamos we would learn all about the building of the first atomic bomb. There was that at the Bradbury Museum, but the big surprise was the vastness of the National Laboratory there and in the surrounding 40 square miles that was originally established to build the  first atomic bomb during WW II. We learned that there is a total of 49 tech areas where various scientific experiments are taking place. We had the feeling that there is no telling what kind of experiments are going on there. When we reached the outskirts of Los Alamos we had to pass through a government guard station.

We learned that one of the main missions of the laboratory is to check nuclear weapons for readiness and reliability without actually testing them. Los Alamos is one facility that still builds nuclear weapons. In addition to defense, the laboratory is working in diverse areas like medicine and the human genome, environmental research, and energy.

Albuquerque – Our Western Destination

                                                                                                        We arrived in Albuquerque to be greeted by a heat wave with high’s in the low 100’s.  On Saturday we checked out Old Town, ate lunch at a good Mexican restaurant, and went to  the Rio Grande Botanic Gardens.  The gardens are lovely and consist of several sections:  roses, desert area, Mediterranean area, Japanese garden, etc.  It even has a model railroad which is Garden gauge and laid out with towns, rivers, and trestles.

One of the places we visited was the Museum of Nuclear Science and History.   It had displays about Marie Curie and other early nuclear scientists, the Manhattan Project, nuclear medicine, and many other subjects.   

We also enjoyed a visit to the Rio  Grande Zoo which is an excellent zoo and has  lots of cottonwoods and grassy areas throughout the zoo, i.e. shade!  I especially enjoyed seeing and photographing the giraffes.  The elephant population includes a mother and daughter, Daizy and Rozy, both born at the zoo.

Palo Duro Canyon

 

We drove through Texas ranching country alongside many fields of corn and hay to reach an outstanding Texas State Park, Palo Duro Canyon.   It was apparent on arriving at the park office that the CCC had been involved with building this park.  One of their most impressive structures is now used as the visitor’s center and has “picture windows” with fantastic views of the canyon, including Lighthouse Rock, the symbol of the park.

From the office, we drove down a 10% grade to the bottom of the  canyon to reach Sagebrush Campground, the closest campground to the entrance.  The other CG with 50 amp service is reached by driving through 5 washes – areas where rainwater flows over the road.  The entire canyon area is verdant due to the recent rain.

We drove through the park today stopping to take photos – too many photos – but it was hard to resist  taking  “just another shot” with the beauty of the canyon walls with rocks of many colors. 

Another feature of the park is the herd of Texas Longhorns which graze just inside the entrance.  Several Texas state parks are home to Longhorns  in an attempt to preserve the breed, a part of the Texas legacy.  Incidentally, other wildlife we saw included a roadrunner and what appeared to be a tarantula.

Now for the weather report:  Note the temperature on the thermometer which was at the entrance to a trail. (It reads 110).  Another thermometer was on the overlook near the visitor’s center and registered 10 degrees cooler. 

Heading West . . . Summer 2010

 

We left home Sunday, July 11, heading west to New Mexico where we’ll join our  friends George and Jan in Santa Fe and Taos, and then continue on to Colorado.  The first few days we are mainly  driving, but we stopped Mon. just across the Mississippi River in Lake Village, Arkansas, at Rhoda’s Hot Tamales to sample the tamales.  As it turned out, we also got a take out order for dinner as well:  fried chicken, turnip greens, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, and corn bread. 

George read about Rhoda’s in an RV park review, and the comment was “if you can get past the appearance, the food’s great,” so we decided to try it since it was on our route.  And it was quite a find! 

