Steve & Susie's Excellent New Mexico Adventure

After researching activities, I realized that the timing for late April was perfect. The weather would be mild; the 25th annual Gathering of Nations, the largest Pow Wow in the country, would be taking place, and....it was off season. That spells one of my favorite travel words: deals!  So, New Mexico, Land of Enchantment,  got the nod.

We arrived in Albuquerque on Saturday, April 18 after a non-stop 3 hour flight from Orlando.  Our hotel was the Quality Suites, and these were the real thing, with a separate bedroom, sitting area, two TVs, two phones, a waist-high refrigerator for Susie's Cokes and a small microwave for any meal leftovers.  Location was close to the airport and maybe 200 yards from an I-25 exit. The I-25 interchange with I-40 was just a few miles away, four exits up, so we could quickly be heading east/west or north/south on an excursion.  

At Albuquerque airport, I noticed that the photograph I took at  left was badly distorted. Attempts to resuscitate the camera at the hotel with new batteries and different media card failed. Uh oh....the  vacation had just begun and my camera's a goner. (On the return flight, I recalled a technical advisory about a defective sensor that can go bad in high heat/humidity, as in Florida. I checked it out online and that was my problem. Canon repaired the camera free even though it was years past the warranty. So my new camera  is a backup camera.) 

As good luck would have it, I noticed in the Sunday ads that one of the electronic stores was clearing out an older generation camera for half-price. I picked up a 5 MP with 5x optical zoom for just $99. The old camera was only 2 MP and 4x zoom. This new camera allows me to adjust MP, so at 3 MP I had 1,400 photos on the 2 Gig card. (But unlike the Canon, it has no optical viewfinder so framing was hard.)

After a fortifying complimentary hotel breakfast of waffles, eggs, sausage, cereal, bagel, juice and coffee (I'm a hardy eater when it's free!), our first stop after buying the new camera was Bien Mur Market at Sandia Pueblo just north of town. I thought it was an outdoor market with vendors. It's an indoor, high priced store but they were clearing out a few a styles of the "painted ponies" collection for half-price. Lucky for me one of the styles was a "Samurai warrior horse" to add to my collection of military knick-knacks. 

Next stop was the Fairgrounds, which has a flea market on weekends. We found some very good buys there, including the popular "Homeland Security - Fighting Terrorism Since 1492" T-shirt, which features four well known "resistance" Indian chiefs (including Geronimo) in "battle line formation" with rifles ready.

About 3 PM, we got together with my Uncle Sonny and caught up on about 45 years. We had dinner at a local institution - El Pinto, established in 1962. After dinner, we visited Sandia Pueblo Casino.