February 29th
03/02/2004
Brother and I got up and headed out to church and breakfast as Saba stayed at the house. When we were done, we grabbed him up and headed on our next adventure.
We took a hike above the town of Los Alamos. The reason Brother is working there is they had a huge forest fire 2 years ago, do you remember? He is doing some of the reconstruction work. We, Saba, brother and I hiked up to about 8,000 feet to the water tower that over looks the plateaus. The views were magnificent, the snow was falling, it was about 25 degrees. The sun would peak in and out as we headed up the hill. Saba was trailblazing for us, sniffing and running back and forth with all the new smells and sites. He was getting the hang of the snow.
There are about 7000 scientists living on the 3 plateaus, all brilliant, some of the smartest in the world. They work on all sorts of strange and scary projects. Nuclear, medical, geological and what ever else comes from theses isolated individuals. Los Alamos almost feels like an island in the middle of the desert. There is not much to the town other than the National Laboratory, they are the employer. There is a mountain pass to get up there, there is nothing around but other employees and a few locals. This I found out later was the whole reason it was chosen as the site for the lab.
We stopped at the museum in town that helped explain what had happened, how they got there and what they were currently doing. It was all very scientific, lots of big words I didn’t quite get the meaning of. The museum had a few films that were quite interesting to watch, one on THE Bomb, one on the history of the town. The US government wanted a place for the scientists to be able to share there work. They wanted it isolated from the rest of the world, they were doing top secret work there. That is why it is so far from everything, they didn’t want the Russians or anyone else to know what these folks were working on.
My feeling:, neat, scary and intimidating all in the same emotion. I was on top of the nuclear ground zero.
After the trip to the museum, we headed back to brothers house. We dug through some photo albums and some loose pictures he had. It was a trip down memory lane. I can’t believe that I had my hair cut so short in some of the photos. I can’t believe how goofy we looked in the 70’s and there were lots of friends we lost along the way.
We headed down to Camel Rock casino for the evening. It is a place I had wanted to stop at the last time I was in the area, almost 10 years ago. I got the opportunity this time. I ended up playing the slots as brother headed for the roulette table. I liked a newer game I had not seen before, the playboy slots with a touch screen. If you get this magic card, the video screen lights up and you get to pick x number of old playboy covers. The number behind the cover gives you points. I loved the sexy music they used for this game, seductive and racy. I managed to head out of the casino with more then I went in with. It helped me with my decision to go to Roswell New Mexico the next day. Home of the aliens!
