… up, up and away …

… in a beautiful balloon!

Frank and I love hot air ballooning, and find it tough to resist a flight when one is available. We’ve ballooned in France, Egypt, California and Maryland and considered owning a balloon at one point. However, it’s sad, but ballooning always involves waking up when it’s still dark out, and driving through the dark to a remote location in the middle of nowhere. Not a real fit for us.

  

When the sun began to rise, the balloon and basket were offloaded, and as the balloon rose from the desert floor, the sun lit the mountains and we clambered rather gracelessly into the basket, with a family of four and our intrepid pilot, Johnny.

  

Johnny has been flying most of his life. In high school he built his own airplane from cardboard, plywood, wagon wheels and a tractor engine. Towed by his brother, it flew until he was unable to untie the lariats with which he had tied it to the tractor. It crashed, nose first. He flew, so he considered it a success. Johnny saw his first balloon the next year in the movie Around the World in 80 Days, and decided to buy material and sew his own. When he started college, he signed up for Home Ec, the only boy in the class, and with money his father sent for books and lab fees bought the materials he needed. He enlisted the help of his fellow Home Ec students to sew the balloon, and his science professors determined how large the balloon had to be to keep a person aloft. When it was finished, he fastened the balloon to a large metal hoop, and used a farm burner to fill it with hot air. As it rose in the air, he grabbed the ring and pulled himself up. It was his first balloon flight; he has now logged more than 8000 flights, ballooning all over the world. He was the first balloonist in Egypt, hired by NBC to carry the cameras needed to map and photograph the Valley of the Kings. While there, he was besieged by people who wanted to ride the balloon, starting the commercial balloon industry in the country. Quite a remarkable guy. 

  

Our flight was not too exciting. Balloon pilots want calm days with little wind. Flight weather service OK’d our take-off, but there was too little wind, and we didn’t cover much ground. Johnny let Frank handle the controls, blasting flames up into the balloon to make it rise and fall. Because we were in an area with arroyos, gulches, cactus and trees, it was difficult to coordinate a landing site with the ground crew. However, the landing was probably the best we’ve had, smooth and gentle.

  

Ground crew chief Jeannie prepared a wonderful assortment of snacks and drinks, including biscochitis, New Mexico’s state cookie. Didn’t know states had cookies…! We did a post-flight toast with mimosas. Donning an apron, Jeannie was definitely our classiest hostess ever!

  

In the afternoon we checked out Santa Fe’s Museum Hill, first visiting the amazing International Museum of Folk Art, with dioramas, doll houses, miniatures and toys from around the world. There were special exhibits on Amish quilts (!), Japanese kites, yerba mate and chocolate. A fascinating video showed the harvesting and processing of yerba mate, a member of the holly family. The chocolate exhibit had an even more engrossing video, which left us desperate to find chocolate quickly!

  

  

We had lunch at the Museum Café, then were off to the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. One highlight was a 1980s video of Maria Martinez demonstrating the making and firing of her black pottery at San Ildefonso Pueblo. No photos were allowed in this museum.

 

Next stop: the Plaza, for the tail end of the Labor Day Weekend Native American Crafts Fair. We stopped at a few shops, and then checked out the lobby of La Fonda, the historic hotel just off the Plaza. 

  

… to see the Tent Rocks …

… at Kasha-Katuwe National Monument. We’ve seen the gorgeous photos of these rocks displayed everywhere since we arrived in Santa Fe. So a visit with camera in hand was high on Frank’s to do list. Like most adventures, it was a little more difficult than that. The Monument is partially on the the Cochiti Pueblo. Kasha-Katuwe means “white cliffs” in the traditional language of the pueblo. The other-worldly rock formations are the result of volcanic eruptions. The rock spires (called hoodoos) are topped by boulders that protect the softer stone below. Some hoodoos are 90 feet tall, sculptured by wind and water.

People have occupied the area for 4000 years. We decided to start our visit at the end of the trail, at the Veterans’ Memorial Scenic Overlook. Getting there required driving 8 miles over a rough gravel road, a single lane in spots.

 

The view was nice, but left us wanting more tent rocks. Working our way through the gravel, we discovered they’d been behind us all the time.

