The Road to Los Alamos

We have been listening to “Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman” in the car the last couple of days. My brother thought we’d enjoy this book by a famous physicist and gave us the cds. I had read the book sometime ago, and found it interesting enough to have another go at it. Warped humor you know-always a draw for me. Anyway, we are at a stage where Richard Feynman is talking about his first experiences at Los Alamos, and it is bringing back memories of the Great Westward Exploration we did, several years ago. At dinner today, my brother was asking, did we travel for 10 months on that trip? I told him, “No, although it seemed much longer at times, it was only 7 months.” My uncle said that’s too long, he finds one month to be more than enough time away from home, and I agreed with him. However, I am glad we did it when we did.
To me, our trip to Los Alamos begins in Jemez Pueblo. There was some kind of festival going on and traffic was slow. Houses were adorned with gorgeous cones of red and green and yellow peppers, some on adobe walls that set them off like framed art. The peppers are my strongest impression of the place.
We stopped at Walatowa Visitor Center and talked to the rangers, looked at the displays, and discussed whether to find a place for the night or go on to Bandelier National Park. The Rangers assured us the weather looked good, snow much later that night, but we should be good if we traveled on right away. We blithely went on our way down and it promptly began to snow…just lightly…we’d be fine, we were sure…boy was that grade steep…but it would end soon…seemed to be snowing harder…weren’t those big fluffy white clumps of snow pretty. ..everyone was passing our truck and camper rig…that was fine…better they were far away, made us feel a little safer…getting a bit slick here…will this grade ever end…can you see beyond the nose of the truck…just barely…no stopping here…no going back…gee that ranger passing us looks nervous…hey I think he is leading us…just far enough ahead so we can see his lights…I feel a little better but guess I’ll keep praying…I think the grade is getting steeper if anything...the road is really greasy now...
to be continued
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