Last Octobers' trip to New Mexico

Chronologically speaking, this trip to Albuquerque is completely out of order, but I still wanted to post it. Both Shawn and I and Shawn's parents flew out there about 3 months ago, from California and Idaho respectively, to visit my dad and timed it in such a way that we would be there for one of the weekends of the Balloon Fiesta. Albuquerque is famous for many things, like chili peppers, breakfast burritos, and drunk driving. But I think most of all it is famous for this festival, so it was quite a busy weekend there. After first arriving we wandered around Old Town for a while and then headed back to my dad's place. Everyone was pretty tired so Shawn ans his parents rested there while my dad and Sandy (who is this great lady that for some unexplainable reason likes to hang out with my dad :)) and I went over to an event at the Balloon Museum where my dad is a regular docent. As we were getting in the car there was this fabulous sunset that I stopped to take a few pictures of. On the way home we picked up a few pizzas and then went to bed early since the next morning was Mass Ascension and it started at 5:30, which meant we had to get up at 4:00am. Aren't vacations great!? So relaxing. So after getting up at this hour and dressed and over to the shuttle parking lot, we found out that for the first time in over 20 years or something it was being canceled because of the bad weather. So, we made some new plans for the day which included breakfast at I-HOP where my dad was really excited about celebrating his 60th birthday, and a trip to the Albuquerque zoo.
In front of the zoo was a highly detailed sculpture of some male animal, that made my mother-in-law giggle.
Even more humorous though was the sight of my dad on a cell phone.
While our zoo experience wasn't quite the behind the scenes tour that we'd gotten when we went to the SF zoo a few weeks earlier, it was still quite enjoyable.
That night we rode the world's longest tram up to the top of Sandia Peak.
The view from the top was spectacular. It had been sorta overcast all day and then right before the sun set there was about 20 mins of brilliant warm light as we rode up the tram. Then within about 10 mins of being at the top, right after we sat down to eat dinner at the restaurant up there, all the yellow went away and we were in the middle of thick clouds. The pictures are long exposures so they look brighter than it really was.
After dinner at High Finance we came back home to go to bed and once again prepare for an early rise as we tried again.
. . . But, after the same routine for the second morning in a row, Monday's ascension was also canceled. So, again we made new plans. All 6 of us got into Sandy's car and we drove to Santa Fe for a lovely day. We looked at model homes for a while and then went shopping, eating, gallery perusing, and photographing around the town center.
I'm not usually so in to southwestern men, but this one is pretty cute!
It was pouring down rain that night on our way back to Albuquerque so we weren't very hopeful that the weather would cooperate on our last morning there. And we were right. . .sorta. On this last morning we were there the ascension just got postponed, but it made it too late for Chuck and Barb to be able to go before their plane left. Shawn and I were able to go for about an hour before our plane left, but unfortunately because we had to take them to the airport, we could only get there in time to see a few of them landing. But even just this little bit was pretty amazing.