Fortunately for you, dear reader, this is a short posting. The bulk of the day was spent traveling, though there was one last photo op in the morning before arriving at the airport…
The ABQ start of Microsoft. Yes, that Microsoft.
The location of this plaque is in a small strip mall. Across the street was some sort of center for the resident homeless in the area. There were folks with dogs, wagons filled with belongings (some carrying their own mattresses) plus a resident police car to keep things in check. I was not going to snoop around too much to look for this plaque given all the activity in the area. When i turned the car around to leave the area, there it was, unattended. I seized the moment, popped out of the car, snapped a shot, and headed for the airport. I’m sure there is a history of the change of route 66 to its current incarnation.
Microsoft had a hard time recruiting talent to ABQ which ultimately made them select Seattle as their next home. The rest, of course, is history. Good thing that plaques like this exist.
The airport was, well, an airport and leaving ABQ was kind of pretty and otherworld-y.
Is the left pic a northern version of the Nazca lines? The furrows of the mountains as they settle down have a formal geological name, i bet. Why isn’t there a rent-a-geologist for things like this?
Ruh-roh…i just asked that very question to Google and there is no shortage of geologists for hire much less other suggestions on how to accomplish that very task. Who knew?
I much preferred the stark loneliness of the landscape to the second leg of the trip back to B’more from Dallas which meant sitting next to an aggressive lady (nervous?) who quietly broke wind constantly for the 2 hour trip until she fell asleep from her vodka and soda which required 3 cups.
One cup was for the soda water into which she poured some of the vodka. A second cup was reserved for the leftover vodka that did not make it into the first cup. The third cup was required to re-pour the first cup’s mixture of soda and vodka into a fresh receptacle. The wee container of vodka was 50 milliliters (1.7 ounces), or approximately 1 shot.
She then sipped from the cup of the leftover vodka and chased that with a sip from the soda water and vodka. I was obviously in the presence of a pro!
Sad to say, but i was not convinced there was more to see of the city. Chances were good that the Petroglyph National Monument would be another casualty of the government shutdown and so was not worth considering as by this time i was 3-for-3 in terms of national parks being closed even though their respective websites did not definitively say that. There are 15 such places in NM.
At the History Museum of NM i learned that ABQ had a railroad yard and when i looked it up, the abandoned buildings hosted an informal market on the weekends. It was parked up when when i got there and i found auxiliary parking nearby. As i walked to the vast building, a “breaking bad” touring RV passed by and you heard muffled talking so it must have been a locale. I only got through season 2…
I bought some local empanadas and delicious watermelon agua fresca and continued the venture south.
So why not follow the Rio Grande where you could? From what i had seen of it at this point it was still pretty, umm, un-grande but was part of a fantastic gorge near Taos. I was close to its headwaters in CO, but needless to say it is tucked away further than i had time to go.
The big highway south was exactly that – a big highway and so i took it south far enough where it had an offshoot that was probably the original road that Highway 25 replaced. There were a few wee towns along it, so i made it a Sunday drive just like any other Sunday drive passing through wee towns.
I was intrigued by a placename on my google maps called ‘isleto pueblo proper’ and so pointed the car in that direction. Upon arriving there was a big sign welcoming you to the isleta pueblo and 3 reminders for visitors: No photographs, sketching, or painting of people engaged in tribal activities. Oh, and to keep the speed down to 10mph to help keep the dust down.
I drove into the pueblo (under 10mph) to check it out and when i did the GPS referred to trails, as in “turn left on trail 36, and then left on trail 42.” The trails were really all very, very short and more conducive to walking than driving.
The church i saw in the middle of the pueblo was in session and so it was off limits. Driving around the pueblo i let the place be; and similar to the morada in Abiquiu, i did not want to be that person poking around with a cam. That said, i would love to learn more about the pueblos of New Mexico. They were considered as something different than other native american tribes and allowed to remain intact when the other nomadic tribes were being pushed into reservations. And perhaps that was the distinguishing characteristic – nomadic vs established communities with a set place and dwellings? Guess i have more pueblo “life homework” ahead of me…
The Rio Grande was more of an idea than a roadside companion because you could not exactly see it though it was very close by. Traveling further south was pretty uneventful and i made it to my intended destination of Sorocco when i saw a sign that said, “VLA, this way”. The sign’s siren’s song worked and i went another 52 miles to see the VLA (Very Large Array, btw) and would catch Sorroco on the way back.
