In 1939 several prominent European-born physicists living in the US, including Albert Einstein, drafted a letter warning that the Germans had the potential to develop a nuclear weapon.  This led to the hurry-up Manhattan Project which undertook to develop a nuclear bomb for the US.  The project was immense and comprised facilities across the country including many leading universities.

A critical part of the project took place at Los Alamos, just a bit north and west of Santa Fe.  The scientists there built and tested the first-ever atomic bomb.  The test was well over 200 miles from here.  The second and third bombs exploded over Japan.  The war bombs used different technologies and even different nuclear fuels.  It’s pretty amazing it all worked.

We spent the afternoon at two museums in Los Alamos.  The first was the Fuller Lodge.  It covers life in Los Alamos during the project.  Everything was top-secret of course.  Thousands of families lived there during the war, but their friends and families knew nothing of it.  They all had the same address; PO Box 1633, Santa Fe, NM.   The second was the Bradbury Science Museum.  It covers technical details of the project and the bombs.

We enjoyed both of these and the weather was a bit cooler up at Los Alamos than down in Santa Fe.  We also had dinner with relatives and got to bed relatively early.  Oh, and the gym at the hotel is great, so one of us got a workout in.

Ayer fuimos a un pequeño pueblo llamado Madrid.  Es entre Santa Fe y Albuquerque. 

¿Qué?  Es MAD-rid, no en Ma-DRID?  ¡ay

Yesterday we went to a small town called Madrid.  It’s between Santa Fe and Albuquerque.  They pronounce it MAD-rid, not Ma-DRID like the Spanish city.  In the late 1800’s it was a thriving mining town.  By 1970 it was a ghost town.  Now it’s a tourist trap.  Oh, sorry, it’s an ‘artist community’.

We had lunch in the ‘Mine Shaft’ and browsed some of the stores.  The movie Wild Hogs apparently concludes in Madrid.

We also did laundry at our relatives’ house and had our second Mexican dinner in two nights.  The Albuquerque Porsche dealer can’t figure out what’s wrong with our car.  We hope to know more by Monday.

It’s been blazing hot here but by late afternoon we had a thunderstorm.  That brought the temperatures way down and that felt great.

Laundry drying in the hotel room:

That’s ‘Mystery Diners’ on the TV.

Not much to report today.  We left Casper, WY and made it to Boulder, CO in good time.  It was a pretty short day, less than 300 miles.  Tomorrow is longer; we probably should have gone longer today and left less to do tomorrow.  But we wanted to stay in Boulder. 

We found a great burger place, Lark Burger, that really understands gluten-free.  And they have edamame as a side dish!  The hotel is great and they have a great workout room.  After dinner and a workout (we know, wrong order…) we went to a bakery called Boulder Baked that also understands gluten-free.  They are open only from 4pm to midnight, perfect for an after workout snack!

So, we got a workout, a GF dinner and a GF dessert and we’re staying in a very nice hotel.

Otherwise, the day was boring.  We made great time in Wyoming and really bad time in Colorado.  Traffic seemed to build the moment we crossed the border and then we hit a construction zone.  Traveling in the summer is nice, but a lot of these western states run their big roadwork projects then.  But, this is a first-world problem, so we’ll stop complaining now.

Overall the trip has been a blast.  We hit the eastern-most point we will hit.  It was a spot just north of Chugwater, WY.  It was good to see the car’s compass on the west side of ‘S’ for a change.

Tomorrow we head for Santa Fe, the halfway point and the focus of this trip.  We’re 1,710 miles in so far, more than a third of the miles in about a third of the days.

In bear country, you find garbage cans with special latches to keep bears out.

In no-bear country, you find garbage cans with lock to keep humans out.

We drove from Bozeman, MT to Casper, WY today.  That’s about 420 miles, all on the interstate.  I-90 to I-25 if you are keeping score at home.  We made great time leaving at 11am and getting in well before 6pm including all stops.  Even on its third road trip, the car continues to impress.   It eats miles like nothing else.  We averaged a, um, substantial rate of speed for the whole day and still got just over 24 MPG.

