One of the benefits of the unplanned detour to Santa Fe and Los Alamos was that we were very close to Bandelier National Monument, Besides the incredible natural history accessible at this park, it is an impressive archeological site with cavates and petroglyphs of the Ancestral Pueblo.  As we left Los Alamos and drove towards Bandelier, we had to go through a manned security gate near the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  The guard wanted proof of our citizenship, and had to look inside the camper.  It was a little unsettling, but considering what they study at the laboratory, it’s probably a good thing that they check on who’s driving by.  We continued on to the park, where we found that the Visitors’ Center is housed in an old lodge, and well maintained trails to the cavates and petroglyphs start right behind the building. We suited up for a hike, locked the dogs in the camper, and took off with a surprisingly high number of other people also out to tour the site.

We pulled out of Bandelier National Monument around 1:30, and headed for Albuquerque, where Todd and Tatiana had just arrived home.

We hadn’t planned to make Santa Fe our next capital, but since we wanted to catch Todd and Tatiana in Albuquerque and had a couple of days to kill, and because the weather report sounded like the weather would actually be pleasant, we headed north.  The drive became a little bit grueling because we ran into some unexpected high winds near Vaughn on the way there, but as I checked weather reports for the more northern towns we were passing through on the way to Santa Fe, it looked like the high winds were in a relatively narrow corridor, which proved to be the case.  As we drove out of the high winds, some beautiful views which we could actually enjoy opened up to the north.

We were a little disturbed by the snow on the peaks we were approaching, and a little more disturbed by the increasingly large piles of snow we could see from the highway.  But, it was sunny and in the 50s and very pleasant once we were through the wind.  We were a little surprised that as we drove towards and into Santa Fe, the snow cover got deeper rather than disappearing, and by the time we got to the Capitol, the ground was completely covered in about eight inches of snow.  When we had looked at the weather reports, it had never occurred to us to see what the weather had been over the past week and to see if there was any snow on the ground!  In the end, it didn’t really matter because despite the snow the warm sunshine made anything more than a sweatshirt unnecessary, and Ty and Princha got to see snow for the first time in their Belizean potlicker lives.  Kismet had played in the snow when we were in the US in the winter of 2015/2016, but those two didn’t really know what to make of it.  Ty eventually came around and decided that it could be fun, but Princha wasn’t really a fan.

When the dogs finished playing in the snow, we walked on to the Capitol.  The Santa Fe Capitol is the only round capitol in the country, and one of only 11 capitols that do not have domes.  Downtown Santa Fe is a beautiful and clean city, and the Capitol makes a worthy centerpiece.  Even on a Saturday afternoon all sorts of people were walking around, in and out of the building.  The building is open to visitors, so Tom and I took turns holding the dogs outside while the other went in, since even though we haven’t been visiting the insides of the capitols, we’d read that this one was worth a look, and it was.

Before leaving Bottomless Lakes SP that morning, we had looked online for a place to stay for the night.  We saw a number of BLM lands listed, but most had the caveat that you had to get there on a bumpy dirt road, and since we didn’t know what time we’d be pulling in, we had decided that wasn’t a great idea.  We found a Harvest Host brewery in Los Alamos that had all good reviews, and since we were interested in seeing Los Alamos anyway, we booked.  We finished walking around the capitol complex in Santa Fe around 4pm, and headed towards Los Alamos and the Bathtub Brewing Co-Op.  As we were pulling out of Santa Fe, we realized that Tom wasn’t prepared to hook up the Buddy heater that night, so we did a detour north to a Walmart in Española to pick up a couple 1# propane cylinders to run the heater. That meant we arrived at the brewery shortly after dark.

This shouldn’t have been a problem.  It’s in the center of Los Alamos, and they knew we were coming.  We checked in, and the bartender told us to drive around to the back where we would be able to park in their private back lot, off the Main Street.  When we got to the back lot, we found that it was snow-covered dirt, and the space for our rig was a little tight because another car was parked next to it, and they’ve been doing some landscaping and construction so there were dirt piles and building refuse piles.  Tom maneuvered around the obstacles and started to pull into the spot…and sunk.  It hadn’t occurred to anyone that the warm temperatures melting the snow on the dirt lot would create a mud pit.  Tom realized what was happening right away and stopped, and I got out and switched on the 4WD hubs, and Tom was able to back out before we went any deeper without doing major damage to the lot surface.  We drove back around to the front to find out what to do, and after a quick conference among the brewery management reps who were there that night, they cleared us to park on the street behind the brewery. They were working hard to convince us that we’d be okay and safe on the street, and we put their minds at ease by explaining that we’re actually pretty comfortable parking on the streets in Mexican cities, so a back street in Los Alamos for one night seemed like a pretty good deal to us.

After we parked the truck, we went into the brewery to fulfill our Harvest Host commitment and buy some beer.  Bathtub Row Brewing has a very yummy chocolate stout, so we had no difficulty drinking a couple of beers each and talking to the locals about what’s fun to do in the area.  We hadn’t realized that the National Park Service had turned the Los Alamos Manhattan Project into a National Historical Site until we started talking and also found out that the brewery’s name, Bathtub Row, is because all the lead scientists working on the Manhattan Project lived in the nearby row of houses which were considered nicer than the temporary houses because they had bathtubs.  We ended up sitting with the local museum director, who not only explained a lot of the history to us, but also gave us a packet so we could do a walking tour of the town in the morning.  We perused the information, drank our stouts, and went back to the camper to get something to eat before going to bed.

