A Full Day

Whew!  What a day we had yesterday!  We're camping just outside Albuquerque, New Mexico.  The nights are nice and cool here in the mountains where the campground is (and they have WiFi!), but it's been in the 90's during the day and especially hot in the valley - Albuquerque is like a bowl, surrounded by mountains.

We started the day with a trip to Petroglyph National Monument, where we took two short (but HOT and uphill) hikes to see the writing on the walls (ha ha) - it's actually writing on rocks.  Very cool - there were hundreds of petroglyphs of all sorts of mysterious pictures and symbols, some dating back thousands of years.

We had an amazing lunch at Sophia's Place, a little cafe we found through one of our favorite TV shows, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.  The food was incredible - super fresh and everything homemade!  I had fish tacos - mmmm!

After lunch, Ken just drove aimlessly around the city, in a futile attempt to allow me to nap in the air conditioning.  We figured it would be too hot back at our camper, but it was pretty hard to nap in stop-and-go city traffic.

Eventually, I gave up, and we spent some time wandering around Old Town in Albuquerque, a historic area of pretty gardens and squares, and lots of little shops.  By 3:30, I was really pooped out, but it still seemed too hot to come back to the camper, so we went to the planetarium in the local Natural History Museum.  Our boys had never been to a planetarium before, so that was fun - plus it was cool, and I could sit back in a comfy seat with my feet up!

We finally came back to the camper for a light dinner, and I tried another nap - better but still too short.  In the evening, we took the world's longest aerial tram up the side of Sandia Mountains - up to 10,300 ft!  It was freezing up there!  We took a short hike along the edge of the mountain and were treated to incredible sunset views of the mountains and the city below.

As you can imagine, I'm pretty wiped out today - sore throat and very tired.  Plus, my allergies are kicked up by something here.  Today will be a quieter day - we're moving into the mountains north of Albuquerque for a few days.

If you'd like to see pictures of our trip so far or follow along with the rest of it, you can check out our trip blog.  I wasn't going to mention it until we got home, but we have lots of people watching our house while we're away.  Besides, if anyone tried to rob us, they'd be sorely disappointed!  We do have a big house in a nice neighborhood, but all our money goes to medical expenses, and whatever is left is used for travel.  We have 30-year old furniture and ancient electronics.  We still tape TV shows on a VCR!  Anyway, check out the blog.  Time to pack up.