Not much else to say.  Montana is freaking huge.  We saw the geography change as we got closer to Wyoming.  We crossed over and actually overlapped our outbound route from last year.  One of the most impressive days last year was a trip through Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming.  Today we got to see that area from another angle.  Plus as we’ve noted before, things are very green this year whereas they were brown and dried out last year.

Tomorrow we head for Boulder, CO.  It will be a shorter day; we might have some time to hang out there.  And then onto Santa Fe!

Last year we drove from Seattle to Indianapolis and back.  We went east through Idaho to Wyoming and came back through Montana.  On that return trip we went from Havre to Great Falls and then through Lincoln to Missoula. 

Today we traveled from Glacier National Park to Bozeman and crossed over our route from last year.  Last year were went West on MT-200.  Today we traveled South on MT-287.

X marks the spot.  It was a good day of driving today.  We covered about 320 miles at a really good clip.  Montana has some great state highways and not a lot of traffic.  Most of the cars and RVs we saw were going the other way.  We stopped for groceries in Browning and coffee in Choteau. Choteau (‘sho-do’) is a cute little town with a very nice coffee shop called Meeting Grounds.

We also crossed our second continental divide on this trip.  Say what?  There is a point in Glacier National Park that is a triple continental divide.  You might remember from grade school that a continental divide is a point, more like a ridge, a really, really long ridge, that splits the direction that water flows.  Mainly we think of splitting east from west.  But in Glacier water will flow in three directions.  To one side water drains into the Columbia River system and flows to the Pacific.  You would think water going the other way would go into the Missouri system and flow into the Gulf of Mexico.  But actually, there is another divide.  When we left Glacier we were in an area where water flows into the St Lawrence River system and ultimately into Atlantic.  About an hour outside of the park we crossed into the Missouri system.

A bit later we crossed the actual Missouri River, twice.  So it was a day of crossings.  We also finally got Internet again and started catching up with the world.

Montana is one beautiful state.  We came through in late July last year and the land was brown and dry.  This year things are quite green.

We also found a new phone app for finding gluten free restaurants.  We tried the most highly rated restaurant in Bozeman.  The food was pretty good, but the service was slow.  And we saw the Bruins lose the Stanley Cup on the TV.  🙁

The hotel has a Precor EFX so we’re working out tomorrow and getting a later start than normal, but it will be worth it!

The Smugmug link is finally live.  And our photos are backed up on Dropbox.  What did we ever do without the Internet?

Today we took the Red Bus Tour to Canada.  And back.  This is a Red Bus:

Actually, it is the very same Red Bus we spent the better part of the day in.  And it was a fine and fun day.  The Red Busses date back to the 1930’s.  By the 1960’s few of them were running and they eventually went out of service.  Sometime in the 1990’s the Ford Motor Company (that Ford) spent about $7M to restore about 30 of the busses.  They run on propane now.

Our tour left the hotel (rustic, remember) at 11am.  We had been wondering about the name Many Glacier.  Our tour guide, Gary, confirmed that it got the name because there are a lot of glaciers.  Doh!

We got this great view during the ride:

 

This picture alone has ‘many’ glaciers.  The top one is called the Salamander Glacier for somewhat obvious reasons.  Below that is the Grinnell Glacier.  Some time ago they were one glacier.  As the earth warms the glaciers are disappearing and becoming ice floes. 

From the hotel we went north to Canada where we had to show passports and eventually made our way to the Prince of Wales Hotel for lunch.  Afterward we saw two bears on the ride back.  They look cute.  From a distance.  We also saw osprey, deer, a whole bunch of trees, mountains, mountains, mountains, a lot of lakes, a waterfall and… wait for it… many glaciers.

Our tour guide was great.  He talked a lot about the flora and the fauna but also about the history of the park.  We got an appreciation for how American’s have evolved their thinking about national parks and what they expect from them.    Back in the day, they killed any predators and stocked the lakes with fish.  Even the Red Bus illustrates evolving attitudes.  When the park was founded in 1915 horseback was the normal mode of transportation.  (That is after you took a train most of the way across the country.)  By the 1920’s, people wanted to use their cars to get to and get around the national parks.  That led to the construction of roads through the park which then supported the busses.