 

 

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Fire in the Sky April 5, 2010

Video by Irene

During the winter of 2009 we scheduled a stop at Jetty Park campground at Cape Canaveral to see the space shuttle launch, but it was scrubbed due to a fuel tank leak. This winter we were lucky to get another reservation at Jetty park for the May shuttle launch,  but  Irene had three conflicting events come up on her calendar, so we decided to make a quick trip to Titusville for the April launch.   At 6:21 am this morning we stood between US #1 and the Indian River as shuttle Discovery blasted off in a fiery yellow light which seemed to rise slowly from the earth and was well above the ground before its boom and crackle reverberated across the river and reached us. Despite it’s high speed, Discovery appeared to be in a slow motion arc as it shot northeast into space leaving behind an almost florescent white contrail.  As the sun rose, a swirl of deep rose mixed with the white cloud adding to the show. It all was over quickly and the mass of people gathered to view one of the last launches gradually departed, having seen Discovery blast off carrying a crew of seven and an 8-ton stockpile of supplies destined for the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA called the predawn launch "spectacular," "picture-perfect" and its "most visually beautiful launch ever."  Today’s launch was the 35th and final time NASA launched a space shuttle in complete darkness which added to the dramatic effect.  The Discovery crew included three women astronauts joining one already on the ISS, thus setting  the record for the most women in space simultaneously.

We had parked our motor home in a shopping mall parking lot across the street along with many others. Apparently the authorities are pretty tolerant of RV’s during launches. Parking there the night before was very convenient as we didn’t have to get up so early. After breakfast we drove to The Great Outdoors to visit Walt and Joyce whom we met in the mid-90’s through the Overland Trailblazers, our previous RV club, and with whom we visited briefly in January when we were at The Great Outdoors for the Southeastern Country Coachers rally.  They had arranged for us to park our coach in their absent neighbor’s RV port while we were there for the launch, but we decided to move to the mall in Titusville for a better view once we saw others RV’ers parked there. 

It was great to see Walt and Joyce, and it was especially interesting to visit with them today after seeing the launch since Walt worked as an engineer in the space program over a long period of time.  He worked with Werner von Braun at the US Army Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, and his office was next to von Braun’s.  He told us that von Braun told his team of engineers that if they had a better idea that worked, do it; they didn’t need to get his approval.  While working at Redstone Arsenal, his work frequently took him to Cape Canaveral and he moved to the area in the mid-60’s.  He also explained the source of the halo effect we had seen at the launch.  After the solid rocket boosters were jettisoned – after about 2 minutes – we saw a halo effect surrounding the shuttle which Walt said was the main rocket actually consuming the atmosphere as the hydrogen/oxygen rocket engine doesn’t emit any visible light.
 
Later in his career, Walt worked for Morton Thiakol as an engineer designing and developing the shuttle’s solid rocket boosters. We could hear a note of American pride as he commented on the solid rocket boosters. He pointed out that the shuttle’s main engine starts first which is no big deal, but that “when those solid rocket boosters light, you’re going somewhere.”
We enjoyed our visit with Walt and Joyce, and the time to leave and head north toward Rome came way too soon. All in all it was a short trip, but one that satisfied a long-held desire to see a shuttle launch before the program ends in September.

One Last Florida Bike Ride . . . on This Trip

 

With sun shining, a light breeze, and the temperature in the low 60’s, we set out for the last bike ride of our winter Florida trip by going to nearby Hillsborough River State Park.  Hillsborough River is one of Florida’s oldest  state parks, having been built by the CCC and opening in 1938. The park has had recent renovations and is a lovely natural setting with the Hillsborough River flowing through woods filled with palmettos and moss-draped oak trees.

We parked the truck just inside the park to unload our bikes and rode along the park road to explore the area.  We checked out the campground (which was full) and then rode on to the Wetlands Restoration Trail where we met up with a couple from Ohio on their bikes and continued on the Wetlands Trail together.  It was a pretty rough trail, but we soon reached  a hard surface unpaved road and continued to the river.  We were surprised to see no wildlife – not even birds. 

Interestingly, the Ohio couple told us one of their favorite bike trails is the Virginia Creeper Trail which we also love and biked for the second time with Jim and Hope a couple of summers ago.  They recommended the Hiawatha Trail in Idaho as a great trail similar to the Virginia Creeper.  Now when can we go there?