Albuquerque North Bernalillo KOA Campground

Having failed to get to El Malpais I knew I needed to see something other than the inside of my hotel room so I made for the Petroglyph national monument. This was my first national monument of the trip to go with my 7 national parks and my 4 state parks – not that I am counting.

I found the visitor centre and a very helpful (as the NPS rangers always are) man gave me all the gen including explaining the petroglyphs are scratched into the rock whereas pictographs are ...

... it was Thanksgiving morning there was barely a soul at security so I whizzed right by. And, yes, made my flight with minutes to spare. I just hope that my luggage made it on the plane!!! Guess I'll find out tomorrow morning.

Then on my flight from Houston to New York, I recognized a seminary student of mine from over 20 years ago. We had a chuckle about how we both look pretty much like ...

... problem would have to be fixed eventually. Well, eventually is on your way to Albuquerque.
So as I finally found Devon and John's place, outside the city and quite remote, I was relived to have gotten the car that far. I met Devon and her husband John and instantly felt at home. My dad and Devon's mom are old theater friends and I promised my dad I would visit them on the way back to Atlanta. Devon and John ...

... point so we went back to the car and went to get some food. We went to Bumble Bee Baja Grill. I heard about it from a website - Delicious Baby. It was a great recommendation -we really enjoyed the food.

We drove back to Alb. through some rain and spent the evening talking with Anny and Jeff.

Leaving the winter home, Sharon came for a week vacation and to drive with me back to Madison. We drove to Bosque Del Apache via a few missions. Spent the night at the RV park for the birds and got up really early to see the birds fly ...

... Albuquerque which we decided to devote to a visit to the annual Albuqurque balloon festival - the largest in the world (or so they claim, but always take these things with a pinch of salt, we have seen hundreds of places that sell "the world's best ribs" or offer some similar claim). Simply too exhausted from our long field trip yesterday, we quickly gave up on the idea of getting up at 5.00am so that we could go and watch the morning's mass ...

I was in Times square in NY taking photos about the crowd crossing the street then i went straight to the airport, get a flight to Albuquerque, there, i picked up a rental car and drove 8 hours to Monument Valley in Arizona, so, exactly 24 hours after time square i was standing in a desert, with for only company a lost dog...actually i appreciated the difference.

I get to the airport in Albuquerque at 4.30pm. my flight is at 6:30pm..I quickly hit the mens room
and eat 8 gelatin capsules of dried, powdered ( fine), peyote. within an hour of consumption
I'm through security and sitting with my laptop and the peyote kicks in."...Woah Mescalito !!!!
..please let me maintain and not have a major freakout here in the airport....just let me maintain and get me on the plane!!!!".....once on board it's smooth sailing...lol

... is that our choice of Bree was exactly right, we have every comfort we need and Malc is very at home behind the wheel. The notion that we can just hook up Toad and move on whenever and wherever we want is still amazing. I suppose if we're truthful we've managed to escape the shackles of 'normal' life to become modern day gypsies, well at least for half a year at a time!