  

We parked and deciphered the map. The photo Frank wanted required a trek to the end of the Slot Canyon Trail, 1.5 miles of rugged walking including a steep climb. Frank completed the last 3/4 of a mile alone … sandals were not adequate footwear. Plus it was quite claustrophobic squeezing through some of the narrow canyons. The final view was spectacular.

  

  

After the walk and climb, we headed back to Santa Fe. Here we need a quick note about pinon nuts. They come from the pinon, New Mexico’s state tree. They are taken from pine cones, like pine nuts. Vendors have small stands in parking lots selling little bags of roasted pinon nuts. After reading about them while waiting for the Sandia Tram, we wanted to try them and bought a bag. That’s when we discovered that they are not sold shelled. All it took was one mouthful of very hard nutshell fragments. The vendor, who I’m sure was laughing hysterically inside, patiently showed me how to shell them without breaking my teeth. I’m convinced our small bag holds thousands of pinon nuts. They’ve become our staple car snack. We’ll probably have at least half a bag left when we head east….

After our pinon nut snack on the drive back to Santa Fe, we had a lovely dinner at the Santa Fe Bar & Grill, close to the hotel. And we ended it with a hot fudge and pinon nut sundae!  

… Bandelier’s cave dwellings …

… carved from the volcanic rock of the towering cliffs by pueblo ancestors. We actually started out to first visit the Ildefonso Pueblo, on our way to Bandelier National Monument. It looked quite promising. A well-maintained road led directly to a large, modern pueblo headquarters building, surrounded by cars. We could hear lots of people talking as we walked up to the door. It turned out to be a bridal shower; the office was closed and no one could help us. The woman in charge of the shower did tell us not to take any pictures of anything!

So we left the pueblo to drive to Bandelier National Monument. In addition to the original cave dwellings, later houses were built with the rocks which fell from the cliffs. We took the Main Loop Trail to see most of the important sights/sites. The Trail started out deceptively easily, on level ground, shaded by trees. The shade quickly gave way to blazing hot sun. A large kiva, or sacred place of worship, was possibly used by ancient men when weaving. A second smaller kiva was probably where boys were taught to become men. The foundations of a circular village are still visible; it was at least two stories high and contained more than 400 rooms, home to about 100 people.

  

  

Past the kivas and the village, the path got tougher, veering straight up the cliff side, with steep, narrow  steps. The handrail was red-hot from the sun, a hazard of its own. You have to climb the cliff to visit the spectacular cave rooms, dug out of the soft rock and plastered with clay. Soot from cooking and heating is still visible on the ceilings. After multiple misgivings, and encouragement from total strangers, we both scaled the wooden ladders to climb into the cave houses open to the public.

  

  

  

     

  

We ended the day with a lovely dinner with Dee Anne, one of Frank’s high school friends from Verdun, France.

… almost to Acoma Sky City …

… a historic pueblo built on top of a mesa. We started early because it’s at least two hours southwest of Santa Fe, and were within 30 miles of the turnoff to Acoma when traffic stopped because of an accident. After spending an hour stuck in traffic, we turned around and headed toward Petroglyph National Monument in Boca Negra Canyon.

Petroglyph visitors can follow three trails; we opted to amble along both the 5 minute and 15 minute trails. The petroglyphs were carved into basalt rocks formed after volcanic explosions. Over time the rocks acquired a dark patina or “desert Varnish” through oxidation of the minerals in the rock. The petroglyph makers found that they could chip off the dark coating to create high contrast images, using a harder rock to expose the lighter color of the rock’s interior. Centuries of exposure have begun to darken the images and they will almost certainly disappear in the future. Most were created between about 1000 BC and 1680 AD. 

  

  

Some of the petroglyphs are indistinct; sunlight exposes or hides their outlines on the rocks. Most are mysterious and open to interpretation. Some were produced much later by ranchers and include ranch brands or initials.

After admiring the petroglyphs on both trails, we headed to the Sandia Aerial Tram, and dinner at the top in the High Finance Restaurant. The tram used to be the longest in the world, but has slipped to third place. Like most trams, two cars travel the lines, acting as a counterweight to each other. The ride from the top to the bottom takes about 15 minutes.

  

  

  

Although the last run with passengers is at 9 pm, the tram continues to operate until around 11 pm, delivering food and merchandise to the restaurant and store at the top, and taking employees down to the bottom. The view of Albuquerque after dark was beautiful!