This past Friday, Andrea and I drove down to New Mexico to spend Memorial Day weekend with my dad. We left Denver at about 4 pm. The traffic from Denver to Colorado Springs was as bad as I’ve ever seen it, so that slowed us down a lot. South of Colorado Springs, we cruised all the way to Taos, where we stopped for dinner at Orlando’s before heading into Los Alamos, arriving at about 10:30 pm.
On Saturday morning, we woke up to a relaxing, rainy morning. We ended up just hanging out at my dad’s house until about 1 pm when we left to go to Albuquerque. In Albuquerque, we ran some errands with Dad and Ivy before heading to Sadie’s for dinner.
After dinner, we drove over to Isotopes Park to watch the Albuquerque Isotopes take on the Salt Lake City Bees. Isotopes Park is a really beautiful minor league park and it turned into a great night for a game. It stopped raining right when we got to Albuquerque and stayed dry until the end of the 8th inning. The game got really interesting in the 3rd inning when former MLB All-Star Jason Schmidt, in Albuquerque on a rehab assignment, was knocked out by a line drive off of his forehead. Fortunately he was ok, with only a bad bruise, and the Isotopes won an entertaining game 11-8. After the game, there was also a fireworks show for Military Appreciation Day, so we stayed to watch that too in the light drizzle before heading back to Los Alamos. Photos from the game are in the Photo Album.
On Sunday morning we slept in a bit since we didn’t get back from Albuquerque until midnight. We had a pretty relaxing morning and dad made pancakes for breakfast. We then decided to try to go see the Puye Cliffs ruins that had just reopened following the Cerro Grande Fire of 2000. Unfortunately Mother Nature had other plans as the rain picked up again right as we were getting there, so we decided to head to Santa Fe to check out the grand opening of the new New Mexico History Museum. We had to wait in line for about 45 minutes to get in, and later found out that over 10,000 people had gone through in the 5 hours that the museum was open that day. The museum is a beautiful facility and definitely worth a stop if you’re in Santa Fe. We are planning on going back again on a normal day when it’s not so crowded. After the museum, we drove to Española for dinner at La Cocina with Ivy and Micah before heading back up The Hill for the night.
Monday morning we hung out with dad in the morning and watched the F-16 flyover for the Memorial Day service at the Guaje Pines Cemetery from his back deck. We then went to Grandma Church’s house and sat and talked to her for a while, before dad took us to lunch at The Hill Diner. We headed back up to Denver, stopping briefly for some wine tasting at Black Mesa, La Chiripada, and Vivac in the Rio Grande Gorge on the way.
It was a good, relaxing weekend, and we’re definitely looking forward to our next trip back.
