Even when on perpetual vacation, there are days with bad weather. For a city that boasts over 300 days of sunshine per year, we have seen quite a few clouds here. Albuquerque has received 5 times the normal rainfall for the month of May, and we're only half way through the month.
We took a morning walk after a rainy night (before the rains started again later that day) at Coronado Campground in Bernalillo. We are 15 miles north of Albuquerque, right along the Rio Grande River. From our site you can see those majestic Sandia Mountains that we hiked the day before.
It's interesting that the Rio Grande is flowing so well here and in Big Bend National Park. But in between these two places, when we were in El Paso, it is completely dry. We had planned to put our kayak in the river while we were staying here. There is a take-out spot that the commercial outfitters use right here in our campground. But the weather hasn't cooperated this time. We'll just have to come back!
We like our site here, and it comes complete with a covered patio and picnic table. We though it was interesting that the campground was owned by the University of New Mexico and operated by the city of Bernalillo.
While we are drying out from the rain and recovering from yesterday's hike, we saw that the birds were doing the same. This young roadrunner had his feathers puffed out, and he was drying out on the bench by the river.
Again, Mark would say that this bird is not a true "roadrunner", but a "bench-sitter" instead. He was certainly content to let us take pictures this morning.
We headed upstream on our walk towards the Coronado State Historical Site, where we found a Gambel's Quail singing to the clouds this morning. He was easy to spot--we just followed his song. Denisa loves the fact that these birds can always be spotted wearing their fancy hats. Instead of their more scientific name, we prefer to call them the party-hat birds.
As we walked along the Rio Grande River, we were entertained by a group of violet-green Swallows. We had to look it up, but the term for a group of swallows is a flight. This flight of swallows was dipping and diving close to the muddy water of the rain-swollen river. Since we were on a bluff above the water, we could view them from above to see the pretty colors of their back feathers.
These birds were tough to photograph because they were zipping by so fast, but Mark accidentally got several birds in one frame.
Besides bird watching, we have also discovered a new activity for rainy days that takes us indoors. Every Indian tribe runs a casino, so there is fierce competition to get loyal customers. Some of them offer a great $2 hamburger with all the trimmings that makes an easy rainy-day meal. Add the New Mexico chile sauce that this state is famous for, and you have a great taste of the local cuisine. Other casinos offer free-play money to any customers there for the first time. We have found that we can usually turn that $20 to $50 in free play money into about 80% cash. For some reason, Mark's percentages are much better than Denisa's even though we use the same game and tactics. He is obviously the lucky one in this family. So we get free rainy day entertainment that can pay for a lot of $2 hamburgers. One of our luckiest casinos was located north of Bernalillo, and is named after the natural rock formation nearby--Camel Rock.
So every day is not an exciting adventure. Some days we are in recovery mode from long hikes and content to stay close to home. But tomorrow we have great plans!
When our new friends from Germany, Norbert and Rosi said that the La Luz trail in Albuquerque was one of their favorite hikes in the world, we definitely knew it would have to fit into our itinerary here. This spring has been unusually wet here in the desert, but we finally found a day when the rain showers weren't supposed to start until late afternoon. So we got to the trail head in the Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque early to start the hike.
The peak to the right of center with the radio towers on top would be the top of the La Luz trail. But the advice we were given was to stop at the scenic view point 4.6 miles up, so that was our real destination when we started.
The first couple miles of the trail is covered with high desert flora that we have seen many times. But we were treated to peeks of peaks that were ahead. This section has countless switchbacks that are the longest we have ever encountered. We measured one swichback that was almost a quarter of a mile long. So it took us a half mile of walking to gain only twenty feet in altitude at that point. That means that the trail felt almost level at first, so it took us about an hour to reach some pretty rocks.
It was also interesting to see the city of Albuquerque nestled in the valley as we hiked higher into the Sandias.
We are now two hours into the hike, and understanding why this trail is so highly regarded. It actually feels like a trail with multiple personalities, so it is never boring. The rocks kept getting steeper and the desert landscape started changing into pine forest.
