Every Mile a Memory: Bandelier, Los Alamos, and Capulin Volcano

May 17, 2016

We left Heron Lake at around 9 and we’re heading for Los Alamos. There’s a Visitor’s Center in White Rock (about 15 miles from Los Alamos) that has an RV park attached. When we arrived at the Visitor’s Center there were only three other RV’s parked in the 20 site parking lot. It really is just a parking lot with electrical hookups. However, we parked as close to the Visitor’s Center as possible and were able to get a great free wifi connection. Yeah! And at $20/night…that’s a real bargain.

Our awesome parking lot spot at the White Rock Visitor's Center

Once we parked and put out the slides, we went into the Visitor’s Center and got info on Bandelier National Monument. Hopped on the shuttle (the only way to visit the park) for a 20-minute ride to the visitor center, that’s right, another visitor center. This one had a 14-minute movie and rangers to help you on your way. Bandelier is named for Adolph F.A. Bandelier, a self-taught anthropologist who established the foundation for much of modern southwestern archeology. Men from Cochiti Pueblo guided him to their ancestral homes in the Frijoles Canyon in 1880, now part of Bandelier. Bandelier is unusual in that it has only 3 miles of public roads within its 33,750 acres, but 70 miles of trails.

We were able to borrow a trail guide from the Visitor's Center.

They sell them there and we usually buy them, but we've been throwing them out left and right so it was nice to be able to borrow one.

We decided to start with the Main Loop Trail (1.2 miles in the Frijoles Canyon) which takes you through the ruins of the Ancestral Pueblo village of Tyuoni (QU-weh-nee). Although the area had been occupied for thousands of years, Tyuoni and this area reached its height of development in the 1400’s. What was interesting to us was that some of the people who settled here were the refugees from Mesa Verde in the late 1200’s (see last post). In the mid 1500’s, the inhabitants here also up and left and moved even further south to villages along the Rio Grande.

View of the Tyuoni Village from above. What's left of the walls are on the ground below.

You might have to zoom in to see the rooms.

This is an artist's rendering of Tyuoni Village

Next was an 800-foot stretch of adjoining, multistoried stone homes with hand-carved caves as backrooms along the canyon wall called the Long House. The builders carved the backrooms (called cavates) into a layer of relatively soft tuff (volcanic ash) from the eruption and collapse of the Valle Caldera 1.15 million years ago just to the north.

The rock looked like swiss cheese.

In this photo, you can see the pueblo dwellings on the ground

as well as the cliff dwelling windows and doors.

Dave climbing into one of the dwellings.

These structures were truly amazing to crawl through and explore. And were, not surprisingly, very similar to the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde. Still visible today, the inhabitants decorated the inside walls and on the cliff above the homes with pictographs and petroglyphs. It looks like they stood on the roofs of the buildings to apply the art to the cliff.

A zigzag decorative painting that was preserved under plexiglass

A petroglyph drawing on the cliff wall

At the mid-point of the Main Loop we chose to continue up the canyon another .5-miles to the “Alcove House”, a cliff dwelling reached only by climbing 3 long ladders and 1 short ladder. Wendy, having had enough ladder climbing at Mesa Verde, chose to document the event while Dave did the climbing.

The sign that helped Wendy decide to stay on the ground for this one.

Dave beginning the ascent

He's at the mid level now

Dave took this pic of Wendy at the mid level point in his climb.

The third ladder

And the fourth and final ladder

On the hike back to the shuttle, we passed a few mule deer and an Abert's squirrel.

Mule Deer

A mule deer resting in the grass

Had to laugh when we saw this little guy. A squirrel with long ears called an Abert's Squirrel

We headed back to the visitor center and caught the shuttle to White Rock. Riding the shuttle and driving around the Los Alamos area it becomes obvious there were a lot of people living here back then. Anywhere the layer of tuff is exposed you will see evidence of cliff dwellers homes and cavates.

To celebrate our thirtieth anniversary we picked a restaurant in Los Alamos called Blue Window Bistro. We ordered a bottle of red wine and Wendy had the salmon special and Dave had a Cajun seafood pasta special. We also found enough room to order desserts. Dave had a huge piece of carrot cake and Wendy had a warm peach/raspberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. Everything was delicious!

Blue Window Bistro

Delicious Dessert!!

May 18, 2016

Visited the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos today. It tells the story of the race to build the first atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project and the work of the Los Alamos National Laboratory today. Dave especially enjoyed the history and security nature of the Lab. Wendy couldn’t wait to get to our next stop, the Pajarito Brew Pub and Grill with over 30 craft beers on tap.

Paj's Palateau :)

Loved the ice strip on this bar!

Nice selection of beer at the Pajarito Brew Pub

We then returned to the rig for dinner and the season finale of Survivor, even though we missed most of the episodes this season.

May 19, 2016

Didn’t do too much today except try to catch up on the blog, figure out the last three weeks of our trip, and do some grocery shopping.

May 20, 2016

Heading for Capulin, NM today. Over 4 hours away, so we got on the road by 9:30. Arrived around 1:30. Wendy did 3 loads of laundry, since we haven’t had full hook-ups in a while! The town of Capulin is small, an RV park, one country store and...I think that's it, population 66 in the 2010 census.

Full moon rising over Capulin

May 21, 2016

Visited the Capulin Volcano National Monument today. We have a beautiful view of the volcano out the front of our rv, it lies only 3 miles north of the town and about 1,300 ft. higher in elevation, 8,182 ft. above sea level.

Our view of Capulin Volcano

Capulin (cah-poo-LEEN) was named for the Spanish word for chokeberry, which grows on its slopes. It erupted into existence about 60,000 years ago at the end (we hope!) of a period of regional volcanism that began 9 million years ago. Capulin is a cinder cone volcano made of layers of loose cinders, ash and volcanic bombs formed by gaseous lava that cooled quickly. We took the 1-mile loop Crater Rim trail which has spectacular unobstructed views in all directions. From here we saw the volcanoes, cones, lava flows, and mesas throughout the 8,000-square-mile Raton-Clayton volcanic field. It was such a clear day we could also see the snow covered Rockies in both Colorado and New Mexico, and points in Oklahoma and Texas. We also took the trail to the bottom of the crater.

Dave walking the rim

As part of the National Park Service's 100th Anniversary, this park employee was manning a HF radio near the volcano's top, one at each park for ham operators to contact.