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9/1/08 - Albuquerque, NM Chris, Jacque, and not-yet-born baby Larry pay a Labor Day weekend visit |
(Shutterfly photo album) |
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After plans to visit us last Memorial Day fell through, Chris & Jacque made the commitment to travel out to Albuquerque over Labor Day weekend to visit Scott, Caroline, and the snakes of New Mexico. They arrived the Friday of Scott's first week of work, and he was already raring to enjoy his much needed long weekend with the Letts. Friday night was off to El Pinto restaurant to introduce our guests to the local cuisine and margaritas - though Jacque's 'condition' prevented her from partaking of any tequila (which served as an advantage later that weekend - pregnant ladies make great designated drivers!). Saturday we made the hour and a half voyage up to Tent Rocks to hike in the picturesque slot canyon. No one told us, however, that the road to the canyon can get washed out after a night of heavy rain. You can probably already guess that the previous night we had heavy rain, and found out upon our arrival that the dirt road leading to the parking lot was closed. Instead of parking and walking the last five miles to the trailhead, we decided to pay a visit to Santa Fe for our usual tourist spin near the main plaza. The afternoon was passing quickly, however, and plans had already been discussed to find an Albuquerque establishment that might be showing the 6pm Michigan State vs. Cal football game. After hitting two different sports-bar-y type places (including the bar that the MSU Alumni club had planned to watch the game at), we discovered that apparently it just wasn't a big enough game to be on down here. Western Michigan was on, but MSU/Cal just wouldn't get WMU type ratings we had to guess. Sunday was spent hiking the Tramway trail, fortunately for Chris avoiding any contact with our native reptilian species. Since the clouds started blowing in and some serious storms were afoot, we thought, "hey, what a great time to take the tram up to the top of the Sandia Mountains and take in the views!". Okay, actually we had already reserved our tickets (they're free since we live in the same neighborhood as the tram, else $17.50 a pop) weeks earlier. It was interesting though, being in the tram and passing into the clouds... seeing literally nothing but white through all of the windows. Since Chris and Scott are Ministers of Finance at their respective places of employment, we all stopped off for some drinks at the High Finance restaurant located at the top of the mountain, watching the rain pour down outside the restaurant. Later, back down the mountain, we topped off our High Finance drinks with some more cocktails at the Savoy (hence the need for the pregnant woman's sober driving skills) before heading out to our local dollar show, which we knew fellow cheapskates C&J would enjoy. Our final day with Chris & Jacque involved
a car tour of some of our favorite places in Albuquerque,
followed by more drinks and dinner at the Brooks household, then
an embarrassingly long yet unfinished game of Trivial Pursuit.
It was great to see those guys, and hope they'll stop by again
someday when they're driving little Larry out to the Grand
Canyon or Disneyland, or wherever he's looking to go.
Heading back down the Sandias on the tram... we've broken
through the clouds and can now see the city below
Jacque pretends to pet the petroglyph creature, while
systematically ruining nearly all of the ancient history of
Petroglyph National Monument with the oils from her hands. |
Jacque
and Larry take a well deserved pit stop along the trail
Chris,
Caroline, and Scott enjoy some margaritas on C&J's last night in
Albuquerque |