We love hiking in the mountains! One of the reasons is we love watching those tiny distant peaks grow larger as we walk towards them until we are finally at eye level with their craggy summits. We are now three hours into the hike and the most uttered word at this point is "Wow!"
We made it to the "Scenic View Point" and it was jaw-dropping beautiful! We were standing on the mountains that we had been looking up to all morning, and now we could see over into the next group of peaks. "Wow!"
We made it to the 4.6 mile scenic view point at 12:15, after hiking for a little more than 3 hours. That was a leisurely pace because we were visiting with other hikers and enjoying the beautiful views. There are a number of people that use this trail for their regular workouts. One gentleman we talked to said he walked to the scenic view point 3 times each week. He advised us to turn around here, as a 9.2 mile hike (with the return to the parking lot) is a demanding workout at this altitude. Besides, Mark had just turned his ankle yesterday, so it was still sore. We'd have to be crazy to continue further!
But we couldn't help ourselves, we just wanted to see down into that next canyon and around that next turn. Above you will see Denisa's black jacket (with her inside it) about a third of the way from the bottom of the picture. There's something about hiking amongst those giant pillars of stone that we love!
Our hiker friend had warned us that past the scenic view point, the trail changes dramatically. It changes from a 6 degree incline to 10 degrees. It's a higher altitude so there is less oxygen. It is covered with areas of rip rap that are hard to traverse. You can just see Denisa in the picture above peeking out from one of those areas of large rocks. We would be crazy to continue!
But the views were spectacular, and we are so glad we got to see this. Above, Mark is resting in the rock section to the left, looking over the landscape that we had just hiked through.
It's 1:00 now, and it looks like we won't have any blue sky pictures today. We're just hoping to get off the mountain before the predicted afternoon rain showers arrive. But we keep going, loving the bright green of the new leaves on the aspen trees against the rocks. There were a dozen times that we had to cross a field of rock boulders, but there was always a level break with a nice walk through the forest afterwards. Have we mentioned that we loved this hike?
We were high enough that we started seeing snow by 1:30. So of course there was a snow ball fight on the trail. You can see the snowball in the air in the photo below.
It's hard to capture how big and beautiful the mountains are around us now. That's why we usually try to have a person in the frame some place--just to get a sense of scale. Below is a panorama shot that Mark took to show the size of the boulders and the mountains with Denisa looking pretty small in the center.
The patches of snow on the trail got bigger as we got around 10,000 feet in elevation. Since upper elevations got snow the day after our hike, there is even more snow on the Sandia mountains now. We obviously have decided not to follow the advice we were given to turn back at 4.6 miles, but we are glad that we didn't miss the spectacular scenery we witnessed after that view point.
We arrived at this junction and had to make a decision. At this point we are a half mile from the summit. If we turn left, we can see the view from the top, but we will have to then turn around and hike the 7.5 miles back to the parking lot. If we turn right, we can walk a mile on the crest to the tram station that will take us to the base in 4 minutes. But then we would have to hike 3.6 miles back to where our car was parked.
We turned left and made it to the summit. We even have the picture to prove it. It's almost 3:00 and we're at the crest.
Here's a view from the top that shows those rip raps sections that we had to zig zag across to get to the top.
Actually, we had just a little further to get to the Crest House--elevation 10,678 feet. We had packed a picnic that we had already eaten, so we rewarded ourselves with a candy bar and cookie at the restaurant here. It might seem curious to have a restaurant that only hardy hikers can get to. But there is a road that travels the eastern side of the Sandia mountains that makes it easy for anyone to see the view from the top.
We also took a picture of Mark in front of those radio towers that are barely visible from the bottom.
As beautiful as this hike has been, there has been a veil
of gloom in the area today. We heard on the news last night that a
24-year-old woman had been missing for 5 days, and her car was found in
that parking lot at the Crest House. Search helicopters were in the air
during most of the morning's hike. They were just tiny specks in the sky at first, but as we
hiked higher we could see them clearly. Their blades make a thundering
that echoes through the canyon.
