New Mexico - Day 18 - A day in Albuquerque

Albuquerque North/Bernalillo KOA, Bernalillo

Thursday, 18 November 2021

part of today's route

On the road

The main AAA map is too compressed to show any detail of this area, and the area map above doesn't start until the ABQ city limits.  I chose to ignore the interstate and come into town on NM-47, also known as 2nd Street in Albuquerque.  I discovered that 2nd Street has several pieces of art along its length, including a nice sculpture of a Nuthatch.

I saw 3 hot air balloons ascending just west of town.  Albuquerque claims the title of Hot Air Ballooning Capital of the World because of its unusual set of conditions that create an ideal setting for the sport.  They have predictable wind patterns, plenty of open space, and cool early-morning temps that allow balloons to rise faster.  Their annual balloon fiesta starts the first week of October each year, so I just missed it by a month.  I'm sure it's an amazing sight, and I'd like to come sometime.

Getting here I drove through a very residential neighborhood and had plenty of time to see that adobe is the primary building material in this area.  At least, that was my thought until I realized some of these houses looked more like stucco.  I've been trying to find someplace online that'll explain the difference to me and honestly, they sound a lot alike.  Here's a page I found from someone who builds these kinds of houses here in New Mexico, and it includes some discussion of the composition of each type.   http://pajaconstruction.com/adobe-plaster-or-conventional-stucco  

But of course, being uneducated, I don't know the difference by looking at them, and then I found this page where the focus is on the style, rather than the building material, and I think that's what I've been noticing.  The buildings I've been seeing all over, ever since before Taos, have very likely been adobe, but what I've actually been noticing has been that Pueblo style of design - rounded corners and so forth.  Then I found this page - Wikipedia, of course - that explains what I've been looking at is most likely what's called Pueblo Revival, a style that's most popular in New Mexico, though it's found in surrounding states.  It was even established by law in Santa Fe in 1957.   https://en.wikipedia.org/Pueblo-Revival-architecture  Whatever it is, there's a lot of it in this neighborhood.

Rio Grande Nature Center

There are 2 similarly named parks in ABQ, one run by the state and the other by the city.  The one I visited is the state park, set on the east bank of the Rio Grande.  They require a $3/vehicle/day fee, which seemed reasonable.

I easily found the path Paula had mentioned for the dogs, because I saw several other people taking their dogs in or leading them out of the area.  I just couldn't take the chance on taking my dogs into an area where it was almost guaranteed we'd meet other dogs on a narrow trail.  And that instinct turned out to be right: I took the dogs around the large parking area instead and while we were out, a guy and his dog came past from that walking area, and Dexter started going crazy as he often does.  Jumping around and barking and generally carrying on.  The other guy stopped - I don't know why people do that, but a lot of them do - and I told him to please keep on going, which he did, and Dexter calmed down as soon as they'd moved on.  I'd been bracing myself against a thick wooden pole to keep him from pulling me over, and I was glad for the reinforcement.

The park prohibits dogs from going on the nature trails, which makes sense to keep them from scaring wild critters, but I really don't like to take long walks any more without them.  They need the exercise as much as I do, and I don't want to wear myself out walking alone and then not having energy left for them.  This meant I started off into the park, but turned around after a fairly short distance when I realized all that was in there was long, winding paths leading to various viewing areas and gardens.

I'd gotten there about 8:30, hoping to avoid other dogs (that didn't work), but once there I found the visitor center didn't open until 10:00 and that seemed to be where the information about the Rio Grande Rift was.  So the dogs and I walked around the area some more, and I looked through the wildlife viewing holes at the Wetlands Overlook - lots of duckies, mostly.  While we were walking some large birds flew overhead singing.  Very large birds.  And I finally realized they must be Sandhill Cranes.  Apparently ABQ is a prime wintering spot for them.

When the visitor center finally opened, I did find some information about the Rift.  Unlike most other river valleys that were created by their rivers, this one got the river after the rift had been created.

The ground in this area sank 25,000,000 years ago along fault lines, creating the rift that was 25 - 30 miles across.  Unusually, it wasn't caused by erosion or earthquakes or any of the usual forces but instead, over (a lot of) time, this section of the earth between the fault lines just stretched and sank.

The Rio Grande is only about 50,000 years old and apparently just used the channel that had already been created.  Here's information about the river itself.

The numbers on this map correspond to
the numbers on the photos below.

These are photos taken at the locations
shown on the map above.

Naturalists have learned to undo some of the damage that earlier generations inflicted on our land - reconstructed wetlands and grassy plains and so forth.  But regenerating the Rio Grande is unlikely to happen.  Too many people depend on it in its present form now.

And here's one of the unfortunate byproducts of those changes.

I know cottonwood isn't universally popular because of its ability to trigger allergic reactions.  But it doesn't have that effect on me and I love the way they look and the shade they create, so their loss matters to me.  This is almost enough to make me want to run out and find a home where I can plant lots of cottonwoods.

The visitor center had a lot of other information, of course, about the many forms of life in this area - types of fish and invertebrates and so forth.  I found this information about beavers.

And there were also exhibits about bird migrations, though it was hard for me to take photos of them because of the lighting.  But here's information about the migration habits of a few interesting species.

I also learned that ABQ has more extinct volcanoes in the vicinity than any other city in the Lower 48 states.  Glad to hear they're extinct.

So this visit didn't turn out as I'd expected, but I still learned a lot.

Back on the road in ABQ

We drove from there to a Total Wine shop, that had a remarkably poor selection of wine (almost none from the Pacific Northwest, for instance) but they did have my favorite brand of scotch so I forgave them.

We went to a grocery store and a park and then to a Jiffy Lube.  It was about time for a routine oil change.  The hardest part about that is finding a shop with doors tall enough to let us in.  I'd called a half-dozen places of various brands before finding this one.  The folks here seemed a little intimidated, but after all it's just got an ordinary Ford engine, so they were able to do the work.  

I'm once again glad about the choice of RV I made.  It may be hard to find a shop with 11' clearance on their doors - but my RV is a lot lower - and shorter - than many other types.  And with the ordinary engine, I can get regular mechanics to work on it without having to locate some RV-specific mechanic as some have to do.

I didn't get to see a lot of Albuquerque that I'd have like to - the balloon museum and Old Town and just more of the town in general.  But we spent more time at the nature center than I'd expected, and sunset is before 5:00 these days at this latitude, so I just added these things to my growing list of places to see when I come back to NM with more time.