Bradbury Science Museum and More

 Los Alamos, NM   high in the upper 80s  lows in the 60s

I must admit, I did not plan this journey at all well. I do not like crowds of people. I get frustrated and give up easily at trying to find a parking spot, or joining hundreds of people trying to see something. And where I am headed next was nothing but crowds.

First up is Los Alamos, NM. The drive up the mountain was gorgeous but I have no pictures because I was driving and trying not to hold up too many other cars while looking at the countryside. Personally, I think the drive down the mountain is more beautiful than the drive up.

Los Alamos is famous for being one of the places that developed and created the atomic bomb which was the primary objective of the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos Laboratory during WWII.

During the operation of the Manhattan Project, this was the main gate for those with top secret clearance to be able to enter Los Alamos.  The work being done in the Lab was a closely guarded secret until after the United States dropped the bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. That part of our history is fascinating and scary at the same time.

 

I arrived at the Bradbury Science Museum at opening time and was glad I did. It was overwhelming because of all the information they had. If I had tried to read everything on the walls and on the exhibits, I would have needed at least a week. And a lot of the information was very scientific and more involved than I could understand. 

This is the Mitchell 35mm movie camera. Four of these cameras were used to record the first nuclear explosion at the Trinity Site. 

They have a great 15 minute movie that really explained the creation of the bomb and the scientists who were involved. Especially J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was a theoretical physicist and was the Director of the Los Alamos Lab during the war.

This gadget was the world's first nuclear device, not yet weaponized, which was the same design as the Fat Man Bomb and was tested at the Trinity Site.

Fat Man

Little Boy

The museum has one area dedicated to the atomic bomb with replicas of the two bombs dropped on Japan - fat man and little boy. The rest of the museum covers the work that is still going on in the Lab and the advances in science that affect the world we live in now.

 

I spent a couple of hours wandering around the museum and using their interactive displays. By then the crowds had grown and you could hardly move. Time for me to explore elsewhere but that turned out to be a bust.

First up was Bath Tub Row which is currently completely torn up with road construction. Okay, so let's go find Oppenheimer's house. Well, what do you know. More construction. His house is somewhere down that street on the right hand side of the road.

 Okay, let's try Manhattan Project Park. There was absolutely no place to park anywhere near by. So I finally called it quits and grabbed a chicken sandwich for lunch. That's when disaster struck. I broke off one of my upper teeth. More on that saga later. That ended my day for me. Tomorrow wasn't much better.

Early the next morning I decided a drive up to the Rio Grande Gorge would be a good thing. And the drive up was wonderful. Not much traffic. Wide open spaces. Until you get close to the Gorge. And then there was traffic and people everywhere. There is a rest area with parking near the bridge, but the Navajo have taken over most of the rest area with all their goods to sell and their vehicles. So parking was limited and people were parking everywhere illegally.

This was the rest area.

This was the only picture I got of the bridge through the car window.

I thought Taos would be an interesting place to visit and the road ran along side the Rio Grande River with a few places to pull over and watch the rafting. That was interesting because their were so many tour rafts on the water they could hardly move.  No pictures of their traffic jams on the water. 

Taos was a drive through with no stopping because there were people everywhere. I'm sure a lot of people come up here to get out of the city and enjoy the cooler temperatures. So I made the pretty drive back to the motel and called it quits.

And this blog post is way longer than I had planned for it so I am signing off now.