WIDIALW

In WIAW fashion, I decided to name this post, WIDIALW or What I Did in Albuquerque Last Weekend. Tomorrow I will show you what I ate. Today I will show you what I (we) did. Fun times.

Ridgecrest to Albuquerque is a twelve hour drive. That will do funny things to you.

No idea.

Some other fun pics from the car

Nice underbite huh? I love it when he shows me his teeth

In addition to funny dog stuff, we saw pretty stuff from time to time

But mostly we saw a bunch of this

Finally we made it and went straight to my parents house to see this girl.

And right about then it was sunset. There is nothing quite like an Albuquerque sunset.

Paul and Chloe had a “moment”. So jealous.

The next day was a day to drive around and see some friends and stalk Breaking Bad locations. In case you don’t know what Breaking Bad is, its a TV show about a high school teacher who gets cancer and then decides to cook meth to make money to take care of his family after he dies. Morbid huh? But also great TV. OH and yeah in case you couldn’t figure it out, its filmed in Albuquerque.

First up was the car wash. I have been getting my car washed at this place for years. Pretty much ever since I had a car. Its pretty close to both my parents house and my house. Paul was pretty stoked. We had his car washed so we could go inside and check out the inside. The inside is pretty different than on the show but you can still tell this is the place.

We randomly saw a car that looks just like Walter Whites (the main character). Not official or anything, just thought it was funny that we saw one. We also tracked down Walter White’s house which is also actually about 5-6 blocks away from my house. Pretty cool to see it in person and drive on the street where some cuuu…raaayyy….zeee stuff goes down.

Then we went and hunted down the place where the cook meth in the show. Its funny b/c in the show it looks like its kind of out in the middle of nowhere but its actually right by the freeway and also by where I used to work. #whoknew?

Later some friends showed us the place where Jesse and Jane lived and then also Jesses’s/Jesse’s parents house.

Friday night we decided to go up the tram. The Sandia Peak tram used to be the longest in the world, but we discovered on our ride that it no longer is. Boo. Its still pretty long though. We wanted to go up when it was light and down when it was dark, but it was waaay busy because of the balloon fiesta influx of people in town. We ended up waiting in line for almsot an hour and finally got up to the top right as the sun was going down.

I haven’t been up to the top of the mountain since goodness knows when, so it was really fun to go up again. Paul was pretty glad that it was dark when we went down because he gets *slightly* queasy with heights. Hanging off a tram cable in a swinging box over a 10,000 foot drop can be stomach turning even for those not affected by heights, so he did great considering!

The next morning it was time for the balloon fiesta. We got up at 430, went to the mall to hit up the park and ride, waited in line, got on the bus, drove to the balloon park, walked around in the cold and then…..

This was the extent of what we saw.

Yep, pretty much 15 min after we got there, they announced that the winds up high were too strong and they were canceling for the day. DOUBLE BOO. We were pretty dissapointed, but not much we could do.

We walked around and stood in line to get a breakfast burrito and then got back in line to get on the shuttle to go back to park and ride. Since there was a huge group of people wanting to leave at the same time PLUS an accident on a nearby street, we ended up waiting in line to leave for almsot two hours. DOUBLE TRIPPLE QUADRUPLE BOO.

The end of the day made up for the morning. We went to the New Mexico Lobos football homecoming game! We all threw on our cherry and silver, headed to the stadium and cheered the Lobos on to victory! Everyone’s a Lobo…woof, woof, woof!!

We also visited with grandma!! Grandma is the best. The pic with Paul photobombing is one of my faves from the trip.

Sunday morning we got up early again (but not 430 early thank goodness), checked the news and found out the balloons were ON! My dad was nice enough to drop us off this time so we wouldn’t have to wait in line for the park and ride. #dadsareprettyawesome

We got there right as some of the first balloons were taking off!

I think I need to work with Paul on his picture posing. No idea what he is doing here.

Here we go, here’s a good one.

Kyle was entranced with the huge cow balloon. I think what he was saying here was “Oh that must be where they release the gas”

hehe…get it?

Here is a balloon as it’s getting filled to standing up

and this one we were standing next too right as they started putting air in it, then literally like 7 minutes later it was up and in the air!

Lots of fun special shapes

Twinsie balloons! And just lots of fun colors.

This pic scares me a little.

We were standing right by the huge elephant as it was going up, so I was able to get lots of good pics of that one.

For this pic, I was looking in through the opening as they were blowing it up. Liked the shadows.

This was the balloon that caused children to run and scream for their lives. I’m not even being dramatic.

They got it to stand but then the entrance somehow closed and they couldnt get it back open and couldnt get hot air into it. So it deflated. Right on top of everyone. It was quite the site to see. A GINORMOUS nylon balloon deflating on top of like 30 people. Kids were running and screaming. It was pretty funny. Does that make me a bad person for thinking so?

We ran into some friends while we were there. And by ran into what I mean is we kept texting each other “we are by the bee” “we are over by spiderpig” etc…until we finally found each other in the crowd.

Later that night we got our second fill of balloons at the balloon glow. My dad had some tickets to an event where dinner was served and we got to watch the glow from the balcony of the balloon museum which is right at the park. Great seats and we didn’t have to deal with the traffic or the crowds. Pretty sweet hook up. #thankspops

The mountains that border Albuquerque to the east are the Sandia mountains. Sandia in spanish means “watermelon.” When the sun sets the mountains glow a pinkish color like watermelon. This pic is a good example of why they were named the Sandias way back whenever they were named. There you go, there is your history lesson for the day.

The next morning we loaded up the car and spent another 12 hours driving back to Ridgecrest. I kind of wish I was one of our dogs for these car trips. They’ve got it good. Except for Toby maybe, since Kyle seems to be using him as a pillow.

What has been your longest road trip?

Ever been in a balloon? Would you go in one? 

Tagged as: albuquerque, albuquerque sunset, balloon fiesta, breaking bad, Lobo Football, Lobos, New Mexico