Day Six

I got up at 8:30 and went for a run, although I was tempted not to. Running is one of those things that you always feel better about afterwards than before.











I’ve been running around the new fields off the cemetery road and it’s like having a private track.











The fields are very near the mesas and the combination of dry earth and fields cut into the higher land create a dune-like effect.

I ran for about 50 minutes and came home to find one of my uncles had stopped by for coffee. After my shower I settled in with coffee and carrot bread, since we were on our own for breakfast, and we all hung out for awhile, talking.

After my uncle left it was decided that me, Dan, and my father would head into Albuquerque and go to the Balloon Museum. Albuquerque is famous for its annual hot air balloon festival and although I wasn’t hugely enthused by the idea of going to a museum about the subject, I figured what the heck. I can get interested in just about anything, given the right context.

Between one thing and another it was nearly 1:00 before we left the house, and then it turned out that neither of our two event planners had gotten directions or even the address of this place. My father had been once before and thought he knew where it was, but of course he didn’t, and he also didn’t want to call for directions. At about the time I pointed out that we couldn’t drive the city all day hoping to find the place by accident, we found it. Figures.











It was a nicely done little museum. The exhibits pertaining to the earliest years of ballooning and the dirigible era were my favorites. The modern stuff was…well, not any more interesting to me than it ever has been, but I dutifully checked it all out and took a picture of my silly husband.











Then we went to my Aunt Mercy’s house, which my father thankfully knew exactly how to get to. By now I was starving since it was 4:00 and I hadn’t had anything to eat since my yogurt and carrot bread in the morning. We sat in my aunt and uncle’s living room and made idle chit-chat, then headed out for an early dinner at a Mexican restaurant. I had a nice grilled shrimp salad and indulged in a sopapilla afterwards. Then we went back to my aunt and uncle’s house where they showed me some pictures I had never seen before of my grandparents’ home town of San Marcial, which was wiped off the map by floods in 1929. I thoroughly enjoyed the photos and my uncle promised to make me a CD. He also showed us some pictures from the time he spent stationed in Japan with the navy in the 1960s. Uncle Pat always has good stories to tell, but it was getting late, so we decided to head home.

We got back just ahead of a train and on an impulse I went across the street to watch it go by. I got as close as I thought I could get away with, considering that Dan and my father were watching from the other side of the street and I didn’t want to worry them. I wanted to see if it was as dizzying to be right up close to the cars as I remembered from my childhood, when me and my cousins would sneak away at night to see the trains go by. The ground shook and yes, the cars were huge and mesmerizing, but not frightening, as they had been when I was a kid. I guess I’ve grown up a little.

Tomorrow, Acoma Pueblo is on the agenda, so I should have some good pics!