October 24-26, 2025 Bandolier National Monument and Los Alamos, New Mexico

 High of 58, sunny in the am, showers in the pm.

Good bye Ojo Caliente. View on our drive today.

Views on our drive today.

Turn off to Bandolier National Monument. The campground is open, but absolutely nothing else is. We can't even hike the trails that leave from the campground. I guess I can see why, the park has a lot of native American ruins and petroglyphs. With no one to watch out for them they might be vandalized. 

The bus at our campsite. There are no hookups, but we can be  self contained if need be. It is a lovely campground, in the pines and deadly silent and peaceful. See the tree inside the tight curve, the one leaning in over the road,  it out one of our awnings today. Fortunately there was no other damage, hopefully the awning can be put back on.

It was raining on us during sunset, but there were a couple of slivers of sunset to the south. 

 We went to the Los Alamos History museum ,which is in the old Ranch  boys school buildings that were taken by imminent domain by the government to set up the Manhattan project to build the nuclear bomb during WWII. On the museum grounds  were the ruins of an ancestral pueblo site. These two houses from the original ranch school became houses for some of the Manhattan project big wigs. the top one is the  Hans Bethe house and the bottom one was the Oppenheimer house. This row if houses is called Bathtub row because they were the only ones with bathtubs. The other miliary buildings only had showers in them.

Then we went to the Bradbury museum that helps visitors about the labs beginnings during the Manhattan project  and how the lab's continuing work enables global security. Most of the  research is way above my head, but really interesting. There were two breweries in the same shopping center, so we stopped at both. Bathtub brewing also had a caldron of Halloween candy which we had as appetizers. John with his Blue Plate special bitter. He had a Dr Strangehop IPA at Boese brewery and we had sandwiches for dinner. 

Elk seen on the drive back to the campground. The camp host told us that the grumpy, unpaid national park  employees at the gate were wrong, there are trails open in the park and tomorrow we will hike. There were some ruins on our hike out to Tyuonyi overlook.

A circular ruin. View into Frijoles canyon from the overlook, which is now closed due to the shut down.

The ruins of the village of Tyuonyi are In Frijoles canyon. Looking the other direction in Frijoles Canyon from the overlook.