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Day 12 - Thr 20 April 06
Up at 06:00 for a 06:30 breakfast and checkout - gassed up the car in Roswell and headed north. The countryside is just gently rolling hills with the road cutting straight through it. The weather is overcast and rain threatens rain. Got to Santa Fe with no problems and the Lonely Planet map got me to the visitors centre, trouble is they have knocked it down and moved it! I put the car on a meter and found a hotel and got a better map. Spent an hour or so looking around. All the buildings are Adobe, and very pretty. You can tell that this is Tourist Central as there are lots of vendors selling 'stuff' on the streets, and there are some very high priced art galleries here as well.
Then it was back to the car and off to Los Alamos, the drive up was spectacular, with beautiful sculptured canyons. Los Alamos itself is a nice place, everyone says "hello". I did the local museum which is in one of the old boys school wooden huts. It details Los Alamos' history from ancient times up to the Manhattan Project era. I went into the Post Office and mailed a lot of tourist brochures that I've collected back home (that cost me $7.50). Then onto the Bradbury museum which details the work of the labs here.
Back into the car and off towards Albuquerque, I passed even higher into the mountains and saw a beautiful bowl shaped valley which was in fact an ancient Caldera. I passed through more Indian land before getting to Albuquerque. I headed for the Sandia Skyway - the longest cable car in the world. The views from the 10,000ft peak are fab, they say that you can see 11% of New Mexico from the top.
For the first time I had issues finding a motel, usually there are loads of them, but for some reason I couldn't see any. Eventually I found a rather more up market place that I'm used to, and paid the $60 they wanted. I was just happy to have a room for the night.
NextView my route through the USA here
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