Albuquerque - A Study in Color

On down the spine of the Rockies we roared.  I was driving out of Colorado, so we were roaring.  Or I was roaring and trying to get the guys to join in... they though it was lame.  When the bellicose sounds of elation had subsided, we discovered that New Mexico is much prettier than any of us expected.  We also discovered that there is a Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Don't worry, there is good reason you've never heard of it.  If you have, then you know why we hadn't heard of it before we drove through it.  

New Mexico, on the whole, surprised me in many ways.  The northern part of the state is very much mountainous, not the desert scene I painted in my head growing up--complete with adobe filled arroyos.  In fact, the mountains do not subside until you get to about Santa Fe.  Furthermore, there are more ranges than just the Rockies on your Western side.  Soon you find yourself flanked by the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the East.  The mountains do shift in hue from the greens and blues of Colorado to the deep reds leading you subtly into the high desert.  Albuquerque sits at an elevation of 5,314 feet above sea level.  That was higher than Fort Collins (5003) and Denver (5280)!  As we arrived in Albuquerque, we noticed that we were in a valley with mountains on three (nearly four) sides.  The crisp, clean blue signaled that we were still fairly high up.  

We arrived at the home of our Mu Alpha brother, Stephen Ford.  His family greeted us with much warmth and with a TON of GREAT FOOD.  It was so nice to be close to delicious avocados again (I ate nearly the entire bowl of guacamole BEFORE dinner).  The Ford family's warmth overflowed into their ease of conversation and their broad knowledge of the United States.  After making fun of North Dakota, I learned that Mr. Ford was from there (good times).  Mrs. Ford, on a much more cultured note, was born and raised near me on the border of Orange and LA county.  Clearly, this family had a bit of everything.  They had travelled the world in their missions work and had instruments from all over and an cosmopolitan understanding of world cultures.  It had all reflected in their son of course, but it was so edifying to see it in the parents as well.  We had the pleasure of singing for their family and the pride of musical brotherhood as Stephen could join us for some of the songs.  :)  As the sunset, they took us into their backyard to show us the Sandia mountains around their house.  Sandia means watermelon in Spanish and the mountains lit up with a deep red glow.  The sky was so dry, however, that the sunset was not as we had seen for so long in Michigan, the East, and the South.  Instead, the sunset lit up the ground beneath it and a bit of the sky, while the remainder of the sky held on truculently to its vibrant blue until it had to concede its color to the deep red band of clouds beneath it.  The clash of blue and red continued until the whole evening was consumed in a deep shroud of purple.  That night, we watched some Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and dozed off to bed. 

We awoke the next morning, went to our respective churches and were off again.  Today we set our GPS for Flagstaff, AZ... if only we knew how lost it would get us.  :)