Got up and left my campsite at van horn at around 8am. After I drove west for like 10 minutes, I entered Mountain Time Zone- the gift of an hour! I made my way through the rest of west Texas and made it to el paso. What is amazing about this city (besides the shirts they sell that say 'el paso, tx: it ain't kansas' with a handgun picture) is how crazy close it is to Mexico. From downtown el paso, you can see the red border fence. There were times on the freeway today that I was right next to it! Pretty cool (maybe cool isn't the right word. Interesting? Thought-provoking? Who knows).
I got onto I-25 north and headed up to Albuquerque. This was a change in my original plans, but I had the time today and figured when would I get to be in new Mexico again? As the title of the blog says, I was just going wherever the wind took me!
Did you know that new Mexico is the 5th largest state in terms of area? I do now, because the drive felt like forever! Don't get me wrong, it was scenic and such, but the desert setting starts to look monotonous pretty quickly. You go over a hill...and there's another valley that has buttes on all sides and shrubs everywhere. And there aren't many towns on the trip either.
Finally made it to albuquerque after about 6 hours of driving (and after spotting 2 Washington license plates who didn't seem as excited as I did about seeing each other). My first thought is that the city seems kind of small! I don't know what I was expecting but there wasn't much of a huge downtown area. While the residential area was spread out it wasn't as grand as some certain CA suburbs.
My first stop was the ABQ trolley company for a city tour. Since I only had an afternoon there, I knew I probably should do a tour of some sort, and these guys were highly rated on trip advisor. I was not let down- the tour was fun and informative and I saw a lot of the city
(typical tourist stuff and not). The tour was about 90 minutes and went through old town, downtown, historic route 66, the UNM campus, some different neighborhoods, and much more. The architecture was so neat to see, and it was interesting learning about all the different
movies and tv shows that have filmed there posing as different cities. Well worth the money and time. Their website is www.abqtrolley.com - I recommend them if you are in the area!
After the tour I tried to get into the new Mexico museum of natural history but it was closing down for the day - dang! I relegated the rest of my time to the old town area and surrounding stuff. Saw the San Felipe de Neri church which was a mission founded in 1706 and still in use as a parish today. Did some tourist shopping (I am one, after all), ate some dinner at a place the tour guides had recommended, and then it was time to get on the road again.
I drove about 60 miles west to the campground I stayed at last night. Was super windy when I set up my tent (must have been hysterical watching me), but it calmed down eventually and it was a quiet night here. And I am actually wearing a sweatshirt right now- I love cold
summer mornings!! Can't wait for more of that type of weather in northern ca soon.
On my way to the grand canyon today!
Joey
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