Double Blind

The timing was right and the airline ticket prices were right – flights to Phoenix were $130 each way plus taxes (so about $370 round trip… taxes nearly 30% of the cost of the ticket now!). The flight was via Denver airport. How come tickets to Albuquerque were nearly double? I had a whole stack of rental car credits and hotel credits which had to be used by the end of the year, so it was a perfect opportunity to fly out and explore the huge (but sparsely populated) state of New Mexico.

I don’t mind driving long distances and since everything was at least a hundred miles apart, there was quite a bit of driving. Thankfully the drop in oil futures had already been reflected in local gasoline prices!

Anyhow, we sketched an itinerary of things we’d like to do and see and we eventually did the following:

Stop #1 was in the Bisti Badlands, officially known as the Bisti Wildnerness Area. There isn’t a lot of information available about this area on the internet, as it is in a very remote corner of New Mexico, very near the border of the Navajo Indian Reservation. Unfortunately, by the time we got there it was raining quite heavily along with lightening. It was also getting pretty dark. It is also kind of eerie driving down a gravel road without anybody else remotely in sight (if your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, you’re pretty much screwed).

The pictures didn’t turn out all that great simply because it was too dark and it was really starting to rain. The first picture gives you an idea of just how remote the area is (keep in mind that I’m driving on this road!):

The second picture gives you somewhat of an idea of what rock formations you can see in this area. Apparently it was a swamp many millions of years ago that dried away as the land rose from the last ice age. You can also see the reflection of some of the rain drops from the camera flash.

As the road was getting decidedly wet from all the rain, we decided to get out of dodge before there was significant flooding – we didn’t want this to be a one-way ticket!

On the drive to Albuquerque, we were treated with a nice rain and lightening show on the road – some of the thunder could be heard as little as two seconds after the flash, which meant that the lightening was less than a kilometer away. Inside the car and driving it is always safe, but if you were outside it would be a hair-raising experience while you waited for the storm to pass. There is absolutely no opportunity for cover at all – the landscape is flat.

One thing that we did catch a video of, however, is lightening! Unfortunately I can’t post a screenshot of it (stupid Windows Media Player doesn’t show it) but what we got a picture of was a barbed wire fence and lightening coming from that to the ground! It’s a rather cool thing to witness – what happens is that the lightening causes the wires to discharge into the ground and you don’t get to see it very often, let alone on film!

Stop #2: The weather the next day in Albuquerque was a lot better and the next thing we did was head back to visit the Petroglyph National Park just west of the city. Looking at petroglyphs has been somewhat of a reoccurring theme in past vacations and the opportunity to see more things scribbled down on rocks (whether by people thousands of years old or 10 years old) couldn’t be missed. The area in Albuquerque around the park has been somewhat developed for nice-looking residential housing, which I find interesting.

Anyhow, here are some pictures of petroglyphs and one of myself on top of the local peak (overlooking a mountain range to the north of the city):

I’ll write more about #3 to #5 in a later post.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 4th, 2006 and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.