Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Day 1

Photo by Tony Hoxsie

I went to Arizona and Utah at the end of September into the beginning of October. I was gone Monday of one week to the Wednesday of the next week. Had to come back for my Pinterest party and our trip to Albuquerque! This is what I will be blogging about today. Day 1 of our trip in New Mexico which actually started by staying at my sister's place in Phoenix to split up the drive. That was fun!

Chaco Culture National Historic Park

We left Albuquerque around 6am to start driving to this National Park. 

Our car in the parking lot :) Nice little Prius

 Starting out our walk to the ruins

The walls are really thick!

It was fun exploring this historic park!

The Road to the Snowflake, AZ

And a long road it was! We drove from Magdalena NM to Snowflake, AZ

It took about 3 hours.

On the way we had to pull over because there was a "procession" coming. Cop cars and finally this:

All this for an "oversize" load?  Oh my.

Cool picture I got out Tony's window while he was driving.

Stopped at a Walmart once we got to Arizona to pick up a few things and rny friend Marietta! She is from the Woodland Stake in CA and now lives in AZ. Crazy cool to see her again! She was coming out of Walmart as we were walking in. So nice of her to walk back in with us and chat for awhile. Meanwhile , back outside, we had about 7 people come over to us and want to see the inside of the teardrop and talk to us about it. That was pretty cool!

Before we left the Walmart parking lot, we started dinner in the crockpot - soup! So handy to have a outlet in the back of the truck. Super cool!

Arriving at the Snowflake Temple to take some pictures....

Teardrop & the temple. 

Some model shots of the teardrop ;-)

And it was on to our next spot...Crystal Forest.

We camped here for the night and the next day we explored the Petrified Forest.
Stay tuned for pictures of that!

Heading Down to New Mexico

Driving in to New Mexico early early Friday morning. 

We had left SLC around 9pm Thursday evening. 

Had some delays, well, things we needed to do before heading out. I had a job interview, picked up our rental truck from Toyota, got my hair cut, went to Smiths to get some food we needed for the trip, got dinner (Subway for me, Panda Express for Tony), packed up and then we finally got to head out.

Cool scenery and rocks on the way to Albuquerque

Reminded me of southern Utah scenery a bit

I spied a hot air balloon wayyy out in the distance. Made me so happy

Cemetery that I saw while we were driving on the freeway

It was super weird to be here and not have the Balloon Fiesta going on

Stopped at the Owl Cafe to share breakfast. Their portions are big. We got a quesadilla and hash browns. So delicious!

A bridge!

Brought our breakfast over to my friend Carli's to visit her for a bit. Always nice to meet up with a good friend!

Our truck was so fancy. Tony made sure he didn't run me over with this handy camera in the rearview mirror. Haha :)

So, you might be wondering (esp if you dont follow me on FB, Twitter or IG) , "What the heck were you guys doing in NM if it wasn't for hot air balloons?" Check out the next post to find out the answer!