Back in the camper, Tom decided to try the Buddy Heater with the propane cylinders.  It started right up, and created a lot of heat…for about 10 minutes.  When it went out, Tom shook the cylinder to see if it had burned through it that quickly, but it was still almost full.  He tried to restart the heater, but it wouldn’t start.  After a few minutes, it restarted, but then it went out again after a very short time.  When all else fails, we read the directions, so Tom pulled out the instruction book and started through the trouble shooting tree.  Not too far down the tree, Tom discovered that most of the Buddy Heaters don’t work well above 7000’.  We checked the altimeters on our watches, and discovered that we were at almost 7400’.  That solved the mystery of the failing Buddy Heater, but didn’t do much towards keeping us warm, so we closed up for the night and went to bed, hoping it wouldn’t get cold enough to freeze our pipes.  All things considered, we both slept well, and woke to temperatures still slightly above freezing, with our pipes intact.  Cooking breakfast warmed the camper up to a tolerable temperature, and we ate and then went on our walking tour.

After our walking tour, we telephoned Bandelier National Monument to see if the roads to get there were okay, and if the trails were open.  The ranger who answered the phone assured us that everything was open and accessible, so we packed up and headed for Bandelier National Monument.

After spending most of our one full day at Brantley Lake State Park doing laundry, we got in touch with our friends Todd and Tatiana, who were driving west from Florida to their home in Albuquerque.  Our original plan had been to head from Brantley Lake to somewhere near White Sands and meet up with them there, but they were traveling more slowly than anticipated, and weren’t going to make it to White Sands before the end of the weekend, and Tatiana had to be home by Sunday night to work on Monday.  So, we took a look at the weather report for Santa Fe and Albuquerque for the end of the week, and saw that temperatures were supposed to remain mostly above freezing.  Santa Fe was on our list of capitals to visit, but we had planned to catch it later when the weather was warmer.  But, since we wanted to see Todd and Tatiana, and the weather was supposed to be good, we decided that we would head for Santa Fe and then meet T&T at their home in Albuquerque on Sunday late in the day.

We looked at the route and realized that Roswell, NM, the home of the UFO Museum, was right on our path to Santa Fe.  We booked at night at Bottomless Lakes State Park which is very near Roswell, and made plans to spend the next day in Roswell and the night at Bottomless Lakes SP before heading for Santa Fe the following day.  Things went mostly to plan, although we woke up to 15 degree temperatures that morning and found that our pipes had frozen.  We had intentionally not hooked up the city water, and had stayed at the campground with electricity so we could run the heater all night, but 15 is below the threshold where we can keep the outside walls above freezing, even with the heater running all night.  We always keep a jug of water in the camper, so we managed to get breakfast and get cleaned up despite the frozen pipes, and decided to let Mother Nature warm up the pipes through the course of the day.

Roswell was less than two hours from Brantley Lake, and we had no trouble finding the UFO Museum right on the main drag through town, so we pulled into their parking lot in time to have a quick lunch before touring the museum.  No matter what you think of UFOs, the museum is worth the $7 admission fee just for the experience of talking to the people who run it and watching and listening to the other visitors.  At this point, it is more of a shrine to conspiracy theories than UFOs and aliens, but it’s interesting to see how they’ve chosen to present their case.  We read some of the exhibits, until we realized that most of the plaques said the same thing, just written by a different writer, and then went to a lecture by an 81-year old man who has been researching the Roswell case for 33 years.  His findings aren’t especially compelling, and while I don’t disbelieve in UFOs or aliens, his presentation didn’t do anything to push me in that direction.  But, it was fun to look around the audience and see people nodding and hmmmming.

The Maya left a lot of evidence that proves extra terrestrials have been visiting Earth for a very long time.

We left the UFO Museum and went in search of a Buddy propane heater since we don’t want a repeat of the frozen pipes experience.  We justified it because the Buddy Heater gets hotter than the little electric heater, and, with the propane heater, we can boondock and have heat all night.  We hadn’t bought one before because we kept thinking that we would be driving into warmer weather, but since it seems that we may never escape the cold, the $100 investment would be worth it.  We were scheduled to stay at Bottomless Lakes State Park that night, which also had electric hookups, so we didn’t take the time to get everything we would need to run it, and Tom could come up with a plan and a list of what he needed before finishing the project.

Bottomless Lakes State Park was about 15 minutes from downtown Roswell, and very easy to find.  We really liked the park since it was in a nice setting next to one of the larger bottomless lakes, which are really gypsum sinkholes, and the pull through spots were enormous and made parking on the level very easy.  Our pipes had defrosted during the day, but the pump wasn’t working, but since we also had city water we didn’t worry about that and Tom decided it was probably a blown fuse which he could fix in the morning; that turned out to be exactly the case.  We took a hike through the park and the campground past a few of the lakes before settling in for the night.

The next morning we took another short hike on a boardwalk through the wetlands, before heading for Santa Fe.

We didn’t get to see the bats, but we did get to see some long horned sheep on our way out of the park.

​One benefit of the Texas Rest Area south of Van Horn was that Tom and I both had excellent cell reception.  After three days of being mostly offline in the National and State Parks, we had a little bit of catching up to do, as well as planning our next steps.  We knew we were heading towards Guadalupe and Carlsbad, but had no idea of our timing or where we were staying, or even how far the parks were from where we were parked.  Tom found that Guadalupe was only about two hours away, so he booked a campsite for two nights since we knew we could easily reach it the next day.  Then, he started looking at weather reports for the next few days, and found out that a high wind warning had been issued for the Guadalupe Mountains area, starting the next afternoon.  We don’t especially like driving our high profile camper in any wind, and the 30-60mph winds they were predicting, with (gulp) 85mph gusts, were enough to make us worry and rethink our plans.  We went to bed that night planning to be up early to make a decision on what to do.  After considering canceling our reservation, we finally decided that we would get a quick breakfast and get on the road as quickly as possible so we could get to the park before the windstorm started.