Here is a map of the full day's ride.
At dinner last night, we got into a long conversation with a couple of fellas that were in Chama for an event today. They and a dozen or so others had brought "speeders" to Chama and were riding them on the tracks today from Chama to Osier and back. A speeder is a small, motorized rail car. They were often used to do track inspection and transportation for maintenance workers.
These guys have narrow gauge speeders and there are only a few places around the US where they can drive them. They are members of a club called
NARCOA. There were many models of speeders there today
On our way out of Chama, we stopped at Wilder Bakeshop and Espresso. They had amazingly good pastries. Clearly the place to go in Chama.
We visited the Los Alamos Historical Museum and took a 1.5 hour walking tour. When the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb) decided to go to Los Alamos, they took over a rich kids boarding school called the Los Alamos Boys Ranch. The buildings from the
school were used to house the bigwigs and barracks-like housing was used for the other project members. The army, represented by General Leslie Groves, was in charge of the project and J. Robert Oppenheimer was the chief scientist. There are statues
of the two of them outside the history museum.
The largest building that they acquired from the school was the Fuller Lodge. It served as a community center for Manhattan Project workers. We spent some time inside the building with our docent, a retired munitions expert from the current Los Alamos
Lab.
Here are pictures of former school administrator homes occuppied by two of the top scientists, Oppenheimer and Hans Bethe (head of the theoretical division). The Bethe house is currently a museum and the Oppenheimer house is soon being restored for visitation.
Oppenheimer House.
Bethe House.
After our tour, we went to the Bradbury Science Museum. We watched two short documentaries, one about the development and delivery of the bombs in 1945, and the other about the current Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The museum had a full scale model of "Fat Man", the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
They also had a model of the minuteman missle, showing how much smaller things can be built these days.
Our first stop upon returning to Santa Fe was the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. We found a parking lot nearby, paid our $10 parking fee and walked to the museum. Alas, we hadn't done our homework. The museum was sold out for the entire day.
So we walked to the Plaza and took a picture to show the beautifull trees.
We stopped at a restaurant near the Plaza and had a delicious lunch that included sangria.
We can't show you pictures of O'Keeffe's work so here are some vistas from our trip down from Chama. Georgia painted many vista much like these, perhaps even the same ones.
At the end of the day we had travelled 159 miles for a current total of 2513. Now that we're back in Santa Fe, we have a supercharger.
