SUN CITY, SANTA FE, AND ALBUQUERQUE

May 13-17

We interrupt our national park tour with a week of urban hanging out with relatives. A nice, restful break, actually. 

One of Mary’s greatest anticipations of the trip was a visit to see her far-western cousin Helen Alfenaar Jacobsen in Phoenix.  Helen lives in Sun City West, one of those massive senior-only developments.

Helen gave up her king bed for us and her dog Skeezix was happy to have a visitor.  I liked her. We came in late from Tucson, stayed two nights, and caught up on our sleep: a motel can never offer the secure sleep of someone’s home.  I rode my bike around a good part of Sun City West in the late afternoon Thursday. It was very quiet in the evening, no traffic. Saw lots of small rabbits and quail in the landscaping, then, up on a TV antenna, a huge owl. For this guy Sun City is a cafeteria.

Helen showed us around a bit, and fed us a great dinner. She and Mary talked for 12 hours straight.  They had been close cousins as kids, nearly the same age, but it had been many years since they had gotten together, they had a blast and Helen was sorry to see us leave. I think they will communicate more now.

Friday the 13^th we left Helen early (well, around 9:30) and drove I-40 to Albuquerque, about 9 hours at 70mph, not much fun, though we could see the beginnings of red rock country to the north.

We picked up my great friend and cousin Sally at ABQ airport

and ran up to Santa Fe for the weekend, staying in a B&B right off the historic plaza.  Spent Saturday doing museums and walking around Santa Fe. Sally’s main agenda was to see the Georgia O’Keefe museum, almost next door to the B&B, but they were for a closed for a couple of weeks for a changeover of all their exhibitions. What a crappy way to operate, why not change the exhibitions one room at a time?!

Santa Fe was neat, though, with a particular artsy ambience, lots of pueblo-inspired earth-tone architecture.

 Courtyard of Santa Fe Museum of Fine Art

Blocks and blocks of upscale shops and galleries. Shopping is not our cup of tea, though we enjoyed strolling around, and the eating was grand.

In the PM we drove up to Ghost Ranch—O’Keefe country and a Presbyterian conference center—and we believe this is the butte she loved to paint, complete with storm clouds:

Georgia O'Keefe's butte

Sunday we and Sally bopped down to Albuqurque, going by way of Las Vegas, NM where there is a great birding spot, Las Vegas NWR.  As we turn into the NWR, mostly open fields, I say “This looks like a great place for a Western meadowlark,” and Sally says “I would love to see one I have never seen any kind of meadowlark.” and just at that moment one sings right outside the car window.  I back up and there he is in all his glory on a fence post.  Great—I had seen one earlier but only at a great distance.  After that they seemed to be on every fourth fencepost.  Unfortunately that’s about all we saw, except for a western kingbird. The NWR is suffering from the same drouth-at-historic levels as the rest of the southwest.

At Albuquerque we hung out at the Hyatt with the Glen Wauchopes and his sister Laura, gathering for Talin’s graduation.

Glen, Thomas, Laura and Jen freezing on top of Sandia Peak

We did have one high adventure: there is a fantastic cable car ride up to Sandia peak overlooking ABQ.

It was COLD on top, still a bit of snow on the ground, very windy. So windy they shut down the tramway for a while. Did a little nature trail and saw (and heard—beautiful) a veery. The western veery has a little different song with less of the spiraling downward whistle we hear in the high Blue Ridge, but it was still the distinctive veery sound. Saw the sun set over ABQ and the Rio Grande.

Sunset on Sandia Peak: Albuquerque and Rio Grande below