Exploring "The Town that Never was"

During our last big adventure, Hubby and I had agreed that on Sundays, we should either just chill out or use it as a day of travel, but without a doubt,we agreed to  avoid the more popular tourist locations.  You get the locals and the tourists, which even in the off season could amount to more people than we like to contend with that.

With that thought still lingering in the back of my mind, we agreed to skip a visit to Taos (the closest tourist attraction to our campground) and instead, decided to take off towards Los Alamos.    

The town of Los Alamos is perhaps best known for the role it played in the Manhattan Project,   In 1943, the government built a secret lab with a single purpose:  to develop the first atomic bomb.  As we were a nation at war, the location had to be top secret, thus earning Los Alamos the nickname of "the town that never was".

  I've read a few historical novels that explained the rationale behind selecting this location for the project, so I found the drive into Los Alamos pretty impressive.   I imagined how the wives of the scientists must have felt, headed out to be with their husbands, but wondering what in the world they were in for?!   We now know that the activities would change the course of history...but back then, what were their thoughts?

  Yeah, the monkey in the side care has a lot of time to just let her mind drift off....

As we approached the town, we realized that poor Waze did not know that the main drag, Central Avenue, was closed.    As I was approaching the "hangy" (hungry and angry) state, I got a bit flustered  in trying to locate a restaurant that was open....in the end it all worked out.   Seems out here, Sunday is indeed a day of rest, as the top 2 restaurants mentioned on Trip Advisor were closed today.

  We enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Pyramid Cafe, where the specialty is Greek and North African cuisine (see above, our options were limited)

After lunch, we  headed over to check out the small but well done Bradbury Science Museum.   While visitors can't actually visit the National Laboratory, this museum serves as an excellent summary of the work being done both past and present at the National Lab.    .

 Fat Man and Little Boy:   actually replicas of the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima...

We decided to pass on the walking tour of Los Alamos, where the National Park service has recently started to develop the Manhattan Project National Historic Park and will be restoring several of the properties and town buildings used during the Manhattan project.

Day light was wasting and we had a good 2 hr trip back in the side car...

Nope, Dad, we don't have the place quite to ourselves...but pretty darn close...

This is the view from the RV as I fixed dinner...

 ...while the kitchen is very small, I was able to successfully prepare my signature dish of beef-n-bok-choy.   So, I'm inclined to say in the words of Goldilocks, it's just right for us....

All in all, it was a great day of exploring our surroundings, riding in the side car, and was exactly what I had in mind when we decided to add the RV to our collection of toys!

Until next time...