Last year we were in Yellowstone.  Between Yellowstone and Glacier, Glacier seems in many ways more accessible.  If you want to hike, they have more trails than roads (by far) and all are well marked and safe.  If you want to drive, the roads are great.  And if you want to learn, the tour is awesome as are the various exhibits and slides shows they run.  And of course the beauty of the place is astounding.

Tomorrow we hit the road again.  It will be nice to stay somewhere less, well, rustic.  With Internet.

Today we drove through Glacier National Park.  Our timing was great as they only opened the road for the season yesterday.  Parts were open a week or two ago, but until yesterday you could not travel the width of the park on the “Going to the Sun Road.”

It’s an incredible experience.  We made three stops.  Not far from the west entrance we stopped at Lake McDonald and hung out at the lodge for a little while.  The lake is quite the scene:

From there we traveled to Logan’s Pass where we found snow.  On the second full day of summer.  We tromped around in the slush for a little while; well one of us did.  It was nice to feel some cold crisp air and yet not be too cold.

Finally we hit up the visitor center at the east end of the park as well as the gift shop.

Like Yellowstone, the west side of the continental divide is extremely rugged.  We drove on roads that hug the mountain on one side with extreme drops on the other side.  But when you get over the mountain, or through the pass, you mostly roll gently down hill until you start to see areas that are more like prairie.  The hybrid liked that part of the drive.  We got some good mileage!

We’re spending the night at the Many Glacier Hotel.  It’s, um, rustic.  Historic, and grand, but rustic.  Like a lot of National Park properties, things aren’t up to Marriott or Hyatt standards.  We’ll live.

We took a lot of photos today and got about twelve or so we want to share.  But the Internet here is too slow, I mean rustic, to upload them.  We’ll get the Smugmug site rolling in a day or two when we hit a Marriott or a Hyatt or something.

We’re looking forward to tomorrow and the Red Bus tour.

No not unwanted emails.  Spam, as in Spamalot.  We saw an off, off, off, off-Broadway production in Big Fork, Montana.  Our friends got to Columbia Falls two days before us.  They spent their days dodging rain and hiking when they could.  And researching the local entertainment options.  Big Fork is a little town on the northeast corner of Flathead Lake.  It’s small and packed with gift shops, restaurants, bars and a summer theater that has been performing four plays per summer for 62 years.

Spamalot is “lovingly ripped off from the motion picture Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”  The cast are young actors from all over the country.  They were enthusiastic and really did great.  We all enjoyed ourselves; it was a great evening out.

The rest of the day was travel from Spokane, about 260 miles, much of it off the interstate.  It rained some  but no where near as much as yesterday.  Montana’s natural beauty came through all day.

The 2013 edition of the Excellent Adventure has begun!  The big idea this time is to drive to Santa Fe.  By way of Montana.  And Canada.  Because, like, they are on the way, right?  Actually, the idea is to head to Glacier National Park then drive down the east side of the Rockies and back up the west side.

Today we made it to Spokane.  It took a while.  It was very rainy and a little cold, there was a bunch of traffic and they were doing “intermittent rolling slow downs.”  Such fun!  But we did get here before dark and had a nice dinner.

Tomorrow things get more interesting as we head into the mountains of Western Montana and meet up with our east coast friends.  We hear the Internet is flaky so we might not be able to post for a day or two.

Well, we’re about to hit the road again.  This time we’re going to Santa Fe.  We’ll go down the east side of the Rockies and come back up the west side.  We’re meeting some friends along the way for a few days in Glacier National Park in Montana.

For the first time we’re carrying a Mac instead of a Windows PC.  But we can bear to part with one of the best blogging tools ever, Windows Live Writer.  So… this post is to prove, or not, that WLW works well, or well enough, when running inside Parallels.  If you can read this, it must have worked!

Otherwise much of the technology remains the same.  Same car as last year (Cayenne Hybrid), same camera (Sony DSC-H55), etc.  We do have a mini- in-car fridge this time, we’ll see how that works.

More from the road in a few days!