Category: Albuquerque

staycation

We had a “staycation” last week.  We went camping high in the mountains near Santa Fe.  Camping up there was cooold, and we could have prepared better…but you don’t actually expect to sleep when camping.  We also toured a bit around Santa Fe.  There was a small labyrinth outside a cathedral there.  Of course, we had to stop by our favorite restaurant in Santa Fe, Tomasitas.  We noticed there was a new African style place called Jambo Cafe, but we neglected to try it…maybe next time.    We dropped by the Chuck Jones gallery.  Was he in New Mexico at some point?  Vanessa got to visit the Georgia O’Keefe museum that she’d wanted to see for a while.  On the way home from Santa Fe, we stopped by Tent Rock and Cochiti Lake.

We went to Cliff’s one day and had fun.  It’s a small amusement park here in Albuquerque.  It was fun aside from Sean having an “nausea incident” on the way home as a result of riding a looping ride 3 times before he left.  Loading up on greek food at the new Ahmo’s Deli probably didn’t help.

Later in the week, we went to my cousin’s wedding in Clovis and had a good time seeing cousins I hadn’t seen in quite a while.  We also played Love Letters.  It’s a cool little rule-based card game with only 16 cards.  Very simple to learn.

Sand storm….ssssssaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnd stooooorrrrrmmm

Sean and I decided to bike to a new rock trail and tunnel near Unser and Rainbow.  I wisely chose a day with 30 mph winds to do it.  I had Kai in the bike trailer behind me.  At one point, I saw a sandstorm coming in from the west and though, “We’re going to be in trouble if we get caught in that.”  One minute later, we were in it.  I blocked the wind for Sean and the stinging sand blew all around us.  (Kai was fortunately fast asleep through it.)  We couldn’t see but a few feet and sandstorms are apparently full of static electricity, so we were getting little electric shocks all round.

Desert bike ride

Sean and I went on a bike ride to the RC air park south of our house.  A guy was doing some RC helicopter stunts.  We also  found a paved trail that goes out to the mesas west of our house.  It was probably Sean’s longest bike ride.

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Sean on Paseo de la Mesa. 

 

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Illegal dumping out west of our neighborhood

 

trampoline park…wow

We’ve had Vanessa’s brother and family visiting.  It’s been a jolly time with them.  One thing we did was visit the Gravity Park trampoline park.  It has a grid of trampolines on the floor where you can jump from one to another.  You get moving fast enough to almost lose control sometimes.  (This is why you sign a waiver before you can play.)  There were also foam pits you could jump into.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun.  I tried to learn the old back flip that I never had the courage to do on our trampoline growing up, but still couldn’t get it.

Loud river walk

Yesterday evening, we parked at the back of the Walmart parking lot on Coors and I-40.  From there, you can walk down a lighted bridge along the freeway to the river.  (Walking along the freeway is pretty loud.)  We saw bats flying around.  I wanted to get a shot of a bat against the moon, but chances would have been one in a thousand.

accidental solar heating

A few years ago, we added an external glass door to our south-facing front door.  Don’t do this.  The glass helps trap heat and turns the whole thing into an oven.  It gets hot enough to burn you and has damaged the paint on the front door.  As the energy.gov site says, “Never add a glass storm door if the exterior door gets more than a few hours of direct sun each day. The glass will trap heat against the entry door and could damage it.”  Would have been nice to read that a few years ago.

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