On the road to Los Alamos

Today we drove to the Aztec Ruins National Monument. The ruins have been mistakenly called Aztec (the Aztecs lived in South America), but it is one of the largest sites anywhere of Indian ruins. Some of the ruins have been reconstructed and others are from the original buildings and are in fairly good condition. We were able to walk thru the site and see the buildings up close.

In the afternoon we drove on to Cuba, NM, which was a small and very rundown town. The same could be said of the motels available there, so we decided to move on to Los Alamos. Instead of taking the long four-lane highway, I decided that we would take the scenic route through the mountains.

This turned out to be quite a trip. The first several miles were indeed quite scenic - a narrow road with pine and aspen forests on one side and meadows and pastures with grazing cows on the other. The leaves of the aspen trees had turned yellow and were beautiful. At one point the cows crossed the road in front of us and we had to stop and wait for them.

After about 15 miles, however, the macadam road ended and we found ourselves on a dirt road with a fair share of ruts and potholes. My speed slowed to about 20 miles an hour, often less.
Eventually, the road again became macadam. That was the good news. The bad news is that the road was now covered with more than an inch of white sleet. Fortunately a truck or two going through had left a track of clear road on which I could drive. Since there were also heavy rain showers,  some fog, and lots of curves in the road, progress was slow and it was getting dark. And we still had more than 30 miles to go to reach Los Alamos, including a few miles at the end reported to have even more severe curves and turns than we had already seen. We had to consider the possibility that we might have to spend a very cold night parked in the car by the side of the road - not an inviting prospect.



rainbow outside La Cueva ski lodge



Fortunately, my guardian angel who seemed to be napping on the job, woke up, and there around the next curve was La Cueva Ski Lodge - a restaurant, a general store and several rooms for rent. At this point we were prepared to pay almost anything to get off the road and have a nice warm place to spend the night. Fortunately, we were between tourist seasons and rooms were available. We ended up in a very nice room with all the amenities of a good motel (including heat) and also including a large selection of VCR's for a mere 85 dollars (plus tax). As a bonus, we had just finished bringing things in from the car when we saw a beautiful double rainbow right in front of our room. It was almost biblical - like Noah coming out of the ark and seeing a rainbow sign that all would be well! So in the end we spent a nice cozy evening watching "Jurassic Park" on a DVD and dodged the bullet of a cold night on the road. Whew!