Wow! Did that ever stink! No, I mean literally smell bad, reek, majorly offensive to the nostrils. The entire hallway of our floor at the hotel smelled like something crawled up and died and had begun to rot. Or more likely, someone tossed an especially dirty diaper into some remote corner and checked out without fessing up. I reported it, but all they could do was “tell maintenance to empty the trash when they get to work later.” Fortunately, we couldn’t smell it at all in our room or we would have been forced to get out of there. As it was, I was never so glad to leave an odor behind.
OK. Reeking and Ranting aside. Back on the road again …
After much pondering and observation of others of his kind, like the speedy versions we saw on our morning drive, Chris has come to the conclusion that the critter she grazed (trying not to use stronger descriptive words) a day or two ago was probably a much slower version of that character we all know and love - the Roadrunner. RIP (er - sorry for the mild bump) SlowBoy.
Our first stop on this already full day was the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. There were actually three sites of Spanish mission ruins, plus a visitor center. We went to one of the sites, Abo (with the accent on the o). Then we went into town (Mountainair) and Chris got her stamps.
Next we headed out through some private ranchlands. Each one looked like it could be the Ponderosa. Miles and miles of nothing. But all that nothing was carefully fenced off. Oh, and we added to our critters seen list:
Road runners
A really fat Llama
Horses (hey, I said it was ranch land)
Cows (see comment above)
On the other side of Albuquerque we found the Petroglyphs National Monument. That amounted to a couple of hikes straight up some volcanic mounds upon which some early artists had been quite active. On the pitch black rocks were scrawled crude images of animals, birds, and even people, as well as random symbols. I had two favorites. One was clearly a bird, but what made it stand out was the fact that an actual bird that kind of resembled that ancient one was busy just feet away, feeding her tiny ones in her nest near the bathrooms. Cool point of connection. Mama bird to picture, not to bathrooms. My second favorite was a symbol that looked like a pistachio on a stick. It reminded me of the sticks early Mayans used in their games like lacrosse with heads of their enemies as the ball.
From there we took a quick drive down Albuquerque’s portion of Route 66. Sorry, New Mexico. I was way more impressed with Amarillo’s.
We ended the evening with supper at Applebee’s. It’s been a long time since we’ve been in one of those. I actually had some fried shrimp. Hey. I was desperate. They weren’t terrible, but they certainly weren’t Shrimp n Stuff. Chris had a quesadilla salad. Hers was enough for two more meals in days to come.
I was very tempted to just stay out here another day. When we checked in I met some young men who said they were in town for a huge basketball tournament. 250 teams were entered, and games were going on all day today and tomorrow. Oh well. There will be other basketball games. But not NBA. Nope. That’s just not basketball. Go Mavericks!
And later we learned that there was also a huge BMX bike competition in town as well. No wonder all the rooms were full.
Psalms 42:11 says, Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!
Father, please be with all the kids who will be taking part in the tournament this weekend. Keep them safe and healthy. Amen.
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