S8 – TRAVEL Series – Albuquerque, NM

My wife, Gia comes on the podcast with me to share about our experience in Albuquerque, NM.  We share a Top 10 places we visited that we highly recommend to you!

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The following is the manuscript of the conversation, followed by the notes I used to guide the conversation.  Thank you for listening and supporting us as we share our experiences!

Joey – Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Overland Podcast. I’m here with…

Gia – Hi, guys. …

Joey – Gia. Thank you for being with us.

Gia – Thank you for having me.

Joey – Of course. Sometimes we like to get on here and talk about our travels and our adventures, and sometimes we just like to talk about life. So, whatever we can share about our misfits, misfortunes, and… Misadventures. Misadventures. Hopefully somebody can come on here and learn from us. But we also have a great time. We love doing things together and going out together and just having a great time.

So, it was not long ago that we were able to get away and go to a very special place, a place that I had been to several times. You had only been through it once, correct?

Gia – The only time I had ever been here was when I went to the bus station. And I was driving my grandparents to my aunt and uncle’s house in Arizona, and it was right before Christmas. And so, the plan was that my cousin hitched a bus from Phoenix to Albuquerque. Ooh, I just gave a spoiler alert. We’re going to be talking about Albuquerque. And then I drove my grandparents from Northwest Arkansas, Southwest Missouri to Albuquerque, met my cousin. She drove them the rest of the way to Phoenix. And then I hopped a bus back. Northwest Arkansas. And the reason we had to do it that way was it was right before Christmas. And so, it was all about trying to get me home before Christmas and my cousin and my grandparents to my aunt and uncle’s house for Christmas. And so, my experience with Albuquerque had just been the bus station and downtown Albuquerque.

Joey – Well, I have never experienced the bus station there as many times as I’ve been there. I’ve never rode the bus there or away from there. So yeah, what an amazing story. How old were you when you did that?

Gia – I was in college. It was, yeah, I was in college. It was, my grandparents had both been ill.  Both my grandparents are of course deceased now. But they had been ill and they would always go and stay with my aunt and uncle who lived in Arizona during the winter. It became a, it was their yearly thing and they’d been ill and they called my mom just a couple of days before Christmas and said, hey, we’re going to go to Albuquerque. We’re going to go to, not Albuquerque, we’re going to Phoenix. I think we’re going to leave, you know, tomorrow, day after tomorrow. And my mom was just, oh my goodness. And all of her siblings were horrified. And I said, okay, mom, I’ll drive them. I’ll drive them and I’ll figure out, we’ll figure out a way to get back home. So that’s what happened.

Joey – That’s cool. Well, several years ago, we had gone to New Mexico together on one of our very first trips together. We went to Santa Fe and absolutely fell in love with the area, the state, the food, pretty much everything there. The scenery, especially the food, the history, the food.

Gia – Yeah. The food is incredible.

Joey – And I’ve told people for years that I would drive twelve hours just to eat chicharrons. So, I was very willing to go back and wanted to take you and have you experience all the good things about this particular city, because I absolutely love this city. And it was going to be cold. We knew that it was over Thanksgiving. But most of the things that you can do in the winter you can do there because it’s the desert and its really nice weather. And so, things you can’t do here in Arkansas, you can do there. And so that would be, that was going to be one of the best times that we could go. When it wouldn’t be really hot and the weather would be absolutely perfect. So, I was really excited to take you there and show you. I was so excited to go back.

Gia – I love New Mexico. And you just spoke of Albuquerque with such fondness that I wanted to. To be a part, excuse me, of those memories.

Joey – Well, we splurged a little bit this time. Last time we went, we got a little camping cabin that didn’t have any amenities. And you were having to walk in freezing temperatures to the restroom several times a night. And so, this time we splurged a little bit, got one of their… Premium camping cabins that was so nice. Had its own little bathroom, kitchen, refrigerator to put our leftovers and everything that we needed. And it was in a great spot.

Gia – Oh, yeah. Just there in the middle of the city. Lots of privacy, though, and security. It was really nice because it had a gate. It was walled and it had a gate, so it just felt super nice. Super safe. Not that I ever generally feel unsafe in cities at all. It was just nice to know that nobody would be able to get out of their vehicle or anything like that at night.

Joey – So true. Well, we talked about it on our ride home. We kind of comprised a little top ten list, which I have with me. And we’re going to go over this and make sure that we agree. In no particular order, we have the top ten things that we did. And I think I’ve got some honorable mentions as well. No, we just got a top ten. So, I’m going to go over these with you in no particular order and just have you give. your impression of each as I will also.