The drive to the VLA went up in elevation to 6,900 feet and the land flattened out. Unbeknownst to me, the VLA and its 27 radio antennae sit in the floor of what was a prehistoric lake and was rimmed by mountains that used to be its shoreline. There was a visitor center that had a 24-minute film and a walking tour around part of the antennae field. You were asked to either turn off your cell phone entirely or just the WIFI and bluetooth because the stray radio frequency thrown off by them could disturb the collection of info by the antennae. You were watched as you did that.
The site has 27 90-foot antennae on railroad tracks that allow them to move in 3 different configurations for small, medium, and large imaging. The on-site supercomputer (!) allows the info from 27 collection antennae to be merged into a single “image”. The radius for the roaming antennae is 17 miles wide and the dish of an antenna is two school buses wide.
The big one in the pic above actually moved while i was there and was remarkably quiet not to mention agile. It did not poke around at 3mm per second and instead reminded me of the Pixar lamp, Luxo.
The trip back to Socorro was supplanted by an ad hoc decision to have dinner at a place in the middle of nowhere known as the Gateway to Ancient Cities. I did not have time for further exploration since i was going to arrive at 6pm and had another hour to get back to ABQ. All i wanted was a simple dinner at a place that had signs on the road.
Even though there was no government shutdown here, the place was closed even though it said it was open. Why should my track record remain unbroken? I have a feeling the best the adjacent cafe could offer (and they were hiring, btw) was a corndog, so it was just as well.
(This was directly across the street from it)
Time was not on my side and i headed back into the bosom of ABQ hungry as heck where i found a vietnamese restaurant that was overrun with fiesta folks. Four cars entered the parking lot the same time as i did and we played “parking vultures” as other cars left.
Since I had the rest of the day open I wanted to use that to see Old Town. I did not have any sense of Albuquerque as a city, so why not start there?
My GPS brought me to what it thought was Old Town but I did not see anything that I would have associated with being terribly old. I stopped the car, asked Google Maps where the old town parking was and parked myself accordingly. I followed other folks from the lot into an adobe area of stores which opened up into an area that yep, started to look old.
Then I started to get it. Old Town was not gonna be some prohibition-era set of buildings, or something like that. As I mulled that over in my head and what that was going mean, I found it pretty much staring me in the face:
Old meant like Mexican old and a proper Spanish town which had to have a church and a plaza. I had the church and the plaza was certainly there with a mariachi band., to boot!
this was old ABQ…a Spanish church and plaza along with supporting shops and restaurants in adobe. I was being too gringo for my own good. My pics of the terrific mariachi band were out of focus, so you will have to just take my word for it.
But nevertheless, I wanted to see some sort of 20th century old town and thought I could do that by looking up where the City Hall was located. When I found it, it was nothing to write home about (or take a picture of) and the current incarnation of the city center was not a unified urban vision but rather a collection of disparate modern buildings that had no souls individually, nor any collective purpose. They were just kind of built as their respective budgets would allow at the time.
There was a great old Kimo theatre which was very worthy of a picture but Central Avenue (old route 66), even this far into the city, was overtaken by drugged out folks who hung out in slumped lumps on the sidewalks. I drove by, whispered my appreciation, but kept on driving by. This was what was left of the “downtown” and now home to nodding off folks who were having a hard time living. I was sorry to not be able to walk around and explore more. Even the Kimo website offered virtual tours instead of the real thing.
So, what to do? I headed further west on route 40 and see if there was any ol’ magic left to route 66. There wasn’t and i turned around. Perhaps it would appear further west, but the afternoon was almost gone by this point and even my nap did fully restore me and i was still tired from the Fiesta morning.
The rest of this are just select pics. The fiesta is kinda sorta over by 8-ish depending on what you want to do. The park-and-ride buses start returning between 8-10 and the last ‘straggler’ bus runs from 10:30 to 11. The next set of buses for the ‘evening glow’ (which requires another ticket, btw) start at 3. Part of the other wonder of the Fiesta is the mass moving of people in a very short time window.
Patriotic though it may be this was one of two flanks of porta potties. I bet there were also a few more.
The big animals are always a hit, no? Even the vampire was pretty cheerful
The POW balloon was pretty outstanding. Yhe barbed wire pieces were added so they stuck out. That was a terrific detail. In this case the balloon was being inflated, but when it was being deflated you got a warm breeze. I asked two ladies who were packing up their balloon how much did all that nylon weigh? The smaller balloon was 150 lbs and the bigger next to it was 300. To pack ’em up they are twisted and stuffed into a variety of containers.
Probably one of my fave ballon’s was the panther. It was shine-y which made it striking. And who could not look at the plump Dino and not smile?
And how do they inflate? Funny you should ask…
Because I was a tired pup from waking up at 2:30, I went home and napped. The afternoon was spent checking out some other parts of ABQ.
