Turquoise Trail
Since everyone had the day off yesterday for Veteran’s Day, we decided to take a little road trip down the Turquoise Trail. This is the road that runs from Santa Fe to Albuquerque down the east side of the mountains. Not much to see, except lots of scrubby bushes and a few very small towns.
Here is how we started our day…
Best friends. Ada was holding Tyghe so daddy could put carmex on Ada’s lips.
We stopped in Cerillos first to see an old turquoise mine museum and such, but everything was closed. It all looked like it was about to fall apart as well. lol Here are the kids standing in some old, rusty mine cart of some sort.
Then we stopped in Madrid. Not much to see as the coal mine museum there was also closed. Biggest disappointment was Maggie’s Diner from the movie Wild Hogs. Thought it would be fun to have lunch there, but a lovely sign in the window says it was only built as a set for the movie. So, it’s not a real restaurant. But, here is a sample of some of the funky art displayed along the main road through town.
There’s so little on this lovely trail that we ate lunch at a gas station grill. Not bad mexican food, but we laughed at all of the comments we got on our big family and everyone being super friendly and talking to us. We planned on driving up to the top of the Sandia mountains to look over the other side at Albuquerque. On our way up, we stopped at hiking trail to entertain the kids a bit while I fed Tyghe. Neither worked so well, but we decided to hike to the top instead of driving. The sign said 1 3/4 miles to the crest trail, but I think in all we hiked close to 4 miles to get to the top (which wasn’t even the very top of the mountain) and back down. We probably climbed a couple thousand feet on a rather rocky trail, but the view was amazing!
You can’t really see much of the view due to the clouds, but it was pretty cool. On a personal note, I carried Tyghe all the way up in my homemade mei tei style carrier, and carried Ada a good part of the way down in it. lol Tyghe may be some what of a heavy weight, but Ada weighs A LOT more! My legs were rubber by the time we got down. I was very thankful last night that our neighbors were in Hawaii so we could take advantage of their nice hot tub. And yes, we did have permission to use it!
3 Responses to “Turquoise Trail”
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Sounds like a nice New Mexico day. I laughed at stopping in Madrid. No Chili Cook-Off? Good thing your kids are troupers about hiking, and have the lung capacity to do it.
what a beautiful girl! Ada looks just like a doll. And how great that she and Tyghe are such good buddies. I think Hannah is still trying to decide if she is entirely glad Ben’s here to share Mom and Dad with
I love the photo of the kids in the mine car. Hannah had me scroll over all your photos a few times, she loves to see the kids.
Thanks for the well wishes. I love seeing pics of the kids. Ada is a very pretty little girl. Tyghe is so big!!!! Asher seems to be the “lightweight” out of our three.