So, one of the most fun things that we did, most memorable things that we did on this whole trip was Sandia Peak. Sandia Peak was definitely in the top ten. It’s 10,378-foot crest in the Sandia Mountains. It’s 11,000 square mile panoramic views. And you can get up there through the Sandia Peak Tramway, which we did the day before we got tickets. And it was just one of those things where I had been up there before. Not this time of year, but I wanted to see the views because the views up there were absolutely stunning.

Gia – Yes. And I love any kind of ski lift, gondola, interesting way of getting up a mountain top. I love it. That I think is just something from childhood. Like my family in Europe would always, we’d hike up mountains, but a lot of times we would also take whatever method vehicle they had available up a mountain. So that was really cool. The gondola ride up was really, really neat. I really enjoyed that.

Joey – Definitely. The views were amazing. One mistake that we made, we had grandiose plans when we were to arrive at the top. We had backpacks full of stuff and we were going to hike. There’s a little hut that you can hike to, several different hikes up there. And from our view down at the bottom on the western side, the mountains look great. But little did we know and did we not think that you cannot see the other side of the mountain where all the snow and ice. Yes, tons of snow. Completely covered in ice.

Gia – Yeah.

Joey – In fact, we rode the gondola up there with some locals and they actually had ski poles and they were going to hike as well. They were hiking.

Gia – Yeah. They were going to hike too. And they were like, oh, we got this. And we saw them. They actually went down a trail and came back in about ten minutes and they rode the gondola back down. They’re like, we can’t do this. So, solid ice. We were not the only ones who were thinking that we were going to be hiking. It was it was really nice. Spent a lot of time up there. It’s very cold.

Joey – Recommendations. I have several recommendations that I would that you need to know, especially if you go this time of year. Bring a backpack with extra clothes.

Gia – Yes. We wore layers.

Joey – And by the time we got up there and got out, we had put everything on that we had taken with us.

Gia – Yeah, I had double pants. I had three jackets on. I was layered. Gloves. I had. And everything. So, yeah, definitely do that.

Joey – Also recommend getting there early. If you want to go, go real early because when we got there, there was a little bit of a wait. We were actually waiting for them to open. And when they opened, we were probably third or fourth in line. It wasn’t that bad at all. But we went up there. We stayed probably an hour, hour and twenty minutes. And when we came back down, there were buses of children that were unloading. The line was completely out the door. The wait was absolutely insane. So definitely recommend getting there early.

Gia – But it was really, really fun. It was. I think one of the things that was also neat about that is I love coffee with chili in it. Chili powder. New Mexico is all about the chili. And on the way out to Sandia, we stopped at a coffee shop. And there’s a really wonderful one not too far away from the tramway. It’s actually directly off, what is that, Tramway Boulevard or whatever? But it was called Obeen’s Coffee. And they actually, they ran… A VW bus is part of their story or whatever, so there’s a lot of VW bus stuff.

Joey – It’s where they started.

Gia – Yeah. Where they started. And their decorations. But it was fantastic coffee. It was good. Really good.

Joey – It was really good coffee. You had a frou-frou, some kind of something that had a bunch of stuff in it.

Gia – No, it was just an Azteca. It’s a mocha latte with chili powder in it.

Joey – Well, if it’s called a mocha latte, it’s frou-frou. I had coffee black. It was amazing. It was so good.

Gia – I just love it because it’s got the chocolate. It was so good. And the chili. It was so good. We actually wanted to go back. We did. We wanted to go back to there. But that was a great, great. It was. I highly recommend going up there.

Joey – The ski lifts were not running on the other side. It was not crowded when we were up there. It was not that bad. We actually found a really quiet place to get away from the little children that were screaming, hollering, and wanting their snacks and stuff. I want a snack.

Gia – yeah on my snack now I think one of the things that also we really enjoyed is we had already this wasn’t our first day and so we had already been hiking several places. We’ve gone to petroglyphs. We’ve gone to several different hikes in petroglyphs in different areas and so it was just really cool to know enough of the geography and geology of the area to pick out where we’d been and then you pointing out. That’s where, you know, the hot air balloons do this and that’s where this happens. So, I think that’s also something that was really neat was to know enough of the area to be able to find all the spots when we were high up above.

