Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Albuquerque, New Mexico ~ Part 1

Albuquerque is the largest city in New Mexico.
It feels calm. It has a history.
Cowboys and Indians...
Wagon Trains...

A Rattlesnake Museum and cactus...
The old Route 66 still runs right through the center of the city. It's a hot spot of trendy shops and restaurants. It still has the power to entice the weary traveler...
The majority of homes are adobes. Whole neighborhoods blend into the earth almost seamlessly.

...with an occasional space craft...
...and shoe tree...

We started our hike at the Petroglyph National Monument Visitors Center...
...in search of the ancient rock carvings.
Archaeologists say these images were created by the ancestors of today's Pueblo Indians during the 1300s through late 1600s. There are approximately 25,000 petroglyph carvings in this 17 mile area...
No rattlers in sight. Just a lonely chipmunk spotted on the way down...
The Sandia Peak Tram is a sweet little piece of Swiss engineering...
The world's longest aerial tramway. 2.7 miles. 10,378 feet from base to peak.
Heights are on my favorite thing, but the 11,000 square mile view was worth the white knuckle ride up.
A southwestern sunset...
Coincidentally our rv was camped near the grizzly crime scene of the recent findings of a New Mexio serial killer...
...a US missile, proudly displayed outside the shops of Old Town...

...and the birthplace of Bill Gates and Paul Allan's little idea...
...a disturbingly odd mutant Paul Bunyan Muffler Man displayed atop a Vietnamese restaurant...
Albuquerque, New Mexico. The Land of Enchantment...

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