There is often an established protocol to many things and Baloon Fiesta was no exception. At 7-ish, even though the decision to not launch was made, the national anthem was sung. And when the final words of, ‘…and the home of the brave’ was sung there were a bunch of old timey planes that flew overhead. That, I guess signified the Official Start.
The planes and the flames
what happened next was that at the word ‘home’ all the balloons tooted with their thrusters as well as stray standalone thrusters that peppered the grounds. The resulting sound, heat, and light was truly remarkable and caught me quite by surprise and I even shed a creeper tear. But I also did that when watching the start of the farmer’s parade at the Sauerkraut Festival in Phelps, NY. 🙄
I was late in getting this but this is the end of itI was caught by surprise by the number of flames being thrown.
Those who knew, knew. The rest of us wondered what was going to be next.
But that did not take long to figure out because there were other balloons on the horizon. I mean lots of other balloons!
So….with getting through the long line in and being amazed by the drone show I ventured into the field. There was a little more light to discern things and there was some additional glow from some balloons and like a moth I ventured towards the light.
The Big Boy cam is not great in such low light conditions so I was curious how the iPhone would do. It did ok.
So now the trick was how not to take 500 pics from the same area? The sky was getting a tad lighter and as more balloons were inflated there was extra light from their burners (or whatever they are called).
One of the traditions is that the first balloons to be inflated are the original 13 who were part of the first fiesta. That was in 1972 (53 years ago) in a shopping mall parking lot and 20,000 people were in attendance. It has grown up a little since then.
The iPhone’s renditions are pretty spectacular but not exactly a true photo. But who’s complaining?
One things the photos do not capture is the low-ish hissing sound of the flames nor their warmth. It was far from a chilly, chilly morning but the distant heat was comforting. Every once in a while the pilots of the original 13 would count down in unison and when they got to ‘one’ they’d simultaneously toot with their flames.
until they started to really rise, I did not really appreciate their size. As more became inflated the thrum of the thrusters became more constant. There was more light at this point and so it became easier to navigate. The grass was surprisingly flat, too.
Another thing I did not expect was the ability wander around the balloonists. You could walk right on up ask questions and things like that.
By this time the 13 balloons were up and ready to go, but soon some started to deflate for some unknown reason. The true reason was that the decision to launch or not launch had just happened. Well call on the ground, it was a little too windy a couple hundred feet up, and that was enough to call off the launch.
But that did not matter much because other balloons were starting to get fired up.
And that is me at 5:24 approaching the gates. I was finally out of the endless line a little before 6:00.
It was still dark as pitch and no real signage about where anything was, so you just silently moved with the crowd surge and be careful with your footing because you are on grass. Until, that is, you realize it is probably a wise idea to make a pitstop because the grass is dewy and you have cold feet and head for an area with lights and vendors. I’ll spare you the details but the let’s just say the mens room had 35 urinals alone in one place. Much to the disappointment of the ladies in a similar situation, they were told the women’s room was closed and were directed to a dense grid of porta potties.
I decided to take advantage of the knowably smooth asphalt ground and so moved along the row of vendors. Surprisingly, the turkey legs were a big hit. The line for coffee was ridiculous and i changed my mind and looked for a redbull.
The audio that was starting to kick in featured a native american chant and probably one that was to greet the dawn which was still 30 minutes away. It made perfect sense and something was going on in the “infield” of the balloon park which is like a horse track – a big oval with a chewy caramel center.
The infield was having a drone show, naturally. Sponsored by a Casino, in between the drone commercials, we were mesmerized by the series of auto configuring morning scenes: The sun rising over the mountians behind us, a rooster crowing and an alarm clock that started to ring as it struck 6:00. The drones shivered when that happened and the clock exploded and dissolved away.
Because drones are silent, this was choreographed to various snippets of music. Drone shows are pretty amazing to see in person and this one had folks talking about it afterwards when you could actually see someone to speak with. If i had the presence of mind, i should have done short videos because these were not static images. The coffee pot poured coffee, The balloons rose, the rooster rotated and crowed and the there were eggs broken into a frypan and then fried. That last one was hard to pull off, but they certainly get points for trying.
Not such a “Big See” day. You have 2 choices on how to get to Albuquerque – The modern highway or a route on the cleverly marketed name of ‘The Turquoise Trail’. Ain’t no way i was going to go by the highway if a byway existed. I returned to Santa Fe to see the nations’s oldest house (1610) and oldest church (San Miguel).
This ‘oldest house’ stuff is tricky. I used to live near the oldest house in New England (1639) and prior to 1639 there just was not a whole lot of the New World, much less America. But given that the oldest church is across the street and the Hall of Governors is nearby, why couldn’t it be located there?