Joey – Totally agree. Another place we went that I would highly recommend, and it’s not normally a place that I would want to go, but we searched this out and because it was so… I guess indigenous to the area. We went to the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

Gia – Yes. And it was… I’m huge into museums. Mm-hmm. I’m always, I love a museum. And there, you know, they’ve got several. There was the Museum of Natural History, which we didn’t make it to. But I’m all, I do love a good museum. So, I’m usually the one who’s like, Joey, let’s go here.

Joey – Well, it’s ranked number six on the 383 things to do in Albuquerque on Yelp. So, it’s way up there. Now, one of the one of the things that I kind of regretted was that we did not look at their schedule and we had missed a tribal dance the day before.  If we went the day before we have gotten to see that.  So, they have several different things there that you can see there was art on display from children and it was really neat to see.  But being able to see all the different tribes that are around the area and how they how this place raises money for all the different places like that so That was really cool.

Plus, it also has a Pueblo kitchen where you can eat and get some local Indian food. And it was it was really good. I was surprised.

Gia – Yeah. And it really helped me understand the role of Pueblo and what those words mean. Because New Mexico really is a confluence of so many. You have the strong Mexican influence. You have a strong historically European Spanish influence. You also have the Pueblo, you know, the indigenous people. And it was just really cool to understand like when they’re talking about Pueblo or Puebla, which is it? I’m probably saying it wrong. But all the different tribes, like the Hopi and all of those, it’s like twelve or thirteen different tribes that are considered Pueblo. And understanding, oh, OK, like that’s just seeing how it all fit together, I think is really valuable.

And one of my favorite parts of that was of that museum was other than the restaurant, of course, but was the spot where they had their languages recorded. So, you could compare, you could listen to people conversing and their languages and hear how similar, how different they were and see where they were on the maps, see where the modern reservations were. I think it just really helped me understand that aspect of New Mexican life and that part of the culture. So, I really appreciated it.

Joey – true and another regret that I had was that I didn’t realize that you could actually tour and go into some of the pueblos.  So, we could have done that.  But again, we did not know that you could do that so we could have taken a tour and actually went into one of the pueblos while we were there but we learned that while we were at the cultural center so we kind of missed out on that.  But the food was good.  Definitely recommend going there and getting something that’s local to the pueblos and trying it out.  Because that was the first time, we had had several different things that they offered.  Most of it again with green chilies which I can eat pretty much anything with green chilies in it.

Now moving on to the next place that highly recommend and when I went to New Mexico for my very first time.  This was the place that I met my friends for the very first time. It was the very first place that I ever went in New Mexico. And that was the… New Mexico Beef Jerky Company. And this is the place that I would drive twelve hours to get there.

Gia – Definitely.

Joey – Yeah. They go there just for the chicharrons because they are incredible. But their breakfast with all the egg and the chicharron and potatoes and all that in there with it. You just can’t go wrong with any of it. The burritos are amazing.  We actually did a little video of you getting your very first what’s that thing you got you got a Churro, which was fresh! This changed your complete outlook on the Churro!

Gia – yes!  Fantastic restaurant!  It’s very it’s unassuming.  It’s locals, it’s delicious and they’ve got several different kinds of platters.  It’s like pick your own meat, depending on what you want, whether it’s a breakfast plate or burrito.  Then you can get chicharrons as a part of that.  But I think we found that we just like getting a whole big batch of chicharrons on the side.

Joey – yeah and you can bring them home.  They’re great dog treats if they get stale or whatever.

Gia – oh they get well in the air fryer perfect. So good absolutely.

Joey – so good but we love this place.  So much you said can we please go back again before we leave and we did.  And I would go back there just for that.  Love that place and it’s not just about beef jerky.

Gia – green chili stew was fantastic.  Yeah, it’s just a neat spot.

Joey – The people there are so nice. Good Christian people. Had Christian music playing while we were there. And just such neat people. There’s a bakery in there, so you can get some sweets. That’s where we got the churro. But the food is outrageous good. I don’t know why it’s not more highly rated. There’s plenty of it.

Gia – Yeah, there’s plenty of it. Yeah, but we went there the first day, and then also we went there the day, that we had gone on our sunrise balloon trip. And so, when we finished the sunrise balloon trip, we were ready for some food. Cause we’d been up by that point for like, we’d been up for like eight hours. Cause it’s early.

Joey – Yeah. Petroglyphs National Monument was something that I had been to before, but I had only been there to get my book stamped. I love getting my national park book stamped, but we really, we really explored this time and got to see all the parts of the monument, which it’s, it’s more than a monument. It is a huge area. It has several different areas that we went to.

