Vacationing in the Land of Enchantment

Because we're living in Colorado this summer, and last summer I felt like we did a lot of exploring in the mountains, this summer I wanted to explore the plains.  So we decided to head to Oklahoma City for Memorial Day.  We could visit the bombing memorial, attend a Memorial day celebration to watch mid-westerners in their natural habitat, and also head east while the rest of Colorado flooded west into the mountains.  There was just one little thing that we hadn't counted on...the weather.  So the tornado warnings threw a bit of a wrench into those plans.  We woke up Friday morning cancelled all of our reservations, and while Justin was at work emailed each other back and forth about alternatives.  Since we live in an extended stay hotel Justin said it wasn't an option to stay home, and I kind of agreed.  We decided that the least expensive place with the fewest crowds, warmest weather, and greatest appeal was New Mexico.  I had us packed and ready to go when Justin got home.

The Friday night drive there was completely uneventful.  It was a beautiful drive, and what we saw before it got dark reminded us that we loved our last visit to Northern New Mexico.  We weren't at all sorry to be back.  Saturday morning we got up early and left for Bandelier National Monument.  Our last visit to Santa Fe was two years ago, and we elected to go to Tent Rocks National Monument instead of Bandelier.  We loved Tent Rocks, but we heard a number of people at the timeshare afterwards talking about how Bandelier was beautiful and amazing, and we felt a little like maybe we had missed out.  (Having been to both now I can say that it's hard to go wrong with either one of them.  They're very different, but both of them are amazing!)  

One of the things that I really liked about Bandelier is that you aren't allowed to drive your car into the park.  They have a free shuttle that you catch in Santa Fe that takes you up to the monument.  It's not unlike the one at Zion.  I love the whole shuttle idea so that I don't have to worry about trying to find parking in the monument, especially on a busy holiday weekend.  Vivian loves riding buses, so it was a win with her too.  Our plan was to first hike out to the cliff dwellings and then double back to the other side of the park and hike out to a waterfall.

I have no idea what this is, but it's part of the ruins there.

Vivian loved the ladders

She had no desire to be carried in the backpack.

So the first set of ruins were actually not that spectacular.  They were fun, especially for Vivian, but if you've been to Mesa Verde, these don't compare in size or complexity.  They are however, in my opinion, just as interesting, with the added bonus that you are allowed to crawl around in them.  That's something that's largely prohibited at Mesa Verde.  The hiking was not particularly hard at all, but it was slow getting through everything.  I think it would have been faster on any other weekend, but we had to wait in line at every ladder, and every "house" along the trail.  It wasn't exactly crowded, but the monument was definitely busy and there were lots of families and groups, so it was a little slow getting through all of it.  At the end of the first trail there were a bunch of petroglyphs.

This one looks like a dinosaur to me.

Justin and I joke around sometimes about how petroglyphs must be remnants of the kids doodling on the walls.  I always feel a little like I'm in the Emperor's New Clothes when someone references petroglyphs as amazing art...am I the only one that thinks stick figures aren't impressive artistic renderings?  Don't get me wrong, they're kind of interesting, but I've never felt blown away by them.  I certainly can't stand their staring at them for hours.  So we hung out in front of the art wall there for a second and then headed down the trail to find ourselves a shady spot where we could take a nursing break.   

I'm not sure who enjoyed this break more, Vivian or Ivan.  Vivian loves dirt,  Loves dirt.  She loves to throw dirt.  I do not love it when Vivian throws dirt, but Ivan does.  She started just sprinkling it around, and noticed that Ivan kind of giggled about it.  The next thing we knew handfuls of dirt were flying through the air and Ivan was doubled over laughing so hard that he could barely breathe.  It was messy, and kind of gross, and she got dirt in her eyes, but the both of them were so happy that I just couldn't see any reason to stop her.  I mean she was getting a bath that night either way, now it was just making more sense to make it a shower, which is faster anyway.  So we let them have their fun.

She hadn't really let loose and started tossing it over her head yet.  Justin had the camera out just to capture her grubby face.

That's sincere happiness right there.  

...and here we have her biggest cheerleader.

After wiping her down the best we could with baby  wipes we decided to continue on to a dwelling at the end of the trail that was supposedly a little more intense, rather than follow the loop back like the majority of people seemed to be doing.  It was about 2 miles roundtrip, so really not very far, and as we were nearing the mile mark a guy coming down the trail told us that "it gets a little sketchy up there guys."  I know he meant that we shouldn't do it with the kids, but Justin and I weren't super worried about it.  Justin maybe should have been since he had Vivian strapped into the backpack, which gave him about 40 pounds of extra dead weight.  I just had this little pack to get up and back:

He's little, and he's cute, and it's kind of nice just having him strapped onto me.

So we continued on, and we only had moments where we wondered if it was a stupid idea.  Mostly when we both witnessed the rungs on the ladder bend significantly as the person in front of us stepped on them.

