Albuquerque

After we returned from Scotland we spent the month of April in Albuquerque, New Mexico, housesitting and catsitting for friends who were out of town. Carrie misses her cats so it was a pleasure to be around a couple of cats for a month. Mai-Mai is a very friendly little cat and she warmed up to us immediately, spending a lot of time sitting on Carrie’s lap. Rocio is more reserved but by the end of the month she allowed us to pet her a bit. Andy came to visit for a few days early in the month and we celebrated Charlie’s birthday together. Click on the first photo in each gallery to see the slide show.

One of Andy’s high school friends, Spring, moved to Albuquerque shortly after they graduated almost 20 years ago. We spent a day with Spring and her family and we all went up to Sandia Crest, at the top of the mountain just to the east of Albuquerque. It was cold on the mountain and there was still some snow on the ground. We ended the day at a local brewpub where we had good beer and Mexican food from a food truck.

We are all fans of the Breaking Bad TV show, which was filmed in Albuquerque. We took a three hour bus tour of many of the filming locations around town. Albuquerque has become an active center for on-location filming, due in part to tax incentives that the state has provided.

Petroglyph National Monument is on the west side of Albuquerque, about a 15 minute drive from our house. We made several visits to see the petroglyphs and to hike around the desert terrain. The monument consists of a large expanse of volcanic rock which was ideal for etching petroglyphs into the rock surface. Native Americans created the petroglyphs dating back many centuries. The Albuquerque suburbs are creeping into the area so it is fortunate that the National Park Service was able to preserve this land and protect the petroglyphs from destruction.

We took a day trip to Acoma Pueblo, an hour drive west of Albuquerque. The pueblo is built on the top of a mesa and it is the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America, dating back to 1150 A.D. The pueblo can be visited only by guided tours, so we took a 90 minute tour up to the top of the mesa to look around. Many aspects of the pueblo are as they have always been. For example, there is no electricity and no running water. But cars parked on the village roads show accommodations to 21st century life. Many of the residents make pottery and jewelry, and they had it on display throughout the pueblo for purchase. Each pueblo in New Mexico has a distinctive pottery style, and the Acoma style is especially beautiful, featuring a rusty brown color.

The Rio Grande runs through Albuquerque and we enjoyed daily walks through el bosque (the forest) that covers the extensive floodplain. Albuquerque has preserved most of el bosque as public parkland, partly for the residents’ enjoyment and partly because it occasionally floods and thus is unsuitable for houses. The people of Albuquerque use the parks a lot and so did we. The river was near its high springtime flow (in an especially wet year) so the water was high and some of the trails nearest the river were flooded. We saw lots of water birds on our walks, mostly geese and ducks.

We left Albuquerque with just enough time to drive back to Oakland for Mother’s Day with Andy. We began with brunch at Belcampo in Jack London Square. After we ate we walked around the farmers’ market for a while and then we drove up to Albany, a few miles north along the East Bay. Andy is a civil engineer and he has been working on a project to reconstruct the trail system on the Albany Bulb, a man-made peninsula that juts out into the bay. We walked along some of the trails and Andy showed us some of the ongoing construction. Seeing Andy’s accomplishments was a great treat for Mother’s Day.