It certainly looks habitable though nobody is currently home.
San Miguel was as large as you would expect an outpost church to be but it had its bona fides in place with a retablo.
The morning’s short walk concluded with a peek at the State Capital and i left with the conclusion that Santa Fe was a comfortable place to live and visit even with its challenging parking.
From Santa Fe it was over to Pecos Nat’l Monument only to discover the gosh darn place was closed due to the government shutdown. This was a disappointment but like many things in life, you snap a pic and carry on. From there i lucked upon an abandoned (i think?) church in Lamy and buried my sorrows in what was my first legit vegetable in the form of a lunch special of ‘stew and salad’ in Pecos.
As i paid my bill, i asked what the story was about a painting behind the cashier. She said the building used to be a bar and a bar patron at the time painted a scene that included caricatures of all the regulars. It looked very WPA-ish and sure enough she located a date of 1942 on the lower right corner. The building, she continued, also served in its day since it was built in 1910, as general store, convenience store, pool hall, dance hall, courthouse, jail, and brothel. The brothel part i was a little dubious about, but who am i to say?
The turquoise trail passes through a town called madrid which is invariably coupled with the word ‘quaint’. It was a place filled with funky stores and was parked up to the gills. I would have stopped if i could have parked. Instead i parked along the road to take landscape pics as i continued down to the Big City of ABQ.
And, of course, there had to be another church with its sanctuary to Mary who they said was the mediatrix of all graces. New Mexico will make a catholic out of me yet, if this keeps up.
And from there it was a few short miles to my hotel in ABQ which abuts a busy highway and is behind a fence which locks at night. It sits behind an mall which is dying and i think has transmogrified itself by looking for new tenants. One tenant is a place called Citizens Church which has branches here in ABQ and Maui. Pictures of the church feature a stage in what looks like a concert setting. And sure enough, when you look at ‘The Team‘ page of the church’s website, you find 48 very engaged people including a Lighting Team Lead. It is down the street from a dialysis center which has a matching Walmart.
But when i made the reservation for this place, ABQ was filling up for the main event of the year…The Balloon Fiesta! and so beggers cannot be choosers.
What was not on my bingo card was a government shutdown when i created an itinerary. Even though the websites say the parks I was going to see today were open…they were not. So what was no. 2 on the list became no. 1.
Even the Manhattan Project was park closed, Someone mentioned to me that programmers who maintain the websites were furloughed as well leaving everything in a surreal limbo. Is it? or Isn’t it?
But that was no biggee because the Los Alamos was a virtual park because the buildings it features are not open to the public. I entered the city from a back entrance which abuts the labs and so you had to provide a photo ID at a guard station which added a little faux intrigue.
Once inside and proceed to the downtown area, you immediately pass the labs which, well, looked like lab space. There was 1 gleaming glass building and 3 small parking garages. It was just another day on the ranch that I could see.
While the Manhattan Project park visitor center was closed, there was a Los Alamos visitor center in the same building and she was overloaded with spillover visitors. I was given a map along with sage phrase of, “history across the street, museum over there.” Fortunately with a population of 13,500 the place is very walkable and i opted for the history first.
Didn’t see the movie but Los Alamos seems to be the product of 2 unlikely sources. The Lieutenant General who oversaw the construction of the Pentagon and was under budget and before schedule and the Theoretical Physicist. Sounds like a marriage made in heaven, huh?
Part of the story of the place is the motivated workforce behind it. The average age was 29! Where all that came together was at the Bradbury Science Museum which presented Timelines of events to help place the development of Los Alamos amid all the other things swirling around it.
Some of the sites on the town was the house where Robert Oppenheimer lived with his wife. You could not walk through it, but the neighboring house (home of physicist Edwin Mcmillan for a few years and then Hans Bethe) was open and had a slight Cold War theme to its displays.
The Bradbury museum had two sections. One was around the work of the Manhattan Project proper and the other was a section that featured the work of the labs now and which was a STEM dream on steroids.
Boys will be boys….
And speaking of which, here are the boys…
This was a life-size replica of the 10,000 Fat Man (thank you, Winston Churchill for the inspiration of the name) that was exploded above Nagasaki and help end WWII.
I checked out the website and it said it was not closed due to the gov shutdown. Drove in and stopped at a visitor center along The way to inquire further and they said the park is closed. They also said that perhaps the webmaster for the site is furloughed as well. I never gave that one a thought.
Whelp, the visitor center had the correct skinny. The site truly is closed, but cars still queued up to be told that.
The Big World 