I did move super slow, because as it turns out Ivan doesn't care for ladders.  He crabbed a little bit going up, but he just let loose and screamed the entire way down.  There were four ladders (140 ft of ladders)  like this, so it was really good times coming down.

We made it though, and were fine.  There was a lady there who apparently hadn't been drinking water.  She also made it to the top, and then collapsed in a heap.  Hopefully her trip down went a little smoother.  It really wasn't that bad, and the view up at the top was very nice.

A view of the cliff dwelling at the top.

Another view from down below again.

The trip down was pretty slow since we couldn't afford a misstep while carrying two little kids with us.  By the time we were down and had eaten lunch we felt like the kids were tired, we still had a long drive to the hotel for the night, and time was running short.  So we scratched the hike to the waterfall, and caught the next shuttle back to the visitor's center.  

The hotel we had reserved was in Moriarty, which is just outside of Albuquerque.  We planned on eating dinner there.  That turned out to be a terrible decision.  So...there's nothing in Moriarty that doesn't look scary from the outside.  Okay, one Mexican place named Nachos looked like it might be okay, but it was also closing.  We ended up paying an arm and a leg to eat at a truck stop diner.  The food was just kind of okay.  Next time we decide to say in the middle of nowhere we need to research food options in advance.  After dinner we checked into our hotel and let Vivian have a very brief dip in the freezing cold hotel pool before we called it a night. 

The next morning we attended church in a ward in New Mexico that was so friendly that they had Justin and I both thinking that maybe we'd like living there.  

Sunday outfits, just because they look cute.  Ivan had pants on, but he blew them out before sacrament meeting even started.  They also weren't super cooperative for this picture, but I still think they look so cute in their little matching outfits!

We were even more convinced later as we drove around Albuquerque, just checking things out.  I've had Albuquerque on my bucket list for as long as I can remember.  I think the name made it sound interesting, and that whole "Land of Enchantment" thing just made it seem even greater.  Albuquerque didn't disappoint me.  I mean it's a big city, so there were parts that I didn't love, but there were nice parts that were what I had always pictured.  After our driving tour of Albuquerque we checked into our hotel and enjoyed some much needed time out of the car for the kids before we went to dinner at a restaurant across the street from UNM named Frontier.  It's was definitely a win.  We loved that one.

The next morning we got up early because we wanted to attend Memorial day services at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe.  We'd left this day kind of open when we first decided to come to New Mexico.  We formulated the idea of attending services there while perusing through things to do Friday night in our hotel room.  I'm so glad that we did this.  I'm glad despite the fact that the freeway was closed for an accident that morning and that Justin and I had a little bit of an exchange about how to navigate around the closed portion of freeway and back on again.  I'm glad we did this despite the fact that we were late and therefore forgot sunscreen.  And I'm glad that we did this despite the fact that we almost got in an accident parking the car, and that we had to hop a cemetery wall to get to the services.

We missed the opening flag ceremony.  The rest of the ceremony was great.  I've truthfully never done anything to actually observe Memorial Day before now, so I don't know how the experience would compare.  I just know that I found it to be very appropriate, touching, and inspiring.  After the formal event we wandered around a bit looking at various headstones, and then set out on foot to the far reaches of this cemetery (that was way bigger than we initially realized) to the grave of the last of the original Navajo code talkers.  We were tired, we were a bit sweaty, and were totally thrown off when we awkwardly arrived at the grave just a few seconds behind a woman who we assumed to be a relative.  We retreated to give her a moment, but when she seemed like she was going to hang out there for a while I went and introduced myself to his granddaughter.  She was very nice, and told us that "Grandpa always loved his visitors!"  We had a nice little conversation with her, and she thankfully didn't think it at all odd that I wanted to snap a picture of her grandpa's grave.

Unfortunately we were about three years too late.  I would have loved to have met him in person.

After that we spent a few hours wandering around the cemetery looking at other graves.  We found a few other interesting ones: 

It's not marked on his headstone, but he was also one of the original Navajo code talkers.

I pray that I never experience anything like what this man did.

...or this one.

This cemetery has 10 medal of honor recipients in it as well: 

We intend to read more about these people later.  This is when it would have been  handy to have had a smart phone I guess.

If you've never had the opportunity to visit a national cemetery, don't ever pass it up.  I find these places to be really interesting, but there is also a really different, peaceful feeling in them.  

The grounds here were super nice

When we were done here we got in the car and started the drive back to Colorado.  We wanted to avoid traffic, so after having braved a little hailstorm that damaged our car (nothing too terrible though) we switched gears a little and headed out onto the plains in Eastern Colorado.  We definitely avoided all the holiday traffic, and we thoroughly enjoyed our drive through the vast openness of the plains.  

At a site for the Santa Fe trail

He's still a momma's boy, but liking Dad more and more all the time.

I love my people

She loves my wearing my shades

You can just make out a little bit of rainbow underneath the clouds

Sunset on the plains

We got home later than Ivan would have liked (he detests the car after dark), but we had a great Memorial day weekend in New Mexico, the land of enchantment!