Albuquerque, New Mexico - Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway - Nov 7th -9th

Tuesday, and today's tour is the Turquoise Trail Scenic Drive. We're out the door by 8:10 and drove down Highway 40 a bit and took the exit to check out the Maverick Fuel Station. Their sign on the highway shows $3.85 for diesel while eveywhere else is over $4.50 per gallon. Other than our credit cards not working at their pumps ... the fuel is as cheap as advertised with gas being $2.99 per gallon, the cheapest yet. We will fuel up the motorhome there before carrying on our journey once the Inverter/Converter system is fixed. (We did find out today, the inverter and remote arrived, but still waiting on the Power Management System.)

Back on I-40 heading towards Santa Rosa. We turned off to see the Tijeras Pueblo Ruins which turned out to be a bust. The whole site has been excavated and refilled with the dirt to protect it, so nothing to see. The Museum wasn't open where most of the artifacts went. Ray took a couple of pictures and we headed back to the car and onto Highway 14, The Turquoise Trail National Scenic Byway.

What the Pueblo would have looked like hundreds of years ago.

View from the top of the mound.

The first stop on the Byway is the little town of Golden which appeared suddenly in 1839 as the New Placers gold-mining town called El Real de San Francisco de Paola. When some years later the US Post Office arrived, there were already other San Franciscos, and so they called this one Golden. It is home to the Henderson Store, an historic Trading Post. (It was closed today so we didn't get to go in it.) The old church is San Francisco de Assis. There were a few old buildings that Ray took pictures of.

The Bottle House

San Franciso de Asis Church

View that the church has over the mesa.

View through the arch of an old sunken building.

Across the road are old buildings crumbling back into the earth.

Here is a view from the top of the hill before going down into Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid).

Coming down the hill we came upon this sculpture studio.

Well rusted stuff! lol

Next small town is Madrid. It's rich history dates back from the mid-1800's and took it from the discovery of coal to a mining town, to today's distinctive artist community.This area was booming in it's heyday supplying coal to the Santa Fe Railroad and many others. When coal use declined, the town fell silent and became a ghost town. 

In the early 1970's, artists and craftspeople arrived and converted old company stores and houses into quality shops and galleries and services. Here is a little "Artist Plaza". We actually thought this was "the town" before realizing the whole highway through town has many more businesses.

Lots of old cars tucked away to find.

At the end of every road there were many mail boxes for residences, all painted different colours.

The little sign in the window reads Men's Room. Sitting Only Allowed

Still a few houses not refurbished.

There are small roads between some of the businesses that go to private home in behind the main street.

Made in New Mexico hand woven wool rugs. Beautiful

The old Mercanatile and boarding house building that still sells groceries.

We ate lunch at the Mine Shaft Tavern. Ray adventoursly (for him) ordered a delicious wagyu beef burger with green chili and I ordered a BLT and avocado sandwich. Both are delicious. Great beer too on tap for me. Unfortunately several of the shops are closed being a Tuesday, including the Chocolate shop for Ray.

Incidents of ghosts here with moved furniture and glowing orbs.

After lunch, we continued along the highway and turned off at the small town of Cerrillos. 

This area turquoise and lead deposits were critical to the jewelry and pottery making of the prehistoric Indians and these mines influenced Spanish settlement. The Cerrillos mining district from 900AD is one of the oldest and most marked of the Old Spanish Mineral Developments in the Soutwest. In fact, turquoise mined here found it's way by trade routes to Mexico and Central America. 

There is not much there now to see except the Cerrillos Turquoise Mining Trading Post and Museum with an attached small Petting Zoo. Boy do they have a bottle and insulator collection!

Our last roadside stop is the Orgami Garden. Unfortunately it wasn't open when we went by, but Ray was able to get a few pictures. 

Time to go home. By this time we're almost back to Santa Fe. There's a cut off road, a short distance more up Highway 14 before being able to cut over to the I-25 and head back to Albuquerque. It's a longer day for us, a 6 hour tour!  Glad we went today, as the forecasted wind for the next two days started early and there were dust clouds in the air on the drive back home. Time for beer to sooth a scratchy throat.

Today is a record breaking temperature day of 25C/78F for Albuquerque. Tomorrow the temps go back down to seasonal, high 16C/60F's before dropping to low 16C/60F's for the rest of the week.

Wednesday other than doing a quick shopping trip to Costco for new pillows, we hunkered down around the Motorhome, definitely not as warm today with a high of only 19C/66F.

Thursday overnight the predicted winds started, supposedly 20mph. Definitely cooled down the temperatures. A chilly 6C/43F morning with the wind chill making it 3C/37F outside. Thankfully our furnaces work now that the batteries are charged from solar.

Ray headed out about 8:15am to drive around and take some pictures, while I hundered down inside and planned what to cook today. :)

Giant Red Arrow

I returned to the Spaceship/Bug House for daylight pictures. Ecclectic architect Bart Prince, a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed and built the house in 1984.

Two Stegasaurus "guard" the house

Bart's Art Studio and Gallery

This is why some call it the Bug House

The pictures below are the old Albuquerque train station.

The Turquoise Museum in the old castle of iconic jewelry designer Gertrude Zachary

The University of New Mexico campus includes a great serenity for the students in the form of the Duck Pond.

Ray's been dreaming about bakeries lol So, for our early Thanksgiving Dinner, I made Butter Pecan Bars, Cranberry Sauce, Roast Chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. It all turned out delicious.

So excited .... inverter install tomorrow. All the parts have arrived. 

Friday morning we were up at 5 am, probably due to our appointment this morning. We woke to it snowing! The first bit of precipitation in weeks and it comes today! Fortunately it's barely a skiff and is already melting by 6:30 am. La Mesa RV is only 1.5 miles down the I40 frontage road where we are so it's not a problem. Good thing we will have our system working today, as it's cloudy all day and that would mean our solar wouldn't work that well.

Of course this being "pack up day" to get the MH over to La Mesa we will have a few wet things to put away.