Grand Canyon here we come!

I don't know where we were when I last posted? Too lazy to check. Hahaha. San Antonio's riverwalk was so friggin cool. Shops and restaurants on this big "river"/moat under street level. The one downside to our time in San Antonio? Although the riverwalk was hoppin, the streets of downtown seemed abandoned! I half expected a tumbleweed to roll by! Granted it was a weekday, but I expected to see more than ten people on the streets!

From San Antonio we made the hike through west Texas (a whole LOT of nothing) to Carlsbad, NM. The theme from downtown San Antonio continued through Carlsbad and all of southern NM, that being isolation and very underbuilt communities. From San Antonio all the way to Albuquerque I couldn't believe (as my companions had to hear over and over again) the state of decay! We drove through communities where more than half of the 6 shops in the town were boarded up. Every building looked like it was falling apart. Fields looked as if they hadn't grown any manner of crop in a LONG time and wouldn't be doing so again any time soon. For me, it was heartily depressing. This and the desert was all we saw for hundreds of miles, granted the desert was pretty cool.

In Carlsbad we opted for the back-country camping near the Caverns. We drove 5 miles off the main road on a dirt track and then hiked into "Rattlesnake Canyon" for a mile to find a suitable camping spot. Despite Ranger Rick's commandmant that we hike a quarter mile off the trail to camp, we plopped down as soon as we saw suitable flat ground. We hadn't exactly come prepared to camp on the 60 degree inclines on either side of us, sorry Rick. I found it rather enjoyable to know that civilization was miles away and that we were all alone! Unfortunately it rained all night and we got a little wet, but if it wasn't for the rain it would have been perfect! Absolutely stunning views (hopefully we will be posting a ton of pictures soon, we haven't since D.C.! Sorry folks!)! In the morning we packed up before Rick could come scold us and headed back towards the Caverns.

They have fallen into my "Greatest Things I've Ever Seen" category with ease. Stunning to see how small you were in relation to what Time had done over millenia! Any further description wouldn't do them justice. They were simply beautiful!

We grabbed another Crossland Extended Stay hotel for 3 nights in ABQ. We made a day trip to Santa Fe, which as the capitol of NM, is TINY. As Timmy hypothesized, they MUST have a zoning law against buildings over 4 or 5 stories. It turned out to be a VERY quaint tourist village with a main drag not unlike Chatham.

ABQ would have been a HUGE bust if it was not for Emma's cousin Danielle. She, her partner Jodie, and their friend Lynn took us on the world's second longest Tram ride to the top of Sandia peaks, which overlook ABQ. The ride was certainly a testament to man's engineering skills. Ascended about 4,000 feet to a total height of around 10,000? All with only two towers in between? Crazy. I say that ABQ would have been a bust, because we travelled into Downtown afterwards and it was a supreme disappointment! We could have missed some great elements to the city, but their main drag was short and underwhelming.

Off to see Phoenix for the day!!

Posted in: Andy