Gia – And yeah, we went through, I think that first day that we come in, you know, we’d spent the night in Amarillo and, we left Amarillo pretty early.  I think between what is it Amarillo and um Albuquerque it’s only like four or five hours it’s not long at all.  So, by the time we got to Albuquerque we went immediately to the New Mexico Beef Jerky for lunch.  Then after that we were kind of like well what do we want to do?  And we decided Petroglyph Natural Monument because that way we could stretch our legs a little bit. You know, we could see what kind of hikes they had. And so, we immediately, you know, of course, went to get your book stamped.

But they gave us some recommendations for hiking. The visitor center was going to be closed, closing soon and the hikes. But there were some hikes that were distant from the trailheads were distant that were still going to be open for quite a while.

Joey – So, we went straight to Boca Negra Canyon, and that’s where the bulk of the petroglyphs are. So, we were able to see hundreds of petroglyphs.

Gia – It was one of those when we went to Santa Fe, we’d seen some, but I mean, it was hundreds of petroglyphs. Parts of the trail are very well marked. But it is so interesting because you pull into this trailhead that’s like, you know, nestled into a neighborhood across the street from a Walgreens. I mean, it’s a busy section of town. You’re driving through a city and you’re like, this can’t be it. So, you pull into this trailhead and within… seriously, maybe an eighth of a mile, you feel like you’re out in the middle of nowhere. It is so interesting to me. And you can see it so much better from Sandia Peak.

And that was one of the such cool things is how, you know, Albuquerque’s in this valley, you know, dip, but then there’s the mountains and then there’s all these, what is it? Plateaus and mesas and stuff around it. And so, you can just see the edge of the city and then where the, you know, where the desert mesas and all the plateau, you know, where it begins, because as soon as the land goes up, they stop building, you know, it is a natural delineation for the city almost. And so, it was just really neat to see. to see and to realize like, no, there’s a lot. It doesn’t take much for you to feel very remote in Albuquerque. You don’t have to travel far to feel like you’re distant from the city.

Joey – Well, the Boca Negra Canyon has over 25,000 petroglyphs in it. And we really enjoy that area. And a few days later, we actually went back to the National Monument area and saw the volcanoes and really enjoyed that because you get you get to hike up to the top of at least one of them. You make it do the third one. I’m not sure you can’t do the first one. But we went to the middle one and you can see a hundred miles in every direction is what they were telling us. And on a clear day, which most days out there are super clear. And it was just absolutely insanely beautiful. Even if you do it in blue jeans.

Gia – So, it wasn’t that, it wasn’t that big. But I think it was the, you know, the one we, the first day when we went to that trail with the, all the petroglyphs, it was really cool because you can do a short trail or you can add on, you know, where it’s just like a mile, mile and a half, or you can do a longer one where you add on to, what is that? Where you’re walking along the top of a,

Joey – Yeah, it was like three and a half miles, I think. It wasn’t that far.

Gia – Yeah, like it’s a crater. It goes up at the top. And so, yeah, it was maybe three, three and a half miles. And it’s not a ton of people at all, even though it’s right there in the sea.

Joey – We saw less than ten, at least.

Gia – Yeah. But it was really beautiful and really enjoyable. And it was just so neat to see all the petroglyphs.

Joey – It really was. Loved it. Well, getting back to food, we actually had taken this from a friend of mine who had been there before. He’s like, oh, you’re going there. He said, I went there for work. You’ve got to go to this place. It’s been there for so many years. And little did I know what we were getting into because this little mom and pop shop really had a lot to offer.

So, we went to Frank’s Famous Chicken and Waffles. It was in the very south part of town. It was on Washington Street in southeast Albuquerque. But we were we walked in there and it was it was a little like a hole in the wall place. It didn’t look like it would seat more than thirty people. It was it was really, really small with a little booth, but we didn’t have to wait very long at all. And it was such good food. The chicken was outrageous. And you ordered something, some kind of a sauce. It was some kind of pecan bacon jam.

Gia – Bacon jam. And it was this sweet, syrupy, pecan-y, bacon-y. It was like a pecan praline with bacon in it. And it was so good. So good. We got okra as the starter. Mm-hmm. And then we got some, we split a chicken. I think we split the seven-piece chicken and waffles or something like that. And had food left over.

Joey – Yeah. Plenty of food. It was a lot of food. They have a website that you can go into Frank’s famous chicken and waffles.com. It’s featured on diners, drive-ins and dives. And it was absolutely insanely good. So definitely recommend that.

