Two Weeks In Los Alamos, NM – Here’s What We Did

After spending a few weeks in Bloomfield, NM, Shae, Truffles and I moved on to Los Alamos for a couple of weeks.

Los Alamos was home to the Manhattan Project which developed and built the atomic bomb, so we were keen on learning more about that. Unfortunately COVID meant we weren’t able to go to the museum or do a few other activities we’d hoped to check out in the area, but our time there wasn’t a bust by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, I loved our two weeks in Los Alamos as there was so much to do in the area. Hiking, history, great food and much more – here’s everything we got up to while we were there.

Where We Stayed

We booked an Airbnb for our fortnight in Los Alamos which was…….OK. It wasn’t terrible, but there were a lot of areas where the experience could’ve been improved. We didn’t really get any photos of the property, so here’s Truffles sleeping on our laundry on the small sofa in the living room.

What We Did

Bandelier National Monument was a relatively short drive from our Airbnb and was a fascinating place to visit with its cliff dwellings, hiking trails and stunning views. Check out this post for more about our visit.

Bandelier has an outlier site called Tsankawi Prehistoric Sites which features more cliff dwellings and petroglyphs, as well as trails and stairs worn and carved into the volcanic rock. Read this post for more details about Tsankawi.

The trails at Bandelier and Tsankawi were relatively short, but we went on some longer hikes. All three of us hiked the Blue Dot Trail in White Rock, then just Truffles and I returned the following week to hike the Canyon Rim Trail. Check out this post for more about those two hikes and White Rock Overlook.

Another hike Truffles and I did was the Kwage Mesa trail which had lovely mountain, mesa and canyon views all the way out and back.

Truffles and Hershey have been Instagram friends for a while. Hershey (and his parents) were in Santa Fe while we were in Los Alamos, so we met up for a nice hike together on the Dale Ball Trails in Santa Fe.

We visited Santa Fe on a different day to explore downtown. We took Truffles with us and so didn’t go in the museums or anything like that – it was just a wander round the city.

While I worked one morning, Shae went out to the Los Alamos History Museum and had the privilege of being their first tour visitor since restarting guided tours.

Another morning while I was working, Shae drove over to Valles Caldera National Preserve which is a volcanic caldera to the west of Los Alamos.

It’s home to all kinds of wildlife and she got to see some of it while driving through the preserve despite it not being the optimal time of day for seeing them (sunrise and sunset is apparently the best time).

We drove back through on our way to Albuquerque, but the weather had taken a turn for the worse and so visibility wasn’t so good!

Just past Valles Caldera we spotted a beautiful scene off to the right, so we turned the car around to take a better look. It turned out to be the Las Conchas Trailhead and we took a quick walk along the first part of it until it got too icy to continue.

Where We Ate & Drank

While at the Los Alamos History Museum, Shae’s tour guide recommended getting food from the Sopaipilla Factory in Santa Fe, so we picked up dinner from there after our hike with Hershey.

Sopaipillas are deep fried pastries which can be eaten in many different ways (e.g. as bread, with honey, etc.), but we got ours stuffed with meat and topped with chili sauce.

Downtown Los Alamos is home to Ruby K’s Bagel Cafe. Shae lived in New York for a while and so she knows good bagels and Ruby K’s has good bagels. They have all your regular kinds of bagels and, seeing as it’s New Mexico, they also have green chile bagels which are definitely worth trying.

On the day we headed into downtown Santa Fe, we stopped at REI on our way back to Los Alamos to get me some new hiking boots. Just around the corner from REI was Bosque Brewing, so we stopped there for a quick drink. Rules in New Mexico meant Truffles wasn’t allowed on the outdoor patio itself, but she was allowed to sit on the other side of the railing.

What We Didn’t Do

We missed out on a few activities during our stay in Bloomfield due to snow and COVID. Snow wasn’t an issue while we were in Los Alamos, but COVID meant there were a few attractions closed which we’d hoped to visit.

That included Taos Pueblo, Puye Cliff Dwellings, Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the latter of which features more about the Manhattan Project. We could’ve visited the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, but that was up by Taos and so we decided to leave that for a future visit post-COVID, rather than driving all that way just to see the bridge.

Final Thoughts

I’d picked Los Alamos for somewhere to stay as it seemed to be close to a lot of activities on our list of things to do and, when looking at the city on Google Maps, seemed to have a ton of hiking trails. It ended up being a great decision.

Although the Airbnb we stayed at wasn’t amazing, we loved our two weeks in the city thanks to all the hiking, history, views, food and more. Considering all the other activities we missed due to COVID, I certainly wouldn’t object to returning to the area in the future as it’s a great part of New Mexico to visit.