Weekly Recap: Albuquerque and Santa Fe (NM)

Early morning at the campground

After we settled in Sunday, we started discussing our schedule for the week. We chose our campground because they offered an extremely reasonable rate for a weeklong stay with water and electricity only. However, we were 40 minutes from Albuquerque and an hour from Santa Fe. We needed to do laundry ASAP and shower, so on Monday after work we headed to a Planet Fitness in ABQ to workout and shower. Then we headed to a laundromat, got dinner, washed the car (and vacuumed the interior), picked up some grocery essentials, and headed home.

Tuesday we worked all day and then decided to go check out Sierra Blanco Brewery nearby. We'd had their Alien Amber in Roswell, looked it up, and discovered it was very close to our campground! It's a special spot. We had a lot of fun and purchased a bunch of beer to go.

Wednesday we woke up early to head to Santa Fe. We went to a Planet Fitness to lift and shower, then got a table at Henry and the Fish. This is a popular café with breakfast sandwiches, smoothies and juices, and lunch items. They also have freshly made pastries and cookies, some gluten free! We spent the entire morning working. The staff is very friendly and the food was delicious.

For the afternoon we moved to the Santa Fe Railyard. We started at Second Street Brewery for lunch and working. Once we wrapped up work for the day we had a round of beer here and then moved to the nearby Boxcar Sports Bar for dinner, watching the Villanova basketball game, and a couple rounds of karaoke for Bryn. We ended the night at Santa Fe Brewing, which is in a funky, converted house.

After staying in the trailer all Thursday, we headed to Albuquerque Friday morning for another day of working in the city. We started off with a morning workout (saving our grey tank in the process). Here we spent most of the day at Central Grill and Coffee House, staying for both breakfast and lunch. This place had excellent food, and we loved their "waffle dogs", which are breakfast sausage links dipped in waffle batter and fried. It's like a breakfast corndog. We're going to try making these at home.

Waffle Dogs

After work we honored Shawn's parents by hitting up two breweries in a row with relevant names: Bow and Arrow Brewing Company and Tractor Brewery. We stopped at Sierra Blanco again on our way back, enjoying another round of their beer with some take out. One of the guys recognized us from earlier in the week as soon as we walked in.

Saturday we returned to Albuquerque for one final day exploring the city, but this time with no work to distract us. We hiked around the Petroglyph National Monument west of the city. This is an area with a lot of volcanic rocks, many of which were carved into hundreds of years ago by the Pueblo people. We did a short loop hike in the Rinconada Canyon Trail, seeing dozens of petroglyphs along the way. After that we circled around to the other side of the Monument and hiked out to the JA volcano (dormant) and an overlook of the valley the city sits in. We ended up skipping the remaining two volcanoes on the trail because of several trail closures and incredibly high winds.

 

We tried to take the tram to the top of the Sandia crest, but it had temporarily closed due to the high winds. We pivoted to a nearby axe-throwing place ( ABQ Ax). We spent an hour throwing axes and ninja stars (much easier). We had a lot of fun and got the hang of it pretty quickly. Also, they amazingly had the Bruins game on their one TV.

After the axe throwing, we saw that the tram had reopened as the wind died down, so we rushed over to the base of the mountains. Unfortunately it had reclosed in the 15 minutes it took us to drive over, so we had to accept we were going to miss out on this attraction. Instead we took another shower at Planet Fitness and then checked out High and Dry Brewing for some beer and a snack. 

We hopped over to Lizard Tail Brewery in Nob Hill for another flight. They had the 2014 Godzilla movie playing, so we watched while we enjoyed their funky and delicious array of beer. The bartender and a couple patrons recommended Happy Accidents, a cocktail bar, and M'tucci's, an Italian restaurant. We took their advice and had some unique cocktails at Happy then headed to M'tucci's for a hearty and absolutely amazing dinner. We had a Cacio e Pepe Arancini appetizer that we LOVED. Bryn got the Pasta Alla Gricia, a carbonara-esque dish, and Shawn ordered the Bolognese. It was a great end to a great day. 

We headed back to the camper to prepare for our Sunday drive into Colorado. We were excited to get to the Denver area, but definitely sad to leave New Mexico.