Sandia Crest & Old Town, Albuquerque

4 Oct 2010--Did a little sightseeing yesterday and today, so we will start with today and work backwards.

Took a drive up to Sandia Crest, a mountain we can see from the RV Park that crests at 10678 ft above sea level. It was probably 20 degrees, or at east 15 degrees, cooler at the top than at the bottom, so I think that played into the fact that a lot of the trees were changing colors the closer we got to the top. The trees that are changing colors are Aspen trees, while the ones staying green are pine trees. For those of you with kids, that would be deciduous and coniferous trees, in that order, if you feel like explaining it to them! haha

Once we got to the top we had a great view of the city below. We could see the city a little better than you can in these pics, but it was pretty hazy for most of the day. No more than Salt Lake City, I think the mountains trap the pollution in the valleys, so this is probably not unusual. They have some great clouds here, too.

Yesterday we met up with an old friend of ours from the military that we have not seen in at least 10 years. Deb used to be stationed with us at Lackland in San Antonio and we were all TIs together back in the 80s. Deb's primary career field was Security Forces, so when she left the TI job she went back into that and eventually ended up here in Albuquerque. She is now a civilian, and heads up security for the General and his staff on base.

Anyway, Deb came over to see the RV and then we all we went downtown to look around and to go to lunch. We went to the Old Town section, an area much luck the River Walk in San Antonio or Fanueil Hall in Boston.

Old Town is built up around businesses, homes and this church that dates back to 1706. It has been in continuous service since that date.

A couple interesting points. I don't even know what this is called anymore, but the box built onto the wall in the 1st pic reminded me more of something I would expect to see in a Protestant church than a Catholic. And even more surprising was this display on the side of the main altar. You can see in the 2nd pic that Mary is above an altar display that has Jesus in it, layed out as he would have looked coming off the cross. The 3rd pic is a close-up of him, blood and all. It was a little disturbing if you ask me.

I mentioned earlier that they have some great cloud cover here, and I should add some great sundown scenes also. I took these pics outside the RV over 2 nights, so you can see it was not a case of one nice evening. The mountains in the 2nd row of pics are the Sandia Mountains that we drove up into today.

We were going to leave here for Amarillo, TX on Thursday but we found out that the "special shapes" balloons all launch on Thursday morning, so we are staying one more day to catch that.