Hey all,
Sorry for going blog silent for so long. A combination of busyness and lack of
internet. Last time you heard from us we
were in Nashville, Tennessee and now we are all the way in Taos, New Mexico. Here’s how it all went down.
Nashville was great as we enjoyed the comfort of a hotel and
everyone within a hundred foot radius appreciated that we showered for the
first time in a week. In Nashville, we
made a quick stop to surprise some of my old coworkers and got some good recommendations
on what to see and what to eat. We had
lunch at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken (awesome!) and walked around Nashville. The most interesting parts of Nashville were
the country music that plays from every establishment and the river walk, which
was pretty. Nashville was also interesting
as we were very popular with the homeless community there. We figured that seven weeks of living in a
Suburban had given us a certain level of disheveledness, but we have officially
reached the point where homeless people have stopped asking us for money and
starting asking us to be friends.
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| The EdTec Nashville Crew |
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| Hattie B's! |
We left Nashville and headed to Memphis for the sole purpose
of continuing our eating tour of the south at Central Barbecue. It was really good, but we probably didn’t appreciate
it as much as we could have since we had already overdosed on BBQ and food in
general at that point. We left and
headed on to Hot Springs Arkansas, which was by far the weirdest National Park we’ve
encountered. The park is centered around
a row of bathhouse that are fed by surrounding hot springs. Otherwise, it is just kind of a regular town,
and a regular Arkansas town at that.
There’s even a Centerfolds right across from the only campground in the
park. Hot Springs is also where Bill
Clinton grew up so maybe that explains some of it. We walked around a little bit and hiked to
the top of a hill for the reward of potentially paying $16 to go to the top of
the observation tower to get a good look of Hot Springs in all its glory. We declined, walked back to the car and drove
to Dallas.
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| BBQ overdose at Central BBQ in Memphis |
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| Hot Springs in Arkansas |
In Dallas we met up with our friend, Tommy, who was a very
gracious host, especially since we only gave him a few hours notice that we were
heading to Dallas. Tommy took us to a
great restaurant (HG Sply Co.) for dinner that is loosely based off the paleo
diet and also had yummy local beers. We
were tempted to stay in Dallas longer, but headed on to Austin. We were entertained on the drive by listening
to the A’s – Royals wild card game, which was very exciting with a disappointing
ending. After nine hours of driving we
reached the campground to find that it was locked up for the night. After debating sleeping in elementary school
or Walgreens parking lots we finally found an RV park and made camp for the
night.
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| Roof top view at HG Sply Co with Tommy |
Austin was brutally hot and humid. And this was October. We couldn’t imagine how people make it
through the summer when it is presumably hotter and more humid. We did find a great swimming hole at McKinney
Falls State Park to cool off in and it made more sense how millions of people
live in Texas. We walked around the UT
campus, found a few good bars, watched the bats fly at the South Congress
Bridge, got amazing tacos at Torchy’s, saw the Giants win their wild card game
and walked down sixth street to see what that was all about (hint:
drinking).
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| McKinney Falls State Park in Austin |
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| Beers at The Ginger Man in Austin |
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Looking out from South Congress Bridge on the Colorado River in Austin
(not the same one that runs through the Grand Canyon) |
The next morning after seven weeks on the road together with
no more than ten minutes apart Notorious B and Notorious G were separated as I
flew to New York for Parker’s bachelor party and Gina stayed in Austin, where
her friend, Katie, flew in from SF to keep her company for the weekend and drive with her to Albuquerque. We both had great weekends with our friends
and met back up in Albuquerque on Sunday night.