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When we made the last turn for the last half mile to the top, we were met by "Butter," a friendly dog that jumped up on Denisa in greeting. We found out that Butter was a search and rescue dog, trained to find missing persons. Butter's trainer rewarded her for finding Denisa, and then she slipped a doggy treat for Denisa to reward Butter as well.
We met another search and rescue team at the summit, armed with very heavy backpacks filled with the ropes and apparatus necessary for high angle rescue. They were one of 28 teams from all over New Mexico that were combing the summit area all day.
When we got to the Crest House, we saw the Incident Command Center bus parked in the parking lot at the top. This is the same parking lot where the young woman's car was found.
We left the summit at 3:30, keeping our eyes open for anything that might help the search. We had hiked up leisurely in 6 hours, but we knew that we needed to make it down before dark and hopefully before the rains came in. The skies were still cloudy, and the views still spectacular. But we took only a few pictures on the descent.
We decided that this was one of our all-time favorite hikes because it had so much variety and such good views. We also compared it to our hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and back up. We hiked 17.5 miles in the Grand Canyon spread over two days. This was a 15 mile hike in one day. At the Grand Canyon, we started at 7,200 elevation and went down. Today we started around 6,500 feet and went up 4,000 feet to 10,678. We spent 12.5 hours on the trail during the two-day Grand Canyon hike. Today, we would spend 9.5 hours hiking up and then back down. We were obviously going pretty fast on our descent, as we got back to the parking lot in three hours, and it never did rain of us!
When we started hiking this morning, we didn't plan to hike 15 miles. But some times God's wonders are too wonderful to miss!
P.S. We heard on the news that the body of the missing young woman was found two days later. The last we knew, officials think that she fell accidentally off one of the rugged cliffs that we had just hiked by.
It's only two hours down I-40 from Gallup to Albuquerque, our next stop on this great adventure. We got the motorhome parked at Enchanted Trails RV Park, and headed into the city. Denisa had made a long list of things she wanted to see and do since we have never visited Albuquerque before. Since it was a beautiful day, we started off with outdoor activities.
Albuquerque is very proud of its Paseo del Bosque Trail. It's 16 mile bike trail that runs north-south parallel with the Rio Grande River all the way through the city. Much of it is shaded because of the large trees that grow around the river. That brings us to our new word of the day--Bosque. We didn't know how to pronounce it or what it meant when we started this bike trail. But we now know that it is (boh-skay), and that it means "a forest along a river."
We started at Central Avenue (also known as Route 66) and headed north. We were riding beside the Albuquerque Gardens at first, and then the BioPark Aquarium, so it was especially pretty. Other times the river, and thus the bike trail, twisted toward the east so that we got a view of the Sandia Mountains.
There are some serious bikers in Albuquerque, and most of them seemed to be on this trail on a beautiful afternoon. Denisa determined that she was riding the oldest and cheapest bike on the trail, so she didn't take it personally that she got passed by all those bikers. She was setting the pace for this ride, so Mark was forced to stay behind her slow speed. However, we did manage to pass one guy that was walking on the trail.
One of the side trails off the Paseo Bosque goes to the Rio Grande Valley State Park. They have a visitor center that overlooks a pond filled with water birds. We especially enjoyed these turtles, and a mother duck and her six babies.
Another item on Denisa's list was visiting Historic Old Town Albuquerque. The center of this revitalized area is a tree-shaded town plaza complete with cannons and a gazebo.
Across the street is the San Felipe de Neri Church. Built in 1793, it is still an active church in the community.
The rest of Old Town is filled with art galleries, shops, and restaurants. This shop caught Denisa's eye because it had beautiful hollyhocks blooming outside. Her Grandmother used to have these old-fashioned flowers, so there was a sweet memory picture taken. If Denisa looks like she is about to cry because the sun is in her eyes, it's because she is about to cry because the sun is in her eyes.
