Today is our last day in Albuquerque. The Balloon Fiesta officially ended this morning. We headed down to the field early to watch the final launches.
All week we’ve been keeping track of the Hearts A Fire balloon. Our friends Mike and Donna Kuper, www.flyingthekoop.com, are crew members and friends of the balloon owners. This morning we watched as the balloon went from flat to full to floating. Spectacular.
Of course I added to my collection of balloon pics. If you ask me, you can never have enough balloon pics.
We finished off our Fiesta experience with breakfast burritos. Other Half and I have been enjoying breakfast burritos almost daily along with an occasional apple fritter.
FYI: The food tracking part of my FitBit Frenzy has been on hold all week. The step count part of my FitBit Frenzy has been kicking butt. Good thing.
While here, we also experienced our first Frito Pie. We had no clue what a Frito Pie was – but it turns out to be chili, with a serious after burn, over top of Fritos. As long as you’ve got a beer, what could be bad with that?
Thanks to my friend Donna, on the right, I enjoyed another first while in Albuquerque – a 25 mile bike ride. I’ve been close to 20 miles back in Ohio, but 25 miles was a first. And there were hills – at least by my flatlander standards.
Our plan was to ride 10 miles one way to a place called Bike & Coffee for breakfast. A friend of Donna’s joined us. The ride was beautiful with much of it along the Rio Grande. We navigated the trail, got to Bike & Coffee and found it’s only open on Saturday and Sunday. It was Friday.
The three of us had skipped breakfast so we were hungry. We decided to ride a couple of miles further to the Botanical Gardens and eat at their cafe. Good plan – or so we thought. We got there and found the cafe closed. We were two for two. The only thing open was the snack bar. We opted to split a giant, super salty pretzel with cheese. Best pretzel any of us had ever had.
We rode back with ease, at least those two did. I did great until we hit the hills. I clearly suck at shifting as I had to walk my bike up one of the hills. I’ll get better.
On the ride back I took a pic of our campground from the trail on the other side of the drainage channel. The Big Rig is in the center of the pic, just left of the yellow sign. If you squint you can spot our Toad, the beige Equinox. Toad is RV slang for your tow car.
We’ve had a great week dry camping in Albuquerque. We weren’t sure about dry camping for that long, but it worked out. Dry camping means no water, electric or sewer hook ups. The Big Rig is self-contained so dry camping IS a thing we can do. It’s just not a thing we usually do.
We’ll be happy to have hook-ups again. Three showers in seven days is not my idea of a good time.