Jemez Caldera and Bandelier Loop

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Santa Fe

   Route 66 used to go to Santa Fe, and then in 1937 it did not. The original alignment of the Mother Road ran over Glorieta Pass into the old Spanish capital of New Mexico, before dropping south to Albuquerque, and then engineers cut a straight line across the desert from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque, shaving about a hundred miles off the journey and leaving Santa Fe on a bypassed loop. The ride from Amarillo to Santa Fe follows that early route, and this is the end of it, in a city at about seven thousand feet in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

   Read the complete Santa Fe write-up.

2. 2. Los Alamos

   Los Alamos is a town that exists because of a secret. In 1943 the US government chose this remote mesa, once the site of a boys' ranch school, for the Manhattan Project, and J. Robert Oppenheimer's team built the first atomic bombs in the pine forest at the end of a single winding road. The laboratory is still the biggest employer, which gives the town an odd, educated, slightly fenced-in feel. Street names, museums and a surprising number of PhDs in the grocery queue all hint at it.

   Read the complete Los Alamos write-up.

3. 3. Bandelier

4. 4. Valles Caldera

   Pull over where State Route 4 opens onto the Valle Grande and the first reaction is usually silence. The meadow in front of you is the floor of a volcano, a vast grassy bowl some thirteen miles across, ringed by forested domes and ridges, with elk grazing in the distance and the sky arching over it all. About 1.25 million years ago a colossal eruption emptied a magma chamber here, and the ground collapsed into the void, leaving a caldera. The ash from that blast settled into the pale tuff that forms the cliffs of Bandelier and the Pajarito Plateau nearby.

   Read the complete Valles Caldera write-up.

5. 5. Jemez Springs

   Jemez Springs is a small village strung along the Jemez River in a canyon of red and cream cliffs in northern New Mexico, and it feels a long way from anywhere. State Route 4 follows the river here, winding through a gorge of banded sandstone, with cottonwoods along the water and juniper on the slopes. It is a land of hot springs, tucked into the base of the Jemez Mountains, and the village has baths and a few small inns where tired riders can sit in mineral water.

   Read the complete Jemez Springs write-up.

6. 6. Back to Santa Fe

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Santa Fe write-up.