Still in Albuquerque

 Tuesday - May 11, 2021

Well, we didn't expect to have a "down day" on the second day out, but sometimes things are just not under our control.  Our situation is not progressing very quickly.  The service man (Kevin) showed up early (10:30)  but didn't have the brake line.  He went to Napa, and they can't get it until tomorrow morning, so we will are spending the day here on the Cabela's parking lot. 

 But all was not wasted.  Surprisingly, we went for a scenic drive in the jeep.  We did the Turquoise Trail, which is a national scenic byway on the east side of the Sandia Mountain Range.  We had actually done this drive once before, we think in the motorhome, when we explored this area several years ago.  But this time we got to make a few stops, and take a couple side roads.  This is not really that exciting a drive, but we did stop in the little old coal mining town of Madrid for lunch.  This town is famous as the inspiration for the Disney theme parks because Walt Disney came here and they had so many Christmas lights lighting up the town that airlines rerouted their paths so the passengers could see the lights from the air (that's what the sign said, anyway).  They had a display of boots on the electric line, and we must have been here before because JW was carved into the mantle below the buffalo head.

Joe had some kind of mad chili burger (New Mexico likes their chilis), I went safe with chicken enchiladas.   We walked around a little but most of the shops were closed, either seasonal or for good, we don't know.  

We ventured on down the road to the town of Cerrillos, which has been the setting for several motion pictures including Young Guns.

  There was a state park here too, which we drove through, but it was mainly hiking and biking trails. There was an old Catholic church that still holds regular Sunday masses, but it was locked. It had a little courtyard with statues but it needed a little grooming.

 Finishing our drive on the Trail, as we came back to I-25, we saw the commuter train that runs between Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  We actually took that train ride on our other visit here.  We wondered about the COVID restrictions since it only had 2 cars.

We stayed on a frontage road instead of getting on I-25, and made another side trip to Cochiti Lake, which took us past the Tent Rocks National Monument road.  Both of these things were on Indian reservation land and both were closed.  There was a huge dam along the lake, but the lake itself looked pretty low.

Joe had read about the Tent Rocks and really wanted to see them, but not this trip.  On our continuing journey, we crossed the Rio Grande coming out of Cochiti Lake, and it was running pretty good.  When we have crossed this river in Texas, its not much more than a trickle.  

We finally finished our drive, and got back to the RV about 6:00.  The weather has been great.  It was supposed to be windy tonight but we never noticed much so it wasn't as bad as predicted.  So now we just wait for Keven, our mobile RV repair guy to come tomorrow with the new brake line.