April 2024: A New Mexico Adventure: day 2

Day 2: Sunday April 21, 2024

After a great night of sleep in a very comfortable bed, I was awake early…like 4 am early. And was texting with my colleagues shortly after because we are educators and it was 6 am back home. So, obviously I watched the sunrise after finalizing my plans for the day. Sunrise allowed for a very Albuquerque moment. Not only did I watch the sunrise over the mountains, but I also got to see hot air balloons lifting off. Yeah, I’m in New Mexico.

Once the sun was up, we headed for breakfast, obviously taking a few pictures outside the hotel on the way.

We drove over to breakfast at the Central Grill. Central Grill is on Central Ave, which is Route 66, so I made sure to text my dad that we were having breakfast on Route 66. One of his retirement dreams (if he ever retires) is to drive the entirety of Route 66. Breakfast was delicious and pretty inexpensive. I had blue corn pancakes. Nick had some sort of pancake wrapped sausage thing. We both enjoyed our breakfast.

Back at the hotel, I did some picture taking while Nick packed his stuff up. While the rooms are a bit plain, the hotel itself isn’t, and I absolutely recommend it if you find yourself in Albuquerque.

 
Once we were both packed up, we checked out and headed for the car. It was time to explore!

Our first stop was the first national park site of the trip: Petroglyph National Monument. We stopped at the visitor center for a map, and then headed to the Boca Negra section of the park. Petroglyph has 3 distinct sections, in 3 different areas in Albuquerque. We were short on time, so we were only able to go to one, and I picked the one with the absolute shortest trails, to make this a short stop. We were able to walk two (I think) “trails” here, and saw a couple dozen real petroglyphs and numerous fake ones (aka vandalism) in a very short amount of time. This was a pretty cool stop for these New Englanders.

Once we were done at Petroglyph, we headed for the Sandia Tram. Sandia Peak is a pretty tall mountain and you can take a tram to the top. I’d purchased our tickets this morning online, so when we got there we just had to check in and wait for the next tram. There are two trams and I think they run about every 15 minutes.

This was an incredible experience. The views were fantastic and at times we were literally above the clouds. Going early in the day served us very well, as we had minimal line for the tram up the mountain. By the time we returned to the base station, there was quite a line for the tram.

 
After souvenir shopping, we settled into the car and programed the GPS. Time to drive the Turquoise Trail to Santa Fe. The Turquoise Trail is a national scenic byway. There are several little towns and lots of desert scenery along the way. It was a nice drive. We stopped for lunch (bbq, burgers, and fancy sodas) at Jezebel Soda Fountain in the town of Madrid, and also explored Shugarman’s chocolate shop, also in Madrid, where we bought a bunch of the most delicious chocolate we’ve ever had. And we enjoyed the desert scenery. Nick even stayed awake for some of the ride.

We got into Santa Fe a bit early, but we were able to check into our next hotel, the Inn of the Governors when we got there. We were directed to room 224, on the second floor of the main building, so after reminders from the folks at the front desk that we are at elevation and need to hydrate and watch the alcohol consumption (it’s like they know northerners) we unloaded the car and headed up to settle in.

Our room was a Superior King Fireplace room. The Inn of the Governors is an older inn that struck an incredible balance of location and value. The room (and property in general) was clean and well maintained. The inn was an easy walk to the plaza and all the major things to see in the historic area of Santa Fe. All reservations include free breakfast (albeit with a limited menu) in the restaurant on property, free parking and reservations made online also include a $15/night credit in the on-property restaurant. Oh, and there’s a daily welcome function where they give you free cookies and sherry. We had a great stay there.

Once settled in, we headed downstairs for the welcome reception, where we tried sherry and the state cookie of New Mexico. Neither one of us was a fan of those cookies. I enjoyed the sherry more than Nick did, but we both appreciated “free” alcohol.

 
We then returned to the room to begin what would become a thing for this trip…the dinner deliberation. Nick was terrified to try ANYTHING in this state even though you can get the chile on the side everywhere, so…figuring out meals was even more challenging than I’d anticipated (and…spoiler alert…got worse).

