Southwest Trip 2010 - Sunday, March 14

During the cold night we had heard coyotes and then - at dawn - a loud, nearby wild cat noise.  I'm not sure what it was.  It was eerie though.

We packed up quickly and hit the road on a foggy, misty morning to drive through northwestern Oklahoma to New Mexico. 

We couldn't see much scenery due to the fog but we did pass a large flock of wild turkeys.


We have friends from Montana whose last name is Gladstone so we had to take a picture of this "town's" sign.


We stopped for showers at a KOA in a small town across the New Mexico border.  They charged us six dollars a person for showers!  That was more than we would have paid for a tent site AND showers!  Next time we will just pay for a campsite even though we have no intention of camping.  Lesson learned. 

We made our way to Fort Union, which was an important site on the Santa Fe Trail.  It was established in 1851 as the "guardian of the Santa Fe Trail". In it's later years it was the largest fort in the American Southwest and it and functioned as a military garrison, territorial arsenal, and military supply depot for the southwest. 








Flat Stanley and the Pop-Machine-Guarding Owl (seriously...)



Logan and Flat Stanley at the Fort's Jail

Kids at Santa Fe Trail Ruts at Fort Union

I talked to the ranger and discovered there was a winter storm moving in...they were expecting at 8 to 12 inches.  He recommended we get on the road to Albuquerque as soon as possible.  Not what we were wanting or expecting to hear!  We took a quick walk around the fort and hit the road.  As we approached Albuquerque the blizzard hit. 

The road was quickly becoming covered with slushy snow and there was hardly any visibility.  We had thought about stopping at our friend Amy's brother's restaurant for dinner but at that point we wanted to get to a lower elevation, out of the storm.  We also scrapped our plans to camp that night.  Camping in cold weather is one thing, camping in a slushy snowstorm is another.

We went to  Old Town in Albuquerque.



Entrance to Old Town, Albuquerque
Statue of Gov. Valdes, Founder of Albuquerque



La Placita Dining Rooms

dinner in a restaurant that is in a building that is over 300 years old and has a large tree in the dining room.  Flat Stanley had his picture taken there, of course  :)    . 

On our way back to the hotel we decided to rent a movie and found a redbox in a grocery store.  It was in Spanish!  Rosie and I were proud of ourselves for translating enough to successfully rent a movie on our first try!