New Mexico Road Trip, Days One and Two

I'm taking us back to the first day because, let's face it, I have a crazy number of photos, and it seems the only way to cover everything! Hopefully Julia and Cara will also be adding their photos (hint, hint!).

The very first day, we got into Albuquerque in the late afternoon and went directly to our hostel, Route 66 Hostel. We ate dinner, went to sleep, end of story. So I'm going to skip it, though perhaps Julia will share some of her outstanding pictures of the mural at the Albuquerque airport.

A few road trip themes you'll notice first off:

Driving pictures, not only of each other in the driver's seat, but also out the windshield and passenger windows. For those of you in faraway places where driving is the norm, please bear in mind that for New York Sea-ites such as us, driving is a novelty, and therefore completely picture-worthy.

Documenting the obsessive documenting:

(That's Julia documenting the difference between her tiny li'l soy cappuccino and my big bad funky drink that had five—five!!—espresso shots in it. Don't worry, I spilled it all over my bag instead of imbibing it, so my brain didn't actually explode from the caffeine.)

And bikers! I didn't take too many pictures of them, because they can look a bit forbidding, but they were everywhere. And they weren't the kind we have here in the northeast who are podiatrists and dermatologists during the week. These were full-time, hard-core, grizzled, cherry-chapstick-eschewing, for real bikers. These two were making friends. What could have been their topic of conversations? The dubious efficacy of her SPF? Leather chafing? One can only speculate.

I guess those are the three big themes that ran throughout the trip, although perhaps Julia can point out a few more. That first day, we noticed the cute signage all over Albaquerque's Central Avenue (aka, Route 66). Here are a few examples:

Ladies Choice Clothing Store [sic].

If you're wondering what they sell there, the side of the building had a mural that answers the burning question:

Elegant, no?

There were *lots* of cute motel signs. After a while, I just stopped taking pictures of them because there were too many.

Octopus Car Wash

After coffee, the first thing we did was check out the Buffalo Exchange, a huge thrift store close the campus of the University of New Mexico. Julia found this Pee-Wee Herman shirt, and I'm still a little shocked she didn't buy it. Are we getting old?

Our next stop was the University of New Mexico's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. Sadly, we didn't get much time to look around the collection, but we did have a nice walk through UNM's lush, landscaped campus.

It didn't seem so out of place then, I think because we'd just come from New York, but all that green grass is an unusual site in New Mexico, and kind of stood out when I looked back on the trip. One wonders about their water usage! I guess the university bows to the stereotypical ideal for college campuses, when what would really be more appropriate is deserty scrub and piñon trees.

Our last stop of the day was the Rattlesnake Museum, where there were a lot of, oh, you know!!

That night we rolled into the Sandia Mountain Hostel, but since it was dark and we couldn't fully take in the charm (donkeys!), I'll save that for the Day Three post.