Petroglyphs and Nuclear Science - Jane & John's Ramblings

Thursday, April 25, 2024

Yay! No traveling today. After breakfast, we headed to Petroglyph National Monument. This national monument is spread among several separate land parcels on the edge of Albuquerque. We started at the Visitor Center where we watched a video in an outdoor pavillon. We also picked up brochures and maps, and walked throught the gift shop where we got our National Park Passport stamped and I bought a t-shirt. This monument is in the 17-mile-long West Mesa, that is strewn with basalt boulders orginating from lava eruptions 200,000 years ago. We learned that the petroglyphs we were about to see were made by Pueblo and other native peoples 400 to 700 years ago by chipping away the rocks’ thin weathered exterior to reveal a lighter gray beneath. The meaning of many of the carvings is open to interpretation but many obviously represent local plants and animals. These sites were, and are still, sacred to many native Americans.

At the Petroglyph NM Visitor Center

Lizard at the Center

Pueblo Orno (Oven)

Flowering Cactus

From the visitor center, we drove to Boca Negra (Black Mouth) Canyon and parked in an unpaved dusty parking area near one of the trailheads (Mesa Point). We ascended a rocky ridge along a curvy trail on the look out for petroplyphs about us. Sure enough, they were quite frequent, often occurring in groups, and we pondered over them while attempting to capture their images. The sun and shadows affected our ability to see some of them. After topping the ridge and admiring the view below, we descended to the trailhead and also walked short sections of two other trails, Macaw and Cliff Base. Interestingly, some of the petroglyphs at Boca Negra represent macaws from Central America and are indicative of trade with meso-Americans.

Boca Negra Canyon Entrance

Starting the Trail

On the Lookout for Petroglyphs

Another Lizard along theTrail

View from the Top

————— Example of Petroglyphs at Boca Negra Canyon —————

After Boca Negra, we drove to Piedras Marcada (Marked Rocks) Canyon in the northernmost area of the monument. We parked in a small lot on the edge of a neighborhood then entered National Park property and took a 1.5 mile round-trip hike. This was a mostly level sandy walk around the edge of an escarpment with occasional petroglyphs. Early on our hike, we encountered a volunteer female ranger on the trail who advised that the “hands” petroglyph was the last and gave us instructions on the quickest route to return to the parking lot. We followed her recommendations and enjoyed the easy walk, the views, and the petroglyphs.

Entering Piedras Marcadas Canyon

Outbound on the Petroglyph Viewing Trail

Returning on the Petroglyph Viewing Trail

————— Examples of Petroglyphs at Piedras Marcadas Canyon —————

Next, we drove to Rinconada Canyon and started a two-mile hike to search for more petroglyphs. The skies had turned cloudy, the temperature dropped to chilly, and strong gusts of winds pelted us with sand. After about a quarter of a mile of struggling to walk we had sand in our teeth and nose and Jane’s chapsticked lips became coated with grit. We decided that we had seen enough petroglyphs, returned to the car and drove back to the campsite where we cleaned up and ate lunch.

After lunch we drove two miles to the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. This was a fascinating experience learning about nuclear energy from the discovery of fission up to modern nuclear power generation and weapons. Much of the museum focused on the development of the atomic bombs that the U.S. used in Japan during World War II including the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos that Robert Oppenheimer supervised. Interestingly, the concurrent German effort to develop an atomic bomb was presented and reasons why it failed. The achievements of the Manhattan Project and ending the Great War are commendable but we have recently visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and witnessed sobering accounts of the devastation and long-term effects of the bombs. Hopefully, current nuclear deterence agreements will hold and our race will not self-destruct. The museum also had indoor displays of missiles, current uses of nuclear energy, and cultural aspects of the atomic age.

In a non-sequitur, one room of the nuclear museum featured wooden models of inventions of Leonardo da Vinci. This exhibit was both interesting and engaging as some of the models could be manually operated. Toward the end of our indoor tour, we began to run out of time and hurried throught the remainder in order to have time to see the outdoor displays in nine-acre Heritage Park. There, we saw real planes, missiles, rockets and a replica of the Trinity tower use to detonate the first pilot atomic bomb.

Entrance to the Nuclear Museum