Apple Turkey (a.k.a. Albuquerque)

We woke up bright and early after the Emily Birthday/Shayne Farewell party weekend and headed to ABQ for a quick-ish Spring Break trip/Business School Conference  (notice how capitals make things seem official and important? ;))
Quick-ish = the time we spent there with friends and enjoying the sites was quick but the getting to and from the Q was not quick!
Luckily our kids are pretty darn good travelers, and we have learned to enjoy the journey when we travel.  10 hours of driving time turns into 12 hours of site seeing and adventure seeking for us.  Unfortunately, there are just not a lot of sights to see between ABQ and ST.G.
We got to Lake Powell at sunrise and drove over the Glen Canyon Dam, that was pretty awesome.

Luckily the kids slept until this point (so did I, I think).  We drove through Page and it was a new experience too.  I didn't take a picture but on the main business loop there were about 10 different churches, and that is pretty much all Page is....and a Maverick.
Our next stop was 4 Corners.  We had really built up 4 Corners and our kids were pretty excited.  Probably a little too excited, even though they have made some improvements over the last time we  stopped there, there really wasn't much to it.

The kids loved all the little "shops" around the perimeter and settled on a wooden flute and a little handmade painted turtle for their souvenirs. We got to Albuquerque about 5:00, checked into the hotel, jumped on the beds, opened all the drawers and doors and cupboards, checked out the tv channels (the basic new hotel room rituals).....and then went to Old Town.  Kyle used to run the Bosque trail to Old Town, and thought it would only take him an hour....so he took of running and we took off in the van and visited the little shops and climbed on the cannon and the gazebo.

not one smile.....

It started to get dark....and still no Kyle.  Luckily I insisted he take his cell phone, because he finally called and said I am almost there, meet me at Little Anita's.  The trail to Old Town was much farther West than Old Town, and much longer than he remembered it being.  He thinks he probably got 8 miles instead of 5, but he made it just before dark and he was really hungry!!

We ordered some pretty mild stuff for the kids and made sure it was "green" because we knew "red" would be too hot, but apparently our little gringitos were not prepared for New Mexico mild....it was all too hot!  Evan kept saying....I need more Root Beer! I need more Root Beer!  Luckily the world famous sopapillas drenched in honey soothed their burning mouths and everyone left full and happy!

  

They had experienced enough authentic New Mexican Southwest food for one trip so as much as I tried I could not persuade them to try breakfast burritos before we left.  I've always thought it interesting that New Mexico has it's own food.  You don't eat Utah food when you come to Utah....

The next morning we met up with the Lines family for a day at the Zoo.  It was so good to see them again, Derek even had the morning off of work to come with us, and in no time it was like we had never left.  What great friends.  Rio Grande Zoo is definitely my favorite zoo, and a really great one too. 

Matty didn't dare cross by herself

Gabe and George became fast friends again. 

The hit of the day was feeding the ducks, mostly the yummy lunch Kristine brought for us...sorry K.

I was always afraid George would fall in when he was little.....see how Matty is just standing on the edge...no boundary, I like boundaries :)  but everyone was fine.

We tried to get a picture of this colorful little guy way over on his branch and he flew right to the fence and let me pet him.  They are pretty tame since people are allowed to go in there and feed them....only seasonally though....I wonder why they don't get to eat in the winter? :)
George of course, was all about the birds and this zoo had a lot of birds.

Here are the backsides of Matty, Evan, Eden, Gabe, Emily and Soren :)

 The kids all turned around and let me take an awesome group picture with the bald eagle behind them, but my camera died and I didn't get it, so this is with my phone and is Soren, Noah, Emily, Gabe and Evan. George and Eden and Eli are hiding.  I feel bad I didn't get more pics of them.
 

Red Kangaroos....for Shayne

 Later, we drove around and saw our old apartments, the Temple, and Georgia O'Keeffe Elementary (it is brand new- completely different and awesome) and stopped by Lines house to see Kristine's ugly couch, and so Noah could play the cello for me.   I should have taken a picture of that too because it was awesome!  He has taken for 8 years...and is great.

