Arriving in New Mexico, I would finally feel like I could rest a bit and wander locally from one hotel and to spend some time with family. My sister Morgan and I miss each other but make the most of being together at my house or hers whenever we can. Although she needed to work when I arrived, I spent time with her husband John and their six combined children. They have already gone back to school so we waited for them to come home and I cooked dinner which was such a big deal for me!
You don't realize how much you miss homey activities until you don't have a home. I was happy to clean my sister's sink, serve the kids, and to be "kitchen mom" again. This was good therapy for me mid-trip. Her home is a typical New Mexican home. This picture is of the front of the house. The climate is Mediterranean and has a warmish but dry feel most days.
My littlest niece, Rylan, loved her spaghetti so much that she decided to share it with the dogs. She is such a little sweetie, hardly ever cries, and is perfectly content for long periods of time to hang out and be friendly. I have never met a baby like her. I was so contented to be with family and so were the kids. It was great to be around other people who knew you and loved you! Cole would sleep the night there and Marley would have her special time the following night. We all needed this time.
I think that if I were to ever to give advice on how to do a long trip, I would recommend either meeting up with people you know at one of your destinations or visiting someone along the way. It breaks up the monotony of having to be with each other every day and helps to improve your sense of how far you've come. I still can't believe that I drove all the way to my sister's house which is a very long way from home. I didn't even remotely appreciate how far I'd driven until I came to a place I knew well and have only been to by a very long airplane ride! I was mystified in a way I cannot explain but it was surreal to pull up to her house in MY CAR from Pennsylvania.
We decided to leave their house for the hotel just after a huge monsoonal storm hit the valley that also dumped an inch of pea sized hail all over their back yard. The temperature had dropped from 93 degrees to 62 in a matter of minutes. Marley and I headed for the car in the freezing rain to leave the neighborhood only there was no way out! There was a "flash flood" and these can be very dangerous in the desert.
This is a picture to the left that I took of an adobe retaining wall outside the car window! The water is gushing out of the adobe in a torrent. The noise and the color of the sky and mud was very frightening. Marley and I were completely overwhelmed. The road behind us had become swallowed up and there were two cars full of teenage girls that had become stranded and the water was racing up over their headlights. I was terrified. A man on a four wheeler went out to help them (that didn't look like a good idea either!) and when he couldn't get the door open he hustled up the hill and got friends who had pick-up trucks. They helped the girls on to the back and got them out of harm's way. It was very dramatic and scary. The best part of this story is that almost everyone owns a 4X4 pick-up truck in New Mexico so there wasn't a shortage of rescuers as we would see as we inched along!
We had to drive very far to avoid any roads that were in a gully or depression. It took an hour and a half to make a ten minute drive. We couldn't believe the vastness and violence of the storm. We tried going down one street but the water was moving so dangerously and deep that I didn't trust that we wouldn't be swept away. We got out of there as quickly as we could and tried other routes.
Above is a picture looking east in a break in the storm. The river is really a street. There are no tricks to this picture; this is just a point and click Fuji camera with no special settings. My niece Kyra kept asking me, "Auntie, why is the sky so orange?" My best guess was that it was sunset but I have to tell you that I have no idea. This was the weirdest storm I have ever seen.
To the right is a picture an hour later I took as I was pulling in to the hotel. This is a sky to ground lightening bolt. In New Mexico, the electrical storms are very powerful in the vast landscape. These lightening bolts were so large and ferocious that I felt like my nerves were going to fry and I jumped a hundred times in the car! They also lasted long enough to snap pictures of them as they went from sky to ground to sky again in an almost double helix. One bolt hit my sister's house earlier and the kids looked like they would come out of their skins they were so afraid!
Seeing my sister the next morning, I was thrilled to be drinking coffee in her bedroom as we talked and she got ready. She is easy to be with and we enjoy just hanging out and having fun. My sister is also a very loving aunt and my children always feel special around her. She makes no judgements, is super supportive of their talents as children, and knows their bad sides and thinks it's funny. This is common of most people in New Mexico and in that sense, she's a native. There are many women like her and that always makes me feel like I am at home in New Mexico when I am here. Her husband only adds to the positive experience of seeing her. He's the sweetest husband and has the funniest attitude about raising 6 children in a three bedroom house. We should all have a sense of humor about what makes us crazy! He treats me like a sister and for that I will always be eternally grateful.
The other personal interesting thing about New Mexico is that I look like everyone here. That's not a sweeping generalization either. New Mexicans treat me like I am one of them and always have. When I was talking to a Navajo man in the north, he spoke of local towns (that I happen to know) like I lived here. That never happens anywhere else in the country. New Mexicans came from New Spain (Mexico) in 1598. Some were wealthy people who colonized the northern territories of the "Kingdom of Spain" (New Mexico) with their own money. They speak "Spanish" but in a Navajo accent. They are tall, have black hair, round faces, robust torsos, and skinny legs. I am definitely one of them! The people are also private, polite but not too friendly, humorous, and absolutely love an evening cocktail. They are the "down home" types that never put on aires and keep their deepest friendships within their families. But, never ever make the mistake of calling them Mexicans! They hate that and they are truly a culture of their own. I am a direct descendant of these people and in New Mexico today, there are about 40,000 people who are descendants of the original colonists who also had relationships with the Natives living here thus mixing this gene pool.
