Albuquerque

We drove to Albuquerque next to meet friends from Oriental and visit Luke’s uncle and cousin.  Friends Bonnie and Pete are on a west trip for the winter also and our paths crossed in Albuquerque.  We met for dinner our first night, shopped the old Plaza shops the next day, and then visited the Petroglyph National Monument, which is actually located within the Albuquerque city limits.  There are several walks and we chose the 1.5 mile Piedras Marcadas Canyon Viewing loop with over 400 petroglyphs.  The trail itself was sandy, full  of cacti, and of course, petroglyphs along the canyon wall rocks.  No one knows what these carvings really mean and probably never will.  Perhaps marking a trail, celebrating something, announcing their territory, hunting territory, we just don’t know.

Ready to explore – Bonnie and Pete

 And us.  No, we still haven't found warm days.

This is a common pose – “there are some petroglyphs!”

 And here ARE some petroglyphs!  A bird, bugs, and people

 Birds

A warrior

Hands – note the ones on the right all have 6 fingers…

Dancers

A hunter

And a fellow with a bird flying overhead.  There were hundreds and hundreds more.

After the walk, Luke and I spent the afternoon and evening with his 98 year old Uncle Gust, cousin Paul, and a cousin visiting from Belgium, Marie Jose.  Here are the 3 Huybrechts men

Paul and Marie Jose prepared a wonderful dinner including a surprise cake for Luke’s upcoming birthday.

 On our last day with Bonnie and Pete, I went with them to Los Alamos.  Luke was a little under the weather (too much cake????) and unhappily opted to stay home.  We drove high – 9000 ft high to be exact! – into the mountains above Albuquerque.  The temperature dropped from the upper 50’s to 37 and snow still covered the ground.

To get to the town of Los Alamos we had to pass through a security gate – the road runs directly through the Los Alamos National Lab.  In case you don’t know, this is where the US developed the atom bomb in 1945.  Here is the original gate.  This was a highly secure, secret location at that time.

We toured the Bradbury Museum which covered the development of the bomb and the current projects which include ensuring that the US storehouse of nuclear bombs has bombs that have not deteriorated and are not unstable.  Here are mock-ups of the two bombs that were dropped on Japan in 1945.

“Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug 6.  A man is leaning over the bomb in the background - you can see it's size.

“Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug 9.  Both contributed to the end of WWII.

On a much lighter note, here is Orchid!  She has 11 blossoms now, with 2 more ready to open.  I do believe she thrives on abuse.

 Tomorrow we will be in Longmont, CO, to visit Luke’s daughters' families which means we will see the grand kids!  Looking forward to spending a week there and then we’ll be seriously heading back east.