We also made a trip to one of the most famous places down there where Albuquerque started, which was in Old Town. And we went there early on a, I think it was a Sunday morning that we got there.

Gia – Yeah, like mass was going on. Because there’s an old church there. It’s still an active congregation, which is always exciting for me to just know that these churches are still going and have been going for hundreds of years and they’re still going strong. So, it’s exciting.

Joey – Well, this is where the Spanish settled here in seventeen oh six. And it was it’s a great atmosphere, great square, lots of shops, lots of really amazing places to eat. And it was it was just fun to be down there and just to experience everything. So, if you want souvenirs from the area, that’s where you need to go.

Gia – It’s not quite as big as the it didn’t feel as big as the old town in Santa Fe but it was still a really pleasant couple hours just wandering around and poking our heads in stores and seeing what’s what. I think that’s actually where I bought I we did end up buying a few things. I bought a souvenir Christmas ornament there of a hot air balloon because I knew we were going on the hot air balloon ride. So, I wanted to have something to commemorate that.

Joey – Speaking of that, that was what I was going to mention next. It was a bucket list for me and I wanted to experience it with you. This definitely a splurge item. This is not cheap. It is. It’s pretty expensive. I can’t remember how much it was. I think it was about five hundred dollars.

Gia – Yeah, I think it was like two hundred and fifty a person.

Joey – Two fifty a person. It lasts an hour, but you have to be there two hours ahead of time. It’s very early in the morning. And so, we had to get up around 3:30 a.m. We had to be there before 5 a.m. We were taking off going right at sunrise. There was quite a few more people that was in the basket than I thought there would be I had no idea what to expect so it was different but I enjoyed it.

Gia – yeah it was okay.  So, that morning you know you go to the place with the balloon agency or whatever for the, you know, trip. And there was only parking on the street. And so, you can see, you know, they have a park, you can see inside their gated parking lot and it’s full of fifteen passenger vans. It looks like church vans and all of them have, you know, their balloon logo on the side.

And so, we’re kind of like, OK, you know, thinking, well, we’ll definitely be in one of those vans. But we wondered how many vans they were taking out. All of them. Because when we got in there, they we filled out a safety release form at the kiosk and they have a lot of computers and then they are like, okay, there’s a restroom and then you’re going to go sit and wait. And so, you walk into this area where it’s like their storage area for all the balloons on all these shelves, but they’ve cleared out a spot and it just has a bunch of tables and chairs. And so, we were like, oh, this is, there’s going to be a lot of people here probably.

And so, we got in there fairly early, which I’m grateful for because it meant that we didn’t have to stand in line for the bathroom or anything like that or stand in line for the computer. But we sat there and we were probably there. I mean, people just kept pouring in, pouring in, pouring in. And they had given us a little, I think it was a color, color number, something like that, so that we know what group we were. And then as soon as, you know, everybody’s there and they’re ready to go, they start calling you by, okay, we’re here for the, red or whatever it was. And so, our group quickly, exited the hangar. It almost looked like an airplane hangar, but it wasn’t, but it’s where you can see just tons of, you could see baskets like, oh, they’re hot air balloon baskets, but none of them were the size of baskets that we actually ended up getting into.

So we go to this passenger, we go to this van and I foolishly, I was just lollygagging. Like, I think I like trying to grab my gloves and stick them in my pocket or something like that. And so, we ended up being at the end of our line of getting into the van and so when we get there we’re standing in the door and they’re actually like there were two people on the outside of the van and they’re acting like every seat’s taken like you look in there and we’re like there’s two more people.  Y’all are going to have to squeeze together so I think they finally people squeeze together enough so that we were able to fit two more people in the very back, in the claustrophobic section.  So, we crawl over everybody and get back there and I mean it was full fifteen passengers.

One was the pilot and then two ended up being our chase crew so what does that leave twelve people. So, yeah, the basket was big enough to hold twelve people and we take off and they drive us through town and we get to this area that is just a cleared lot in the middle right in the middle of the city.  In the middle of strip malls, a cleared lot and then they just start getting everybody pours out of the vans because every single balloon has their own van and they kind of arrange themselves in a circle.

Then, the people that are chased along with the pilot are pulling the basket off the trailer that our van had been pulling and pulling the balloon off and get everything set up. And then they have these gigantic fans, and they’re asking volunteers to help fill the, to hold the balloon open so the fan can fill it with air, because that’s what they do is they first have to fill it with air. And then the basket will be on its side with the propane torch, and they’ll heat that they’ll turn the propane torch on, which will heat the air and it’ll cause the balloon to tip over, to tip upright. And then once it’s upright, everybody, can climb in the basket.

