Day 9

July 28, 2008 – Monday – Day 9

0615 Wake up

0700 Call Shani to catch up on all the latest and greatest back home

0740 Ron texts me while I’m on the phone with Shani – guess it’s time for our webcam call! I get online and everyone (all the kids and Grandma and Grandpa R) come to see Ron and say hello. Ron gives me a list of things to send in his care package.

0805 Eat my breakfast burrito that Grandpa R got for me.

0825 Shoes on – time to go!

0833 Everyone is loaded up and we’re off to see the petroglyphs.

0838 Stop at Smith’s for gas ($3.82/gallon) and empty all the garbage bags in the car.

0841 ATM

0912 Arrive at the visitor center of Petroglyph National Monument. I have seen the signs every time we come to town and we are finally going to see what it’s all about.

0937 Leave the visitor center. Everyone bought something. Just doing our part to support the national parks!

0946 Arrive at the easy trail that we selected. They weren’t kidding when they said easy. That trail could hardly be called a trail. I think the loop was a whole 50 yards long. We went on the second easy trail on the other side of the picnic area and it is not much longer. At some point in my life, I have been somewhere with awesome amazing petroglyphs and pictrographs. It must’ve been somewhere in Utah. I don’t want to make too harsh of a judgement since we chose the absolute easiest, shortest trail, but I wasn’t awed and amazed by what I saw. Interested, yes. Amazed, no.

1017 Leave the trail area.

Drive to Old Town Albuquerque to visit the Dinosaur Museum and do some shopping. While at the museum we saw a show at the planetarium. Now that was awe-inspiring. It has been awhile since I have been to a planetarium show and therefore it has been awhile since I have been reminded exactly how vast Space is and how miniscule we are. They also did a short preview of a fractal show that is exclusive to this planetarium. The computer-generated pictures where amazing but psychedelic. I even had to close my eyes a couple times so that I didn’t get sick.

After the planetarium and the museum (and the museum gift shop of course!) we had lunch in Old Town. A bit more shopping. I found some awesome authentic Indian items (a tomahawk type thing and a rattle made from a turtle shell) but decided against buying them. Ryan bought an arrowhead. The girls found stuffed animals. And Lana found some southwestern souvenirs.

2:21 p.m. Leave Old Town and head home

2:37 p.m. Arrive back at the house.

We rested a bit then Lana and I went out to my favorite thrift shop and then to Target and Lowes to get the items Ron had requested. We also hit Sonic for happy hour (1/2 price drinks!) then home again. As soon as we got back the kids wanted to go swimming so we got in another short swim in the cold water before dinner. ALL of the kids went off the diving board. Felisa almost drowned me in the process but she thought is was great fun!

Dinner was noodles and fried rice – yum. Then Grandpa hooked his camera up to the big screen TV and we looked at pictures from the beach over 4th of July and of our trip to Petroglyphs and the museum today. I spent the evening uploaded pictures and then it was… bedtime!