Since we don't have room in the motorhome for trinkets and souvenirs, we only stop at the eating establishments. We found a wonderful frozen yogurt place across from the plaza, and we were pretty excited to see they were celebrating "Marvelous Monday." On Mondays, you can fill a large waffle cone with as much frozen yogurt and toppings as it would hold--all for $1. You can tell that Denisa is pretty pleased with her yogurt cone creation! She felt compelled to replace those calories that were burned off in the 20 mile bike ride.
Because we always enjoy a free attraction, we also took a hike at the Petroglyph National Monument. There are three different locations in Albuquerque where lava fields have been preserved because of the ancient petroglyphs carved into the black rock.
We hiked the 2.2 mile trail at the Rinconada Canyon site, and took some pictures of the best petroglyphs. It was a little like an Easter egg hunt, trying to find the carved pictures amongst the mounds of boulders. The hunt was made harder because we were kept away from the boulders by a cable fence.
This rock art was carved between 400 and 700 years ago, and there are supposed to be 1,200 petroglyphs in Rinconada Canyon. We found something closer to 12 petroglyphs. Some of them looked a little like space aliens.
This was my favorite group of petroglyphs. In the lower left corner are two crosses, probably carved by Spanish sheepherders at a later date than the "space alien" on the right hand side, or the foot on the rock on the upper left.
We must say that the highlight of this hike was meeting Norbert and Rosi from Germany. They were starting the hike as we were finishing and we struck up a conversation. They fly to the United States on a regular basis, and rent a small airplane to fly themselves to different locations that they love in the western part of our country. They have made 30 trips here so far, and gave us lots of information about their favorite hikes. We thought it was very interesting to get good travel advice in the United States from Germans. We wish we would have thought to take a picture of them on the trail! We hope to keep in contact with them for future advice, and we will be making the La Luz hike that they recommended here in Albuquerque.
Our next stop was the Balloon Museum. Albuquerque holds the International Balloon Fiesta in October, and this museum chronicles the history of the first successful flying machine all the way to the record setting balloons of today. It also has some interactive displays that allowed us to pretend we were flying in a hot air balloon.
There were other displays where we could sit in larger balloon cockpits that even included the lawn chairs, sleeping bags, and soup cans used in their record-setting journeys. It was a great museum!
Our next stop was the University of New Mexico campus downtown. We enjoyed our picnic lunch at the Duck Pond, then headed to the Meteor and Geology Museum in Northrop Hall. We enjoy being on university campuses, and the University of New Mexico has some beautiful gardens.
In our quest to buy only edible souvenirs, we also visited the Popcorn Cannery and Buffett's Candies. They pop and flavor delicious popcorn at the Cannery, and we had to try several different flavors before we made our purchase of cherry popcorn, and the Christmas mix of Red Chili and Green Chili Cheese popcorn. Then we went to Buffett's, started by Warren Buffett's less wealthy but better looking cousin. Their specialty is home-made candy made out of pinon nuts. The woman that we talked to has been working for the company for 35 years, and she educated us on all things pinon. For example, who knew that pinon nuts sell for $45 per pound? That could explain why the small pinon/caramel/chocolate bar we purchased costs about 10 times more than a similar-size Baby Ruth bar would cost. Our shopping stops led to the following treasures. We can report that they have been tastier than our purchases at the Gallup flea market.
We also explored the east side of Albuquerque, where we tried another bike trail. The problem came when we attempted the side trail to the Gallegas Park in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. It might not look like a steep road, but it certainly felt like it. That beautiful view was encouragement, but biking up steep roads when you are at 6500 foot altitude is tough. We did a short loop hike on some foothill paths, and Mark managed to twist his weak ankle on a stray rock on the trail. Just about the time we feel like we are getting into great shape, a day like this puts us in our place.
We consoled our injured egos with another trip to Yay Yogurt in Historic Old Town. It wasn't Marvelous Monday, but it felt pretty marvelous to share that big dish of yogurt and toppings!
Yogurt might not technically be one of God's wonders, but it tastes like He had a hand in it.
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