Doing the tourist thang
Well, the folks finally gave in and took in the sites here in Albuquerque before we leave for Santa Fe.
It all started when Dad discovered there was a High Country Gardens store right here in “Alb”. We get their catalog - all kinds of native, xeric, and southwestern flora, basically filled with all the things we like to do our bizness on. Turns out the store was near “Old Town”, which several members of the RV club had already been to and helped the local economy. The HCG store and its neighbor Jackalope had all kinds of cool garden stuff.
Old Town may or may not (we haven’t researched it) be authentic old adobe pueblo buildings. Mom said it certainly was quaint. There were lots of stores selling Mexican art, Indian art and pottery, touristy T-shirts, and stuff like that. Dad saw some beautiful turned wood pieces by a Texas artist/woodworker in one shop. It gave him something to aspire to once he gets his lathe going. Their favorite stop was a gallery that specialized in art glass, which the folks really love. They saw a number of cool sculptural vases and some candle sticks that they said they “would have jumped all over had the market not tanked last week”. Mom is holding out hope that the market, whatever that is, recovers as fast as it went down, because we’ll still be close enough to go back and get those pieces.
All we care is that it doesn’t cut into our Fromm budget.
On the way back, they saw a sign for the National Petroglyph Monument and detoured themselves to see what it was. Apparently there are volcanic remnants here in Albuquerque and ages ago the natives scribed all kinds of figures into these rocks. They went on a short hour or two hike to see these petroglyphs sometimes sadly noting the modern-day petroglyph (graffiti) scratched alongside the real artifacts. So sad to see the lack of respect for cultural history.
Now the good news is that this time they brought us something tasty back. Seems there was a local woman baking bread in adobe ovens just outside the parks visitor center and they bought a hot, still-crackling large round loaf of fresh bread. It wasn’t exactly intact by the time they got back, but there was (and still is) plenty to share with us.
Pass the butter!