After getting in late on Sunday night we got up early for
the Albuquerque Balloon Festival. The
festival was really one of the coolest things that we’ve seen. There were a couple hundred hot air balloons
launching all at the same time. The balloons
came in all varieties including a bear, an owl, a pig, a whale, a fire hydrant and a basketball. After the mass launch they had a flying competition
where balloons raced to drop a marker onto a target. The most exciting part was when a balloon was
trying to accelerate so hard that it actually caught on fire. The balloon captain was so into the race that
he just kept going even though charred fragments of balloon were falling off. After the balloon festival we headed up to
Santa Fe, which is less than a hour from Albuquerque. We planned to spend the day walking around Santa
Fe, but it is such a small city that it only took about ten minutes to see most
of the town. Luckily for us it was about
time for the Giants game to start so we found the nearest brewery that had a TV. We lucked out on our brewery choice as the
brewery we went to, Marble Brewery, had just won the gold medal for best small
brewery at the Great American Beer Festival.
Their beer was exceptional and quite a bit of it is now living in our
cooler. After the game we got some
dinner and went to our campsite in Santa Fe National Forest.
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| ABQ Balloon Festival |
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The next morning we hiked around Santa Fe National Forrest,
which was really pretty with the aspen trees changing color. After finishing a quick loop hike we were
walking across a parking lot to another trailhead when we saw a guy wearing a matching
short sleeve orange shirt and long orange pants. We definitely thought this to be an
interesting choice of clothes for hiking, but when we got a little closer we
noticed that on the back of his orange shirt it said “New Mexico State Prison”. The guy also looked the part, exactly like
John Malkovich’s character (Cyrus the Virus) in Con Air. He
was walking around pretty casually either because he was out on some prison
field trip or he heard that you’re supposed to just act natural before you kill
a couple of hikers. Given the limited
upside of finding out that it was the former and the obvious downside of the
latter we decided our best move was to move as quickly as possible to the top
of the 9,400 foot peak that we were near.
We figured that White Power Bill, or whatever his name was, probably
wasn’t used to high elevation running. I
wish we a better ending to this story, but I guess the fact that we never saw
him again is good enough.
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| View from top of the peak in Sante Fe National Forest (no prisoner in sight) |
After descending from the peak, carrying big rocks and
pointy sticks for self defense in the event that White Power Bill was laying in
wait behind a tree, we got back in our car and drove to the other side of Santa
Fe National Forest to see Valles Calderas National Preserve, which is a high
altitude valley that was created by many volcanic eruptions. We were a little disappointed to find out
that most of the hiking was closed because it was elk hunting season (the elk
must think that preserve is a bit of a misnomer). We did find a short hike that led up to a
ridge and had a good view of the caldera.
We stayed at Jemez Falls Campground that night and walked down to the
falls in morning. In the afternoon we
went to Bandelier National Monument, which is the site of Anasasi ruins. We were able to walk up ladders into some of
the ancient cave dwellings, which was a pretty cool experience.
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| Hiking above Valles Caldera |
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| Valles Caldera |
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| Jemez Falls |
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View driving down from Jemez Falls
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Cave dwellings in Bandelier National Monument |
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| Lounging about |
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Gina's new house!
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We left Bandelier and drove to Taos, which is a very pretty
drive that follows the Rio Grande.
The
actual town of Taos didn’t quite have the charm we were expecting.
There were a lot chain restaurants and stores
and a lot of graffiti.
Just wasn’t quite
the small mountain town we were expecting.
The mountains around Taos, however, were beautiful.
We hiked to Divisdero Peak, which gave us
great views of the Taos Valley and then drove to the Taos Ski Valley and hiked
to Williams Lake, which is over 11,000 feet.
From there we also had great views of Wheeler Peak, which is the tallest
mountain in New Mexico at over 13,000 feet.
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| View of Taos from Devisadero Peak |
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| Highest hiking point on the trip so far (Williams Lake) |
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| Williams Lake basin with Wheeler Peak on the right |
We were going to drive to Durango, but since there were flash flood warnings in Colorado we decided to stay put and relax in Taos for one more night. Headed to Durango today, then on to Telluride, Arches, Bryce and Zion. Hope everyone is well. Go Giants.
Love, B and G
Great storytelling, great pics!
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