Mar 27 – Around Albuquerque

The natural beauty of the modern RV park.

We had quite a wild time last night. The RV park serves a “free” continental breakfast and the topic of everyone’s conversation was the wind last night. We all talked about having to batten down the hatches as someone from the park said it to be at least 60 mph at times. Our RV shook quite a bit. It finally died down sometime late into the night.

During the day the weather was great, not too windy and highs in the high teens Celsius.

First up was some shopping. There is a store called Camping World, one of which is conveniently located just across the highway, that has stuff that I can’t get in Canada and to have them ship it to me costs way too much.

After lunch we decided to break in our hiking legs at the Volcano section of Petroglyph National Monument. Just 8 km away from the RV park are these 3 cinder cones that poke up in the middle of a vast flat patch of desert.

It was a really busy place. The road off the highway is not even marked. These are the two close cones. The one of the right is called JA Volcano and the left is called Black Volcano.

Then this one on the far left is called Vulcan.

Off we go.

As usual Jennie is much more observant of the stuff beside the trail than me.

Heading up JA

Overlooking Albuquerque

Checking out a vent hole.

I always have to be king of the mountain.

Looking off to the west

Tiny cars on the highway.

There wasn’t much to see at Black Volcano. Looking back at JA

We were trying to decide it we were going to go on to Vulcan. It was about 1 km away.

We weren’t that tired and it looked interesting so we continued.

It had what we thought was a large crater part way up. Looking at the topo map later it is marked as a quarry.

The climb to the top was a bit steep and covered in round balls of lava that made climbing somewhat slippery.

At the top of the trail was a field which looked like it was the base of the main crater with two of the sides knocked out.

Once again I had to climb to the very top.

Looking back towards Black and JA Volcanoes.

Looking down at Jennie.

Heading back to the car.

Our path. In total it was 5.5 km.

 

The afternoon was still young so we headed into to town to explore Albuquerque Old Town. Jennie wanted to see some old southwest architecture.

The view from the high plain the RV park is on, down into the city.

This church is the oldest building in the city.

It turned out this is the tourist district. Most of the buildings are gift shops or restaurants. They are still nice to look at.

I did some of this.

At about 4 we started feeling the effects of all the walking and headed back home for a nap.