Catching up... slowly but surely

NEW MEXICO AND ARIZONA

Ok so, because I’m so behind on everything I’m going to try to remember the important things and leave the little details behind. I realized that the longer I go without writing this stuff up, the harder it’s going to be to write everything up so bear with me while I work out my baby steps. Haha.

Albuquerque
• We stayed with Dre’s cousins who were really really hospitable and lived in the foothills of the Sandia mountain, overlooking the city and the valley. It was gorgeous and they were so great to us – took us out to dinner, took us out flying one morning in their plane (what???? I know!! When I get batteries in my camera I’ll throw the pictures on Facebook), and most fun – introduced us to Dre’s 21 year old cousin Sean, who guided us through the Duke City nightlife. (Yes apparently Albuquerque is nicknamed Duke City. I feel like they were just trying to make up for the silly original name.)
• We hung out with some kids our age one night, basically a regular college party night, and learned that the elevation can mess with your alcohol tolerance and your car.
• The next night we went around downtown Albuquerque. It was a Wednesday night so nothing really special was going on but we had a good time, went into about 6 places and generally made it a good night.
• The BEST night was when Sean’s friend had his 21st birthday party at the Sandia Casino Resort, which luckily was close to the house we were staying. That was really fun- the casino gave us $20 free for the slots and $20 free chips for whatever we wanted, I assume so that we would keep putting in money and then they would take it all, I won $10 in roulette and got out quick before I lost anything, and $.28 playing slots, which I didn’t bother cashing in. All in all, it was a big party and a good night that lasted until about 5 a.m.

HOWEVER – that really fun late night was not a great thing to have right before we had to drive 9 hours to Phoenix the next day. We didn’t get going until 2 p.m., and then had a gas scare at about 10 p.m. in the middle of 3 Indian reservations. Rolling into the gas station in Globe, AZ in the middle of the night never felt so good! The next day we bummed around Phoenix, where there really wasn’t anything to do or see, and headed out of town to a random lake in the middle of the desert. Interesting but not the cleanest body of water I’ve swam in. I guess when you live in the desert you take what you can get. We stayed with another of Dre’s cousins in Scottsdale and played with her cute dogs, and then headed out to Sedona, which I had heard from lots of people was definitely a place to stop.

And I’m SO glad we stopped there!! It was this great little hippie town high up in the mountains, and apparently the main attractions included annual Phish weekend concerts, energy vortexes, and special crystals. Awesome. Arizona actually had the most varied landscape – on the way to Phoenix we drove through tree-covered mountains that reminded me of West Virginia, we drove through high country desert to get to Sedona, and Sedona was huge red rock mountains and forests. We had expected Arizona to be just desert but it had the best landscape out of anywhere. We got there in the evening and camped for the night, and the next day we managed to find a hike along a creek, which kept us nice and cool. Rather than spending the night again and paying for camping again, we headed straight to Vegas to stay for free with my friend Dave.

TO BE CONTINUED...