And so, these baskets… Oh, goodness, babe. They were… They were big, but we were still kind of tightly packed in there.

Joey – You know, I’ve seen this all happen before, but I really hadn’t actually been up in one. So other than being at the Hot Air Balloon Festival, I’d never experienced this, but from what I could gather was going on is they have multiple places throughout the city that they can launch from. And it depends on the wind because they have a place that they want to land, which is at the center where they do the festival at. That’s where their goal is to land. but it doesn’t always work out that way, but they want to take you up for an hour. So, they want to make sure that they give you the best time and the best places to go to see and give you the best experience.

Now, if you don’t know, Albuquerque is considered a box. So, the way that the winds work is if you go up just a little bit, you go this way. And if you go up, you go back this way. So, they can kind of control where you go, depending on how high they go. But it was really neat to watch them. Okay, we got to go here. We’re going to meet here. I believe there were six balloons that took off that morning. There was easily ninety people that were there that were getting in, you know, seventy to ninety people. Quite a few.

Gia – I think there were six. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, there were a bunch of balloons.

Joey – Quite a few balloons that were going up. And, of course, it was freezing cold, absolutely insanely cold that morning. And this was before the sun came up. They wanted to take off right off the bat. And you being one that wants to get involved in everything, you volunteered to hold the balloon open, stand there with the freezing cold air being blown on you with the fan. And so, it was really neat.

Gia – Yeah.

Joey – I really enjoyed getting up we were the first ones to go up our pilot was incredible he had done this definitely so long and the very first thing that he did was he took us up right above the trees and we got to see you know just things from probably from fifty seventy feet up in the air and then he sat us down right on the Rio Grande River, which that was a really cool experience.  We were the only ones that were that actually did that that day while the rest of the balloons went somewhere else.  So, that was really neat. And then he took us way up, really high. And then we floated back the other way and ended up overshooting our landing area.

Gia – Oh, everybody did. I don’t think, didn’t he say nobody? I don’t think anybody. Nobody hit the area.

Joey – So, they were chasing us all over. We actually had to land on one of the Indian reservations that were there in the city. We had to call and get their permission. Somebody to get, you know, unlock the gate. Things like that. Of course, that happens all the time. But we used Rainbow Riders. R-Y-D-E-R-S, is the company that we used. I was very pleased with them. I thought they did a great job. They were very professional. They took good care of us. And at the end, they gave us a little champagne toast to complete everything.

Gia – Which… Normally they do it at the landing site, but they were I really appreciate the explain. We’re not going to do it here because this is reservation and we just want to make sure that we’re really respectful. So, after they had called the police to come and open the gate so that way they could drive in and get the balloon out where we landed. And all that packed up. Rather than having the toast there, they drove us back to the facility and everybody did their toast because everybody had landed all over the place on reservation area and all over.

Joey – Yeah. I would recommend that if you are a cold natured person, get into the balloon first. Get into the basket first. And that way you’re seated underneath the fire. So, we were right underneath the fire, right beside. We were right up against the pilot. And so, we got to feel all of the heat from the heat that was blowing up in the balloon. So, I wasn’t cold at all. uh, the whole time. Now we were layered up pretty good, but yeah…

Gia – I was wearing every like multiple pairs of pants, two pairs of pants, you know, three layers worth of jackets, that kind of thing. Gloves.

Joey – Yeah. Toboggans, everything. Also, when we got back, I was telling people that we had done this and they said, oh, I just couldn’t do this. I’m afraid of heights. I’m afraid of edges. I just want to ease your mind a little bit on this. The basket came up really high. It was way high on my chest, almost to my shoulders. And I have a fear of edges as well. But I did not. I was not afraid at any time during this. We actually hit a tree at one time and we when they were.

Gia – Yeah, we were. Having to climb because we overshot our landing area and we had to climb.

Joey – Didn’t get climbed up fast enough and clipped a tree a little bit. No big deal. He says it happens all the time. And also, we had a pretty rough landing. He said there was going to be a little bump, and now I know what a bump is. It’s pretty much where the whole basket leans completely over, and then you stand up, and then you lean completely over again. But I didn’t feel unsafe.

