Ms. Adventure

There are two roads into Los Alamos when entering from the west - apparently I picked the more complicated of the two. View of Los Alamos from Anderson Overlook area on NM Route 4 I drove along NM Route 4 from the west into Los Alamos. Following a GPS will take you onto NM Route 501. I followed the road but at some point noticed the cars in front of and behind me turned off on a side road while I kept going straight, following my GPS to town. The next thing I knew, I was in the middle of a US Department of Energy security checkpoint. I panicked. The guard asked for my ID. I told the guy I was just following my GPS to Los Alamos. He told me I was going the right way but that I wasn't allowed to make any right turns for one mile. Apparently the main road into town is also the main road into the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which allows citizens to drive through but not enter any facilities. The cars ahead of and behind me turned down the back road that goes around everything. The ...

Bandelier National Monument was my favorite park I went to in New Mexico. There's so much to see, but it is doable in one day or less. My second day on my trip to New Mexico and West Texas in September and October 2021 was spent in Bandelier National Monument and the area around Los Alamos, both on the eastern end of the Jemez Mountains (see more about my time in the Jemez Mountains  here and about Los Alamos here ). Bandelier National Monument is split into two sections, the main part of the park and the Tsankawi Prehistoric Sites. The latter of the two is less visited, but I consider it to be a hidden gem. The two different sections of the park had two separate groups of Ancestral Pueblo people living in them. The mesas in this area were formed from soft, porous Bandelier tuff (volcanic ash from the Valles Caldera supervolcano explosions). The canyons between mesas are from rivers eroding the rock. The ancient pueblo people carved into the rock because of its softness and expand...

Driving north of Albuquerque to see the Jemez Mountains, even just to do a scenic drive, is 100% worth it. The first thing you'll notice is that the rocks are a gorgeous red color at the bottom of the mountains. I regrettably didn't get any good pictures of them because I mostly just drove through the area during my trip to New Mexico and West Texas in September/October 2021. The rock layers above the red are yellow and black from volcanic materials from various eruptions. The Jemez Mountains were formed from volcanic eruptions from the Rio Grande Rift Valley, and the area is loaded with hot springs from the volcanic activity. Multilayered colorful rocks from various volcanic eruptions on top of the red More colorful mountains  I drove up NM Route 4 from from south west to north east, through Jemez Pueblo, Jemez Springs, over to the entrance to Valles Caldera National Preserve, and on to Los Alamos. The drive is especially scenic, winding along the mountains and rivers. Most o...