He was so little when we lived here, and is so big now--just like the school ;)

The next day Kyle had his conference, so I dropped him off at the Convention Center and then I went back and got the kids for a day at EXPLORA!!

  My favorite place, well actually I have a love/hate relationship with this place (because of the mess and chaos), but the kids have only love for such an awesome museum, so I hold the hate in check and resist cleaning and organizing the craft room and just enjoy. We got there about 10 minutes early so we crossed the street to say hi to Spike and Alberta.

They were pretending to be running scared fro Spike!  Not their best performance :)

We were lucky to have great weather the whole time we were there.

It wasn't very crowded and I convinced the kids to pass by all the eye candy at the entrance and go straight upstairs where we had the place to ourselves.  It wasn't hard to convince them, when I told them they could take the elevator....

Right at the top of the elevator is a bicycle that goes across a high wire...over the people below.  George didn't hesitate and was the first one to test it out for the day.

Evan was really concentrating on making that airplane fly!

Giant size lincoln logs on the roof.

She was captivated by that turtle, the balls would go in his mouth and then he would lower his head and transfer the ball to the next track.

We would have been there 2 more hours I think, but luckily we had planned on meeting the Lines back at the hotel for swimming.  So the super fun chaos had to end.   Unluckily when we wanted to swim, the pool was closed for cleaning, but they hurried and we got Matty down for a nap so I didn't have to swim with her.  She desperately needed a nap so it was lucky after all.

They spent most of the hour trying to push each other in.  Eden spent the whole time in the hot tub, such a little lady.

 Later we left her with the boys and all the other kids at Lines party house while we went to dinner with the grown ups.  Another picture that I am so mad I didn't get....I don't know what was wrong with me, I even had my camera.  It was like I was home, so why take pictures, but now that I really am home, I am so sad I didn't take more pictures of all the awesome people that I love at my ABQ home.  We got to go out to dinner with the Wittwers, Wheelers, Snows and Lines.  Salisburys and Bakers had to back out at the last minute, but we had so much fun. Especially thanks to Kristine and her awesome reservation making skills and seating arrangement ideas, it was a really fabulous night.   I love those people.  It is really amazing to me that we really only lived in ABQ for 10 months, and yet we have several life long friends there still.  If UNM's campus wasn't in the hood, we would be highly tempted by these awesome people to move back.

Our last stop the next morning was to Trader Joe's to stock up on awesome treats for the road and a lot of other yummy treats we have been eating all week.  These bananas were SOOOOOO GOOD.
 We also drove by the Sandia's tramway.  To let the kids see the tram.

I obviously didn't take this picture because we didn't want to spend the time or money on the ride.  Then we just kept driving. Kyle wanted to see Chinle and Canyon de Chelly, someplace he hadn't been since the summer after his mission, so with map in hand we headed into the reservation.
The first stop we made was an accidental discovery of an original trading post.
Jan's song about Retta at the trading post kept rolling through my head but I didn't let it escape my lips. :)

The Hubbell family has been working this trading post in Ganado, Arizona since 1878.  We were only there a few minutes, enjoyed the nostalgia and were on the road again.

Chinle is in the middle of nowhere, but it was fairly easy to get to...and Canyon de Chelly was well worth the side trip.

Notice the houses?  In the shadow you could also see the OUT houses....no electricity or plumbing.

 Really amazing place.

To continue in the direction of home however was not very.....direct? comfortable? safe? urban?

We hit one dirt road and thought, this can't be the right direction, so we turned around and took another way and then it also turned to dirt.  We had been on it for about 10 minutes when we saw a sign revealing that we were headed North and we wanted to be headed West....

We were hoping to get to Tuba City but that would have been twice as long on the first dirt road, so we stuck with our current dirt road and about 10 more minutes in, Evan looks up from the ipad and says, "Mom, do we have wifi right here?"

Kyle and I LOL'ed so hard.  I said, "Look out your window Evan, there is nothing right here."

Once we hit the highway again the fun and adventure was kind of lost and the next 4 + hours were pretty miserable. :)  We were very happy to be home when we pulled in at 11:30 pm.

It was a great trip, but now it is Albuquerque's turn to visit us!