Friday, September 30, 2011

The Other Mile High City

We’re having a great time on our first visit to Albuquerque, elevation 5,300 ft. Tuesday, on a bus tour set up for our group, we visited two equally interesting places that were very different from each other. We spent the morning at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

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There are displays from each of the pueblo tribes, showcasing their distinct crafts, food, and history.

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In the afternoon, we toured The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, a comprehensive  display of nuclear-related historical items. 

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There are displays highlighting nuclear energy, nuclear medicine, and nuclear weapons. From the latter category, we saw bomb casings from both bombs that were dropped over Japan in World War II. Below are photos of “Fat Boy” which was used at Nagasaki along with a B-29, the plane that carried it.

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On Wednesday, we visited Acoma Sky City Pueblo, the oldest continuously occupied Indian pueblo in the United States. The pueblo (town or village) is located on top a 70-acre mesa which rises 400 feet above the valley floor. There is no running water or electricity in the pueblo; there’s a paved road up to the village, but once there the streets are not paved.

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Bread is baked inside traditional outdoor ovens, and water is collected in several cisterns scattered throughout the village.

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When it was time to leave the pueblo, we were given the option of climbing down rather than riding on the bus that had brought us up. The path started out wide and easy but quickly turned narrow and steep.

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The hike down was a good opportunity to work off some of the filling southwestern food we’d been enjoying!

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