Day 4
Su Oct 9
Albuquerque NM to Santa Fe NM
This was the weekend of the annual Albuquerque balloon festival and it was on this morning. However, we were on a mission to find the space house with dinosaurs. It was an unbelievable sight. This house was designed by Bart Prince, a protege of Frank Lloyd Wright. It is in wonderful shape and there are dinosaur guards out front. Bart also built a new house next door to the spaceship house. The neighborhood? It is very regular. One can only wonder what the neighbors think?
The balloons? We saw several of them hovering over the town before we left. Yes, a very pretty sight too.
Our GPS went nuts and we took a circular route to get to the Indian Pueblo Archaeological Museum. Tickle went on the walk with us and had a great time sniffing everything. Except for one other couple we were the only ones on the trail.
The Pueblo Indian Museum was a single room. It included cupboards and drawers full of archaeological findings and tools. In this way tt was interactive. Nice.
We drove through a town named Golden where we stopped by a place filled with hanging bottles. That’s when Leroy Gonzalez stepped out to invite us in. He is Golden’s mayor, sheriff and probably holds every elected office in town. Very funny. We kept on going.
The Madrid Old Coal Town Museum is located within the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid NM. We walked through the Engine House Theatre (the only theatre with a train engine peeking into it). The museum served as part of the nerve center for the mining operation.
It occurred to us that, although the museum’s focus was on coal mining, many things had been dumped into this museum. Check out that fancy, round fish.
In Cerrillos NM we headed to the Casa Grande Trading Post. It includes its own mining museum. The store exclusively features natural Cerrillos turquoise. A petting zoo is right next door too.
The museum itself is small but stock full from ground level to the ceiling. Lots of stuff!
Ellen keep talking about going to Meow Wolf Art Complex. It is something like a fun house creating an immersive art experiences that transports people of all ages into fantastic realms of storytelling. The massive installation is a combination of jungle gym, children’s museum, and haunted house. The experience is like being inside of a video game made real.
It features a wild new form of non-linear storytelling which unfolds through exploration, discovery and 21st century interactivity. Visitors choose their own paths.
They can walk, crawl or climb through an imaginative multiverse of more than 70 unique rooms created by a team of 500 artists. We were told at the entrance to try any door, be curious and have fun. That we did and we can report that we had smiles on our faces the entire time.
