Having a Yabba Dabba Doo Time in Bedrock

Day 14 Santa Fe & Los Alamos

All of the 'streets' here at the campground are named for flowers, right now there are irises everywhere. We were on Marigold 'Street'.

Sunny and windy here this morning, what a surprise! We drove to the historic district of Santa Fe and did some walking. We went into the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, very beautiful. Next we stopped at the Loretto Chapel noted for its floating or miracle staircase.

The houses here in Santa Fe are different than most of the country. I realize that architecture is different from one area to another, say a Florida house is certainly not going to resemble a log cabin on a mountainside. But these are very different....well, to my Yankee eyes anyway. I'm sure there's a proper name for this style, but I don't have the time to research it. My best description would be, uh...Fred and Wilma Flintstone's house.

This is a bank, but the homes look like this on a smaller scale

I apologize to anyone who lives in and loves these houses. Surely the interiors are beautiful, I just can't get past the exteriors. Most of them are are built on the sides of the hills and canyons and are ALMOST INVISIBLE! They are for the most part, all the same color - earth tones or, if you will, the color of dirt, preferably the dirt surrounding the house. As far as I can tell, the homeowner has three choices of exterior color...light dirt, dark dirt, or if you're lucky you've built on RED dirt, my favorite!

Some of these homes were extremely expensive, which left me wondering. Why would anyone want to spend big bucks to build a house that can't be seen and looks like dirt?

Can you find the big expensive homes in this picture?

After lunch we decided to take a car tour. There were several half-day loops and we picked the Los Alamos area. Pretty ride through canyons and mountains. We entered the Bandelier National Monument. We opted for the short loop about a mile walk into a valley where many archaeological displays of the cave dweller Native Americans, the Puelbo people, are. Very interesting, but with the altitude climbing all those stairs was difficult. I went slow.

Upon entering the park, we were given the information below... See #3!

Yikes! If I see a WHAT! You want me to do WHAT! Oh Sure....

The only thing we wish we'd done differently is we would have arrived at Los Alamos earlier in the day and taken a tour of the museum at the facility, I'm sure it's VERY interesting! The first atomic bomb was created here.

Tomorrow we pull up stakes for Colorado!