Eventually Nick found a restaurant called the Ranch House that was…NOT walking distance…so we hopped in the car and drove there. We got the last parking spot in the lot, and managed to snag seats at the bar that were opening up as we walked in. I think Nick had brisket mac and cheese. I had some sort of chicken sandwich. Nick had a margarita and I had a prickly pear mojito, so I at least had something southwestern. Dinner was great.

After dinner, we made a stop at Wal-Mart for bottled water and then returned to the hotel, where we finalized plans with Nick’s parents for the next day and then crashed hard.

April 2024: A New Mexico Adventure: Day 1

Day 1: Saturday April 20, 2024

The alarm went off EARLY. Like in the 3:00 hour. We got up, got ready, and got out the door reasonably close to on time.

The drive down to the Manchester airport was easy, and we got there about 30 minutes after we left the house…so about 4:30, I think. At some point since I last parked a car there, MHT had upgraded to the Disney Springs style parking space lights in their parking garage, so finding a parking space was easier than I had expected, and soon enough I was texting my sister, who had inherited car pickup duty with grampa’s hospitalization, the location of my car, and Nick and I were headed inside the airport, me grinning at that wonderful sound of suitcase wheels spinning across the moving walkway of the pedestrian bridge from the garage.

Check in was quick, and within minutes, our bags were tagged and headed backstage to be seen again in Albuquerque and we were headed for security.

Security in Manchester is always tighter than seemingly any other US airport I’ve flown out of, but today…yikes. It seemed every single party had at least one bag being pulled for extra screening. They had gotten new machines that appeared more sensitive. Nick’s bag was the one that got pulled for us, but thankfully after a bunch of standing around and a relatively cursory check and a knowing “oh” from the TSA dude when he finally got around to the bag, we were on our way.

The gate area was a full house, and I quickly discovered one of the second grade teachers I work with was on our flight and looked just as perfectly (disgustingly) put together at 4 am as she does at 10 am. I avoided eye contact and we settled in to wait for boarding.

Boarding began and, you know, half the plane was family boarding. Nick and I were WAY in the B group, so we had to wait awhile, but eventually we were onboard, and Nick found us two seats together in the VERY LAST ROW. But, we have a 4 hour layover in Baltimore, so there’s no need to rush off the plane. And yes, you read that right.

It was a quick flight down to Baltimore…like less than an hour. So the 25 minutes it took for deplaning was almost as long as the flight. But hey…that’s less time that we’re spending in the airport?

We emerged into terminal C which has a nice patch of barely used gates, so we parked ourselves at one of those for awhile. I tracked our bags journey around the airport via our airtags and did some research for both this trip and future trips. And then we went to breakfast.

At the time of the trip, my Priority Pass through my Chase Sapphire Reserve still had restaurant privileges, and the Harbor Grille was a participant in the program. So we went there, knowing we could get breakfast for just the cost of the tip. We had time to kill, so why not?

We both got the chicken biscuit, and well…this was why not. Flavor was good. Biscuit was good. Chicken was so dry that it was basically like extra crunchy cardboard. We were glad this breakfast was free. Our service was great. But even if the dining perk stuck around (which it didn’t), we would not eat here again.

A bit of time killed, we wandered the airport, scoping out options for food to take onto the plane for our 4 hour flight to ABQ, and finding our gate to make sure it exists. We had a nice conversation with the older couple and their daughter who were on our flight. And then we headed off to get some food to take onto the plane. Two Chick-Fil-A chicken biscuits please!

We returned to the gate area, where we discovered that the bathrooms had electronic signs to let people know stall availability. Is this REALLY necessary?! BWI has MASSIVE bathrooms.

Boarding began eventually. We were A14 and A15 for this one because I’d taken advantage of the upgrade reimbursement perk on my Southwest card to get us good boarding positions for the long flight. Know your card perk folks! Between breakfast and upgrades, we’re at over $100 in perks for this morning…

We went with seats close to the front of the plane and settled in for our LONG flight. And it was a LONG flight. We had a massive head wind, so we actually landed a solid half hour late in Albuquerque. I paid for the internet (which I saved 25% on because #cardperks) so that I could do some trip planning, but still….it was a long flight. We did have some good views as we made our descent into Albuquerque though.