Gia – No, no, no, no. It was fun. It was part of it. It didn’t bother me at all. It made it more of an experience, but it is one of those where like limber, I did feel like being limber was helpful because getting into the basket, you know, some limber, they had stepping stools and everything to get in, but getting out was more of a challenge. And some people really struggled with knowing, like, with how to do it and sit on the edge of the basket and feel comfortable hopping down. But everybody there was super helpful and helped everybody get out.

Joey – The only thing I was afraid of the whole time was dropping my phone because I was taking pictures and videos and things like this. Yeah. If I go up again, which I hope to do, I’ll probably get something to tether my phone to my person. And I did actually drop my phone, but it was getting out of the basket. So, I waited till we got out of the basket to drop my phone, which I was very thankful for. Yeah. The other thing that it was just really cool because it’s so peaceful. That’s one thing I just hadn’t realized how peaceful it was going to be. Because even though you’re expecting there to be wind, but you’re going with the wind and the balloons.

Gia – So, you don’t feel a lot of air rushing past you because you’re going with it. It was just so cool.

Joey – Yeah. It was nothing like I had ever experienced before, floating on air. I’ve been in airplanes a ton, been in helicopters, but as far as floating on air, I’ve never experienced that. It’s so peaceful. No, and there was no feeling of the butterflies that come with fast descents or, you know, roller coasters or anything like any kind of, nothing like that. Nothing that you might feel on a roller coaster in turbulence in an airplane. So, it was really, it was really cool.

Well again back to food…we’re probably going to finish this our top ten on food.  I think it was the last night that we were there we were looking for some local food and I found a place that was highly rated was not really on the most popular list, but ended up being one of our favorite places that we got to go there. And it’s so hard to pronounce, but I think the guy pronounced it La Gualaguetza Mexican restaurant. It’s G-U-E-L-A-G-U-E-T-Z-A. Yeah, is how he said it. Now, this was a very pleasant surprise.

We had to drive quite a way through a lot of traffic to get there. And it was the first place that I had ever seen a Mexican place nominated for a James Beard Award. And that was just absolutely incredible. The tacos, the Burria pizza that you got was their specialty. It was humongous. We should have shared it.

Gia – I know. I was like, I walked in and saw somebody had it. And I was like, okay, that’s what I want.

Joey – Yeah. I think I got a couple of tacos or something like that. But we definitely ended up with a humongous to-go box when we left there.

Gia – And once again, at the end of a strip mall, very unassuming tile floor. I mean, I don’t want to it was clean. It just was not anything. It didn’t it wasn’t like some, you know, little ritzy place or anything like that. It was just, you know, just owned by brothers. You know, one server, one cook, five brothers. Yeah. Yeah. But I did make a note when I was making this list that said I would eat there every day of the week if I live there. It was that good. I think. And I think they’re originally from I think they’re it’s five brothers or something like that. But they lots of other kids and they’re originally from Oaxaca. So, the food is Oaxacan. Like it’s from their area of Mexico. And it’s very it’s they’re really proud of their Mole. I did not try the Mole, but that’s one of the top things he also recommended when we sat down. And it was one of the brothers that was serving that evening. Actually, it’s always them that are there serving.

Joey – Really good. Love that place. Highly recommend it. It is on Old Coors Drive in Southwest Albuquerque. So, look it up. You can definitely find it. La Gualaguetza.

Another place that we visited that I had been there before and I wanted to take you because the shopping is very unique. They have really fresh vegetables. They have all local produce. Oh, yeah. And that is the Fruit Basket. Fruit Basket is a great place. It has all the local coffees. It has all the green chilies. You can get fresh green chilies. We picked up some green chili corn nuts. Green chili hot honey. Hot honey. They have probably the most beautiful vegetables that I’ve ever seen in any open-air market. And this is an open-air market, and it’s just a great place just to go and find place, especially if you want fresh green chilies. That is the place to go.

Gia – And they have the pine nuts, the Piñones. You can get raw, fresh. You could also get roasted and salted, which we got a bag of those because I wanted to try them. That was a fun, that was a fun little rest that not restaurant, grocery store. That was a neat spot.

Joey – Well, the older that we get, the more that I realized that our souvenirs that we always bring home as food. When we were in Santa Fe, we visited several different, uh, Mexican grocery stores, New Mexican grocery stores. And I looked for a Fruit Basket there, but they didn’t have them there. Apparently, they only have them in Albuquerque. So, this is where I first saw that you can actually buy the fresh roasted fruit. Green chilies and everything green chili that you could think of is there. So definitely wanted to go there and we were able to go there one day and that was very, very exciting.

