Well, we had planned on just making Albuquerque an overnight stop, but we liked it so much here we wanted to stay another night. Plus, Nathan and I wanted to explore a bit, so we did! But first Tim and I enjoyed watching our church's service online while the kids slept in. Then we had breakfast and a very nice Little Church. Finally, Nathan & I left to explore. We first went to the Museum of Nuclear Science (again for free on our MOSI passes) and got a few pictures. The first is of a Packard limousine - only 100 of these were made, and this particular one was used by the scientists who conducted the first nuclear tests here in New Mexico. The next pic is of Nathan in front of some missiles, and then the next one is of me sthanding near some planes with the mountains in the background - too cool, eh?
This stuff that I'm standing near is called Trinitite. It's very sparkly like a diamond (this picture doesn't do it justice at all!), but it is green in color. It was created after the nuclear test bomb here in New Mexico, which makes sense since diamonds are created by high heat and sand, and the nuclear test created high heat in that sandy region. Pastor Ryan had told us that people used to take the stuff as souvenirs, and many people made necklaces out of it. Unfortunately, the material was still radioactive, so many people ended up with chest cancer where the necklaces hung. Interesting that I can't find that information anywhere on the net. Hmm....cover up? Who knows? Evidently, 85 percent of Americans approved of the bombs dropped on Japan at the time, but within 15 years approval of the use of nuclear weapons had decreased considerably (I can't remember the exact number but it was well under 50%). Anyway - we learned a bunch of interesting information there. Then we ventured into old town, which is right off the old Route 66 road that goes straight through downtown. Our MOSI passes allowed us to go to 2 more museums - a nature and science museum and another children's museum called Explora. We didn't have it in us to do 2 more, so we opted for the nature and science one. They had really cool moving dinosaurs all over the place, and a replica of the lunar land rover and a video that showed how the thing was rocketed from the US and went through space and landed on Mars. Amazing stuff. Nathan snapped a video of me next to the T-Rex, which I can't load videos on this blog, but I took a still shot from the video and put it here:
T-Rex was really cool - he roared and his eyes opened and closed and his big mouth opened and closed! Kind of reminded me of me when I'm grumpy! :-) We left there and drove around Old Town for a bit, which was very historic and fun to see, and then we headed 'home'. The forecast called for only 98, but once again, we were around the 103-105 range! So Nathan grabbed Tim when we got back and they went for a swim in the RV park's pool. Nicole and I walked down to snap some pictures (and I got her to get into some of them!). The 2nd picture is of Tim faking Nathan into being the first one in the pool. Isn't there a verse about parents not exasperating their children? Just saying. The other boys joined the pool party a short time later.
This RV park is REALLY cool - they have a bunch of vintage stuff - from phonographs to a Wurlitzer organ to old pinball mashines to washtubs to old RVs. I'll leave you with just a few pictures of what I'm talking about.
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