 
Deplaning was quick enough and pretty soon we were in the most uniquely decorated airport I’ve been in. Seriously…this was southwest (USA, not the airline) to a T.

We worked our way down to baggage claim, and our bags emerged pretty soon after. Then we headed outside and joined the lengthy line for the bus to the rental car center. Miraculously we made it on the first bus. We were the last ones allowed on, so we stood, but it was a relatively short ride. Once there we hopped off the bus and headed out back to the Alamo parking lot. Despite the crazy week leading up to the trip, I’d made sure to make time to do online check in for the rental car, so that we could skip the line and go straight to the car. We wandered around and found…nothing in the midsize lane. We found an employee and they quickly directed us to “anything in these two rows”. We debated the pros and cons and, knowing this trip had a LOT of driving, quickly chose…a new Prius.

We loaded up the car with our luggage, programmed the GPS, and we were on our way. It was a fairly quick and easy enough drive to the Hotel Albuquerque. We parked out back and headed inside, where thankfully our room was ready. Room 1014 was, no surprise given photos I’d seen online, a pretty sterile room, but it was clean and comfortable, and as promised by the check in desk guy, had a great view of the mountains.

 
We made ourselves comfortable and then headed out to play tourist. There was no time to waste on this trip! It was a relatively short walk (albeit slightly complicated by Nick, who was not carrying Google Maps in his hand) to the Albuquerque Museum.

This museum was bigger than it looked. It also was heavier on the art than the website had suggested. But it was very well done. We left at closing, so we were there about an hour and a half and we had to rush through the last several rooms because it was closing.

 
Museum exploring completed we took a couple pictures in the sculpture “garden” and then headed for dinner.

 
Dinner tonight was at a place recommended by one of my colleagues. Yazzie is Navajo and so he flies into Albuquerque whenever he visits his family in Eastern Arizona. He was very excited that we would be exploring New Mexico and had sat himself down in my office to give all kinds of recommendations a couple days before break. Knowing Nick can’t really handle spice, he’d recommended, among others, Little Anita’s for dinner.

Dinner was alright. I think we both had some sort of burrito or enchilada, with the chile sauce on the side. The margaritas were definitely the best part of dinner, and the server was fun, if not totally scatterbrained. The food was good enough.

After dinner we walked around Old Town for a few minutes to say we’d seen it and then headed back to the hotel where we enjoyed the view and crashed hard.

April 2024: A New Mexico Adventure: Pretrip

Cast of Characters

Me: 37, school SLP, family trip planner…yada yada
Nick: 37, still selling trucks in the commercial world. He’s the travel prince.
Kim: 60something, my MIL, has a goal to go to every single national park site that exists
John: 60something, my FIL. He does all the booking for them historically, but mostly goes where my MIL tells him to

SO….why New Mexico? Well, I have this goal to go to all 50 states before I turn 50, and that’s one I hadn’t been to yet. Throw in really wanting to see most of the major National Parks (and any realistic small parks, because every single national park site I’ve been to has been fantastic), and April seemed like a great time to cross this one off the list. Shortly after I got hotels booked, my in-laws decided to sort of join us for the trip, since they’ve been to New Mexico multiple times for the balloon festival, but have never been to most of the national park sites there. They used their timeshare points to book a week in Taos and then booked at the same hotels as us for our time near Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands National Parks. And I had gone on a hotel booking spree and booked us at 5 hotels around the state.

Plans got made and revised. John gave all of us mini heart attacks when he shared his rental car plans, which involved a car rented via Expedia from (I think) Ace Rental Cars. And the trip got closer.

This was a wild school year. Really wild. We all know Nick and I spent basically all of January sick. Well, obviously the lead up to this vacation was just as exciting. Lots of things I can’t talk about led to me doing a LOT of extra work in the week leading up to break. Guess I’ll be putting the finishing touches on our travel plans on the plane.

Because things were so crazy my packing didn’t even start until I dropped the dogs off at the local pet resort after school on Friday. The packing got done. A lovely margarita (and dinner) was consumed at the Everyday. I got the phone call from my mom that my grandfather had been hospitalized for observation, but she hoped we would have a great trip (WTF). And eventually we crashed for a short night of sleep.