The Spanish spoken in Northern New Mexico is considered archaic Spanish and is about 400 years old. It's as if there were a group of people in Boston were to speak Medieval English! The New Mexicans were isolated from the rest of Mexico. They have a fondness for Coronado, Cortez, and St. Francis. You can find pictures and statues of them everywhere in New Mexico. There is a lot of pride in the Spanish heritage of New Mexico by the natives here.
One of the things I love about New Mexico is the architecture. This is something that is very specific to New Mexico and there are no structures like this even in Mexico. Adobe buildings in New Mexico incorporate wood in the supporting structures that aren't used in building similar structures in Mexico. These buildings are so soft and rounded that they look very friendly and warm. They are also very common and are in all the older architecture of New Mexico.
The kids and I went into Old Town Albuquerque for the afternoon. It was such fun to sit in the Church Street Cafe in the courtyard (all traditional old New Mexican places have courtyards). There are usually fountains, flowers, arbors, and oftentimes there is also music. These places are so lovely and old world. There is nothing nicer than sitting in a courtyard for an afternoon lunch. The old part of town has a typical Catholic church and a plaza in the center of town. New Mexico, unlike any of the surrounding states is a very Catholic place (it's also a very "blue" state compared to its neighbors, Arizona, Colorado and Texas). Here are some pictures from Old Town, Albuquerque: Top: A Zuni Native (they are the natives that use a lot of black and white stripes in their artwork):
There are at least two unique features of Albuquerque that are worth noting. One are the Sandia mountains which rise up on the eastern horizon. Albuquerque is nestled at the base of these mountains and receive the warm western sunset while also enjoying the lively Rio Grande which turns the valley green. Albuquerque's altitude is at 5,000 ft and the top of the Sandia are about 12,000 ft. The Sandias are so looming and are a beloved part of the city.
The other cool geologic feature is the five burnt out volcanoes that occupy the western edge of the city. They remind me of backgrounds from the animated show The Flintstones. We once went up to the base of them. They begin the desert on the western edge of the city and are visible for from the local highways. There are petroglyphs nearby and new construction is constantly being built closer and closer to their bases. You can see them clearly on Google Earth and then you can see the last eruption marks. Look to the west of the city of Albuquerque.
My brother-in-law is an Albuquerque police officer and he invited me to go on a "ride along" to learn more about what he does. I jumped at the chance! His shift begins at 10 pm and I drove to southeast Albuquerque to the police station. He has a computer in his car that tells him where activity is taking place and he signs in if he thinks he can handle that call alone as he doesn't have a partner. The first stop was to a elderly brother and sister who were worried about an Aryan Nation hothead that was threatening to kill everyone in his apartment complex. He listened intently and said he'd keep an eye out but said there was nothing he could do unless the person the man threatened came forward. Then we took a ride through the rough part of the neighborhood once called the "War-Zone" and is now called "The International District". He shined his light on people wandering the streets at around 11 pm and said that he'd make them scatter like cockroaches and true enough, when he moved his spotlight over them they ran into the shadows. I could see how easy it would be to feel contempt for people who always seem to be hiding something from the police.
He then got a call from a man who owned a karate place and was upset that a Native couple had camped out in his alley to sleep every night. My brother-in-law felt a lot of compassion for the homeless couple because it was late and they were asleep. He had to wake them up and make them move. He asked them why they didn't go to the shelter. When I saw how pretty the woman was I guessed that she was afraid to go there and to be accosted by one of the men living there (a common problem in shelters). Also, the bedbug problem is so bad at shelters that it must be difficult to decide to go and risk getting bitten all over your body.
Next he got a call that we had to run out to the car to attend to. A man who had raped a young girl was found in an apartment complex. Several police cars arrived at the same time and they turned off their lights. We had driven up so fast going about 80 mph in a 30 mph zone with sirens and lights! John held up his gun in the dark and followed the others. "What do you want me to do if you get shot?" I asked and he said, "Run! I'm no hero and I will be running with you if I can!" What??? "Either that or take my gun out of the holster and shoot him." What??? I sat in the dark police car praying he'd come back. He did thank God AND he got the perpetrator!!! To the left is a weird picture I took along the ride. There was full moon in the sky.
After that things got a little slow so I asked if we could stop for a milkshake. We were waiting in a car line when he noticed that the car in front of us had a license plate that had expired. "Let's get 'em!" I chanted. He pulled up behind him in traffic and went after him. It turned out that he was intoxicated and he was wanted in three states for larceny. Hooray! We found a "bad guy" and were going to make the streets a little safer that night! He was arrested and put into the car. He was the quietest drunk driver ever. As it turned out, he is an attorney and was watching his mouth on purpose. I got back to the hotel at 1:30 am completely spent. It was really exciting!
The next morning I was tired but got up and met John, Morgan, and their baby at their house and we packed up to go to the Jemez (pronounced Hey-Mezz) Mountains to a high river to take a hike to a waterfall. We stopped at Los Ojos after the Navajo Reservation and had a fine lunch of fried green chilis (mmmmmm!!!!) with beans and rice. We were so happy and contented! An hour later in up in the high redwood hills we parked with the dogs and walked into the hills for about a mile and half to the waterfalls. This is a beautiful hike as you have to cross the river about 10 times to get on the trail. It was bathed in brilliant sunshine, quiet, and full of happy hikers coming to and from the falls. Some Native Zuni teens were playing in the water with a few children and people were jumping from the cliff to the water below. It was a glorious day in the New Mexican hills with my sister's family. We would leave the next day but we ended this part of our trip with her family in such a lovely way. We felt rested and loved thanks to our family. The next day we'd start our journey east again toward Texas. Here are some pictures of the Jemez Wilderness.
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