Kelvin and I don't really do "gifts" for anniversaries, birthdays, or other (that being said, this year, we both ordered gifts for one another, but neither of them arrived prior to our departure from home!). I always think the best gift is a travel (childless) getaway, and we'd missed out on this so much over the last near-year and a half due to COVID! Bolstered again by the goodwill and capability in kid-watching by my in-laws (we also are reluctant to electively travel with the unvaccinated munchkins), we decided to make an adults-only "anniversary" trip out of state to visit a new place (and new state for both of us) and fly from LA to Albuquerque, New Mexico (which is apparently known as both the "Land of Enchantment" and the Chile Capital of the World and also thankfully mostly immunized, at least in the areas we planned to visit!).
We landed midday on Tuesday and headed straight to Petroglyph National Monument west of town, which features (and protects) one of the largest collection of these rock carvings by Native Americans and Spanish settlers from 400-700 years ago. It was HOT! (like 90+) but we walked a ~2-mile trail checking out the designs and symbols (some of which were hard not to misinterpret as graffiti!).
NO shade!!
Such a different landscape from home!
We didn't see any rattlesnakes, just buzzing insects.
Some of the carvings were far more subtle (especially with the desert sunlight) than others.
(The crosses were undoubtedly carved by the Spanish settlers).
We then wandered around Old Town Albuquerque.
San Felipe de Neri was founded in 1793.
We also had a bit of time to drive around in a self-guided Breaking Bad tour and take some nerdy photos (some snapshots were from the next day). Kelvin and I have very different tastes in media and Breaking Bad, filmed and set in Albuquerque, is one of the very few shows that he and I both have loved, even though I watched it independently way later than he did!
Fans of the show will know this establishment...
...which is really a fast food drive-thru called Twisters.
(We weren't the only tourists who stopped to take a photo!).
Here are two other spots used for filming: a laundry (Delta Linens) that was the underground meth lab.
The (meth money-laundering) car wash!
(Where Wendy the prostitute hung out)
We checked into our very comfortable (and, most importantly, airconditioned) AirBnB apartment, a historic bungalow near the University, and ended our day with a nice authentic New Mexican dinner (featuring a lot of red and green chiles!) at El Pinto, where we had a lovely patio meal with birds for company.
New Mexico "reopened" late in May (I think), earlier than California's lockdown eased, and we didn't see many masks around but still felt really safe on our first day. Traveling again has made it almost feel like post-pandemic life is upon us-- what a gift this has been. It still blows my mind that the pandemic unnecessarily carries on in some parts of our highly privileged country especially with rising cases from the Delta variant, mostly in red states where people are playing the death lottery by refusing to get their vaccines. (I have no interest in visiting any of those places anytime soon)!
In any case, we are loving seeing new sights again and this sweet Southwest getaway! More to come!
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