New Mexico – The Land of Enchantment!

As soon as we crossed the line from Texas, we saw a complete change in scenery. No longer did we have the lovely roads and the fields of corn, cotton, and wheat. Instead everywhere your eye could see there was sage brush and long plateaus known as mesas. We also had to change our clocks to Mountain Time so we made up an hour, putting us ahead of our schedule which is always nice. Around sixty miles from Albuquerque we passed by a platoon of motorcyclists riding free as the wind with their hair flying like Easy Rider. It was No Helmets for this group! They wore black leather jackets that said, "Survivors – Clean and Sober."

The road was suddenly redressed with many billboards advertising local Indian casinos and restaurants. We found ourselves in the center of a vibrant city and since we were famished decided to find a place to eat. There were many interesting restaurants but we chose Jason's Deli. It was noon and the Deli was full of people going through the line. We opted for a salad bar and sandwiches. I was surprised that they offered a whole menu for non-gluten entrees and breads which is seen more and more in pure food communities. We opted for the salad bar that had Romaine lettuce and baby spinach as well as a great variety of fresh vegies and fruits. This was my kind of place.

When we were done, we put the Garmin Girl to work again. She directed us to our Koa Campsite a few miles out of the city. This Koa had limited number of campsites for tents, but we were able to locate one in the far corner. It was perfectly suited for us under the shade of large poplar trees and away from the road. We quickly set up our campsite and hit the pool which was under shaded roof. This was a welcome sight as the heat index was in the 100s.By far this was the longest pool of all the Koa Campsites with its rectangular size making it perfect for swimming laps. We had the pool all to ourselves and enjoyed our favorite football-catch game.

Albuquerque is a vibrant city with many things to offer visitors. We were told to make sure we went on the Tram that took you to the top of the nearby mountain. We were also told about the great bike trails all over the city. We were sorry that we had not set aside more time in this lovely place, but we found we had just a small window of time for the evening. We chose to be picked up by the Casino bus and go there for dinner. The small bus picked us up at our campsite. The driver was a walking-talking Chamber of Commerce for Albuquerque. He went on and on about how great the place was. He actually had only arrived six months before. He sold his house in Maine and relocated when his daughter got a great job in Albuquerque and his son became stationed nearby in the air force. Now that he was semiretired, he worked for the casino driving people about. He took us to the popular Casino run by the local Indians. Since it is within the reservation line, Indian casinos are often out of the jurisdiction of local governments. We had no plans to gamble and we were not hungry yet, having had a large lunch, so we went to the bowling lanes upstairs from the Casino.

We got a lane, rented shoes, and found a ball that would fit my hand. I was pretty rusty rolling lots of balls in the gutter, but John soon got into the groove and was hitting strikes. We had the lane for an hour so the second game I did much better and John kept breaking 100. Next to us there were three other bowlers. One was an Asian fellow who was super smooth and he delivered the ball with a deep knee bend so it slithered hitting all strikes. The other fellow was a lefty and prepared his motion way over to our lane so we had to be careful not to collide with him on his delivery. The third fellow had some kind of palsy and walked with an awkward gait holding the ball at shoulder level. When he delivered, he let it drop so hard we thought he would crack the floor. BONG! Somehow he never put the ball in the gutter and his scores were higher than mine. By the third game I was doing better bowling a few strikes that put me over the 100 mark. Somehow I beat our neighbor by a few points. By now John was on a roll and got his score up to 140. Not bad for not having bowled for over a year!

John hits another strike!

The bowling experience gave us an appetite so we went to the first floor restaurant and sat and ordered a light meal: Mild chicken wings for John and a bowl of soup for me. For some reason we waited forever for our food and finally when it came John's wings were so hot he turned as red as his shirt and gulped down his beer. I was waiting for my cream of chicken soup to cool, and John asked me if I wanted a chicken wing. Watching his eyes still dilating, I said, "NO Thanks!" So now it was my turn and took a large soup spoon and delivered the soup in my mouth. Within a second I grabbed for my water glass and gulped down as much as I could to put out the fire in my mouth. I looked carefully at my soup and saw a lot of green things flowing around. My suspicions were correct; my soup was full of jalapeno peppers. It was too late to ask for reorders as our bus was waiting for us but we voiced our concern to our server and her reply was, "Welcome to New Mexico where everything is HOT!"