My goodness. Today was a very big, very good day.
We woke to air balloons floating all around us. It was magical. Speaking of magical, the tooth fairy came! And boy, is the American tooth fairy generous - Ali got two American dollars and two Canadian dollars! He is covered on both sides of the border.
After everyone was awake, we started today’s adventures in Albuquerque at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Here was saw some amazing things, such as the massive B-29 planes that carried the Fat Man and Little Boy nuclear bombs to Japan to end WWII. We also saw a Minute Man long range ballistic missile as well as the heat scarred missile cone from one that had re-entered the atmosphere. We saw yellow cake uranium, a replica tower from Los Alamos that held “gadget” (the first nuclear bomb) to be tested by Oppenheimer and his team, and a board game from the 1950s that actually provided kids with their own real samples of uranium ore (yikes!). The kids loved the Einstein Learning Lab and were fully immersed in several of his popular experiments and machines.
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| Yellow cake uranium. |
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| Jacob’s ladder. |
This wrapped our time in Albuquerque and we headed North along the Scenic Turquoise Highway to Santa Fe. First stop was Tinker Town in Sandia Park. The museum here was a labour of love project by the late Ross Ward. It was incredible. The attention to detail, creativity, and uniqueness were amazing. This was such a cool stop. The boys slotted in quarters to make the figures dance and sing. It was entertaining for the whole family.
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| Seamus had his fortune told. |
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| This ship sailed its captain around the world for over a decade. What an incredible journey. |
We finished up our journey to Santa Fe without incident and found ourselves at Meow Wolf House of Eternal Return, an interactive art installation, for the afternoon. We weren’t sure what exactly to expect here. Turns out that it was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb to the senses. It blew our minds. It was an interactive maze of sorts but honestly, it defies description. We have never in our lives seen anything like it. We walked through a fridge, found several secret passages behind bookshelves and in closets, travelled to space and underground, passed through Chinatown and Candyland. It was extremely weird but beyond cool.
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| Going through a portal in the dryer. |
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| Exiting a spaceship. |
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| Ali walking through the refrigerator to another dimension. So weird. |
Meow Wolf was such an overload on the senses that as soon as we exited the building, Alistair - who had had an incredible time up to this point - burst into tears in the parking lot. He could hardly form coherent words, he was so overstimulated. It passed after he sat quietly in the car for a few minutes to regroup but it was an intense and overwhelming experience. We loved it.
Our next stop was more normal - we visited downtown Santa Fe to check out the tourist shops and galleries. We loved the dried pepper garlands and all the colour and smells of the different wares for sale in the markets. We also marvelled at the beauty of the Santa Fe architecture.
We ate delicious New Mexican cuisine again, for supper this time, at the Shed - a popular tourist restaurant. The food was exceptional. After supper we attended a free, outdoor concert in the town plaza as part of the Lensic 360 Santa Fe Summer Scene featuring Latin Grammy-winning headliner Monsieur Periné and opening act Christina Gomez y Los Cuates. It was relaxing to sit in the park, enjoy the music and watch people salsa dancing to the catchy tunes.
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| Enchiladas with pinto beans and pozole (hominy stew). Yum! |
What a full day! We saw and did so much and made so many great memories. This was one of the best days of our trip, for sure. We are bedded down in the parking lot of the Tesuque Casino just outside of Santa Fe. It is very smoky here. We are keeping an eye on the large forest fire to the North East of us but it is far enough away that this is a safe place to sleep tonight. We don’t mind that the wind smells like campfire smoke.
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We passed a massive military cemetery on the drive to the casino.
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