Balloon Fiesta and cable car ride

 

balloon fiesta, Albuquerque, NM

 There are many advantages to traveling with Elise including the fact that she is constantly finding more places to go and things to see that I might have missed on my own, but one thing that has always irked me is her extended negotiations with room clerks at motels to get the highest room with the best view furthest from the road. These are just things that don't matter to me. Clean sheets? Running water? Maybe, but not necessarily, a microwave and refrigerator?  Good enough. I'm satisfied. I don't need to check out three different motels and wait out these negotiations. I have to admit, however, that this time it was worth her efforts. After checking out three different rooms, she finally settled on a room on the third floor with a view of the Balloon Fiesta, and although yesterday there wasn't much to see, today there was. We also broke out the binoculars, which I have carried all the way from Philadelphia and not yet used.

 Between our location and the binoculars we had a wonderful view of at least 50 brightly colored hot air or helium balloons that ascended within close view of us. We could see the balloons in full living color and some of them came close enough to us so that with the binoculars we could actually see the people in the baskets below the balloons. The highlight was one red balloon shaped like a huge heart with the word Skyheart written on it. We had never seen anything like this scene, and it was really an excitement, as one balloon after another came within view.

After the balloons had all drifted away, we drove to a peak of the Sandia Mountains slightly to the east of Albuquerque and took a cable car ride to the top, over 10,000 feet high. We had a great view of the mountain looming before us on one side and Albuquerque spread out below us on the other. We walked around a little while at the top and observed the ski slopes which are covered with about nine feet of snow during the winter. I also saw more of the trees with beautiful yellow leaves and found out that they were aspens and not beech or birch as I had previously thought.

 There was a bit of a mystery connected with our tickets for the cable car ride. Although Elise purchased the tickets with her credit card, the tickets came printed "10-07-10/senior/Milt. How did they even know my name? We couldn't figure it out until someone explained to us that Milt was short for military rather than Milton. Apparently, the senior discount and the military discount were the same so both were printed on the ticket. It was comforting to know that there was at least a certain amount of rhyme and reason still left in the world.


 

view from cable car, Sandia Mts.

From there it was off to Roswell. Our real goal was the Carlsbad Caverns further south but we knew we wouldn't get there today and settled on Roswell as our goal for the day. We arrived there around 6:00 and after Elise's usual motel negotiation,  settled on a room at a local motel.

 We found out that there was the New Mexico State Fair in town and went to see it that evening. We ate an Indian burger (a hamburger on two slices of Indian frybread), walked past all the carnival rides and games, did a quick browse through the big hall with booths touting various local politicians and things for sale, spent a little more time in a hall featuring a model train display and displays by various schools, community service institutions and health centers, and finally sat ourselves down at an outdoor stage where a fairly entertaining magician was performing magic tricks, primarily for the kids.

We took a raincheck on the comedian that was to follow the magician and called it a night.