Gia – And they had, they had a lot of specialty rubs and salts, like the green chili salt, the green chili, like you got really big containers of some green chili rubs, like some of their local places that make their own rubs and all kinds of stuff like that, like seasoning mixes and spice mixes. So, we picked up a bunch of those.

Joey – My favorite seasonings are made by AlbuKirky, and it’s A-L-B-U-K-I-R-K-Y. I believe it’s what it is. But they have the red chili, the green chili, and quite a few different seasonings like that. But they’re so good, and they make them right there. And that’s a great place to get those if you can’t get them online.

And the last place that we’re going to mention was one of the first places that we ate after we went to New Mexico Beef Jerky Company, but downtown. In Old Town, we ate at the Church Street Cafe in Old Town. Now, this place is completely different than any other place that we went. A great atmosphere and amazing food. Do you remember going there?

Gia – Yeah, yeah. It was more traditional New Mexican food. Like it was, I think, didn’t we get the combination plate that had the tamale and the enchilada? Enchiladas with the green chili sauce. Yeah. It was neat. And then the sopapilla, you know, because that’s the thing they always bring you sopapillas.

Joey – And you got the Pasole soup.

Gia – Oh, I did. Yes. I do love a good, I do love a good soup. I always want to try their soups. It was really good.

Joey – Well, other than that, to pass the time, we actually found a really cool trail that we hiked on. I can’t remember the name of the trail, but we actually were able to hike right down beside the Rio Grande River. It was in the middle of the city, but in the middle of nowhere. So, it was really cool.

Gia – Yeah. So, they have a… Oh, gosh. I almost wanted to call it a trail. Like… Trailway what is it a greenway it’s like a greenway? They have them and you know areas where you can run or bike on that are paved that go for miles.  So, they have a greenway there that goes for at least twenty miles.  This greenway kind of follows the river but it’s not directly it’s not up against the river like you can’t necessarily see the river from it the entire way at all.  In between the greenway and the river there is just a span of land that they have left undeveloped, but it’s just covered with trails. And we can access the trails. And so those trails go immediately next to that span of green space between the greenway and the river.  They just go directly next to the river so we were able to meander up and see the Rio Grande.

Joey – It was gorgeous beautiful and you felt like you were out in the middle of nowhere although you were still in the middle of the city.

Gia – I just I really appreciate towns and cities that have done a lot to try to get people outside and make it where the outside is accessible and it’s not all just paved over. Albuquerque is a gorgeous city. I think it actually was really neat that morning when we had found that where we were driving through some really neat old neighborhoods looking at old houses.

Joey – It was over by Old Town. We probably weren’t two miles from Old Town. We got there. Everything doesn’t open there until about nine o’clock. We got there a little bit early And so we just needed to pass some time and this gave us a really good place to get out, stretch our legs and walk around.

Gia – Yeah. We got a couple of miles in.

Joey – Yeah. It was really nice. We really enjoyed it. Yeah. But this was a great trip. This was a very memorable trip. We love New Mexico. Of course, most of the things on our top ten had to do with food because that is what I love about New Mexico is the food is outrageous good. And I would be as big as a house if I lived there. But it was such a good time. And we had so many things that we were able to do in such a short time. We were only there five days, but we crammed as much as we could into a little time.

Gia – Yeah. It’s just a place, though, that there’s still more I want to go back. There are more national parks, like Mesa Verde that I haven’t been to, Carlsbad. New Mexico is a place that I think we’re going to go back to over and over again.

Joey – Yeah. And yeah, fall or winter is a great time to get there, especially, in the areas that we were at, because being in a lower elevation, I mean, Albuquerque is surrounded by mountains. It’s gorgeous. It’s, I mean, it’s really, really beautiful, but so the nights could get cool, but the days it was getting up into what fifties, forties.

Gia – I mean, it was really pleasant.

Joey – Yeah. Very comfortable, especially if you want to get outside and walk around.

Gia – Oh, sunny, gorgeous, sunny.

Joey – Yeah. I loved it. Well, thanks, babe, for coming on here and sharing with us your opinions and what you loved about this trip and our time there. And I want to thank everybody for listening to the podcast and joining us each week as we try to share all of our experiences. And as me and my wife, Sherry, share our travels, our adventures and our life with you.

Gia – Thanks, babe.

Joey – Everyone have a great week. Thank you for joining us again. Whatever you do, look out for number one and don’t step in number two.