Valles Caldera and Bandalier

We took a beautiful drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe through the mountains. The pueblo museum had some great replicas of a horno and a pueblo that helped the boys picture a little bit of how life was for Native Americans 500 years ago.

We saw many forests that looked like this--burned from various years of forest fires.

Valles Caldera National Preserve. Like all of the New Mexico parks and forests, it was closed except for guided van and walking tours because of the extremely high fire risk. We completely lucked out because the moment we arrived in the tiny dirt parking lot and stepped into the trailer-slash-visitors center a ranger was gearing up a 16 passenger van for a tour for an older couple interested in the movie industry history of the property. When I asked if we could go on a hike around the caldera the ranger said no one was allowed to walk unaccompanied and the only ranger hike had left an hour before. He said I might be able to catch a van tour, and I asked if we would be able to get onto one. He glanced outside and said, well, there's a van leaving now. You might be able to catch up before she leaves. So we ran out, banged on the side, and asked if we could go for a ride, wherever they were going. We got a fabulous tour of the park and saw a herd of elk as well as a thousand or so prairie dogs.

A huge area around Los Alamos NM is fenced off to varying degrees of intimidating seriousness. I saw no women the entire time we were in Los Alamos. There were a ton of bizarre tubes, aircraft and giant equipment visible from the road. I can only imagine the amazing and terrible things being studied and tested nearby.

Bandalier National Monument. Testing out the telescopes to see into the cliff dwellings before the hike.

The boys were fascinated by the pueblos and the way of life of the people who lived there. And they LOVED climbing the ladders into the restored cliff dwellings. When we (read: I) were feeling a little hesitant about the steepness of a ladder or how far down we were looking, we repeated the mantra Reggie taught us: "I can, I know I can, and I will!" Which we sometimes screamed, especially on the 140-step climb up to the Alcove Trail, as I was trying to convince myself that I had not lead my children into certain death.