Gallup to Albuquerque

Lulu and Barry began the day with a workout in the exercise Room at the El Rancho. This was John Wayne's special suite when he visited. As you can see, Lulu wakes up slowly, and takes a while to warm up to the idea of exercising.

After breakfast in the El Rancho's cool restaurant, we got on the road. There are lots of original stretches of Route 66 left in New Mexico, thank goodness. We spent most of our time traveling through the Northwest New Mexico desert. The scenery is not to be believed: mesas and bluffs of striped reds and yellows towering overhead; huge boulders and slabs of rocks looking as if they'd been tossed around by giants and left in piles; tall wind-carved red rock towers...The scope of it is so huge, we knew it wouldn't show up on our little digital camera, so we didn't even try to take pictures. But there's a cool site you can check out which will give you an idea -- although you really have to see it in person to get the full impact: Northwest New Mexico Pictures.

At one place -- Cubero, maybe? -- road work forced us to detour through a small town. We came around a bend in the tiny narrow road to find a cow meandering casually down the middle of the road.

Lulu said, "You don't see that every day!"





We got into Albuquerque a bit after noon and met Ann's sister, Kat, and her two boys, Dietrich and Ian, and headed off to the Aquarium. The kids had a ball watching the sharks, and Lulu kept going back to the seahorses, anemones and clownfish. The restaurant in the Aquarium is right next to the shark tank, so the kids got to watch the sharks and sea turtles swim around while we all ate. There's also an outdoor area with a ship, and the kids enjoyed clowning for the camera out there, too.


Then came the biggest surprise of the day. We finished at the Aquarium and wandered over to the Botanical Gardens, expecting a few flowerbeds and boring signs. But instead, we found a kids' area with a giant stone dragon guarding a castle, a maze, a sand pit and lots of cool fake giant bugs and vegetables. This gave Lulu another opportunity to pose with a giant creature (see earlier shots of Lulu with a jack rabbit and a dinosaur). Then came a lily pond; a farm with animals to pet, a farmhouse, and a barn; a greenhouse with a Mediterranean and a Desert garden, then a rose garden, followed by a memorial garden with beautiful tile benches and fountains, an outdoor concert shell...the list goes on, and there was too much to see, so we're going back today. Lulu wants to pet the pigs again. Who wouldn't?