Santa Fe, New Mexico   As we drove from Denver to Santa Fe, we were looking forward to our return to the Santa Fe Skies RV Park. We weren't disappointed. We were greeted by the Brown family as we arrived. They even invited us to Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, we had to decline because we were flying back to the midwest for the holiday. When we left, they were grading the ground for their new recreation and office center. Now the walls were going up.   This trip we decided to take a loop trip through Los Alamos and the Bandelier National Monument.   Los Alamos: A Year After the Fire As we headed to Los Alamos we wondered how it would look a year after the fires. We stopped at our favorite store in town, the gift shop at the Bradbury Los Alamos Science Museum. Then, we headed to the outskirts of town where the fire had its greatest impact. It was bizarre. Entire blocks of homes were gone. The jeep is the only thing that remained of one block. Sometimes one house would mysteriously be standing while the others on the block were burned. The picture below contains a sign in from of the house that says "last stand." You could clearly see where the fire went up canyons and simply stopped. Sometimes only the bottoms of the trees would be burned. Nature works in strange ways.   Bandelier National Monument The drive from Los Alamos to Bandelier National Monument showed signs of the fire too. Fire was even evident at the entrance to the park.   We explored the visitor center and took the Frijoles Canyon trail through the valley. The one and a quarter mile loop goes by the Tyuonyi Pueblo, talus houses cliff dwellings, and long house cliff dwellings before cutting across a meadow to a nature trail. The Snow As full-timers, we've been spending most of our winters in the south, so snow is now a novelty rather than a frustration. In Santa Fe the winds can be cold, but the snow rarely last long.   The strangest thing is seeing snow on the cactus. Or, maybe the strangest thing is Annette. You decide.   Created by Annette Lamb and Larry Johnson, 7/01. Updated 5/02.   Return to Trip Page