I Spy: Zoo Train

Ryan borrowed an “I Spy” book from the library recently. And like most things that strike his fancy, he is obsessed with it now. Subsequently he has taken to making his own “I spy” scenes. Here is the first.

I spy a red flag, a brown reindeer, a potato in a car, and one bunny ear.

I spy a dragon, a seal, a knight and two cheetahs in a cheetah fight.

Sandia Crest

A few years ago we made a trip to Sandia Crest, overlooking Albuquerque at 10.,867 feet, vowing that we would do this again regularly. Well, we haven't done that, but today we decided it was time to go back to the top of the Sandias. The drive there was faster than I thought it would be, and before long we were parking near the ranger station. After a quick picnic lunch, we started some hiking. We first went along the crest, and then we took to the La Luz trail, which connects the crest with the foothills below as part of an intricate network of mountain trails, along which one may spend an entire day and traverse the length of the Sandias. This I plan to do when my sons are older.

We eventually hiked a mile or so down and then back up, and, while the kids (and the adults, truth be told) were tired by the end, everyone did a great job along the way. In spots, the trail is maybe one foot wide, with a pretty steep dropoff down the mountain at your side. And it's amazingly lush and green. In fact, at the crest it was almost chilly with the thin air and the breeze.

Here are two pictures from the trip. First, Summer and Evan walking to the car after lunch:
And second, the kids at the crest, with the city behind them:

Riding the Rails

On Monday, Allyson had a field trip to an afternoon Isotopes game, and as Summer picked me up outside my office, I commented that I was proud of my little girl had her priorities straight--skipping class for baseball. Well, today was another such day--playing hooky as a family.

To be fair, the kids weren't missing much. Today was the annual play day at their school, a day that last year we celebrated by skipping school for fun in ABQ. This year we decided to up the ante and get out of town.

Our plan was simple--catch the Rail Runner from downtown ABQ to Santa Fe, walk to the plaza and go to a museum or two. We figured we'd eat lunch in the City Different and make a day of it. So after a lazy morning at home, we drove downtown for the 10:35 northbound train.

The kids, as you can imagine, were excited to ride the train. I had taken the Rail Runner once before, and I thought it was great. But riding an evening train down to a stake priesthood meeting by yourself is nowhere near as fun as taking four kids on a trip. And that it cost all of $17 for the tickets (the boys all rode free) made it even better.

The station in ABQ is adjacent to the bus depot, and it's nice, although there are not nearly enough benches. Apparently a lot of old people ride the Rail Runner, and they show up 45 minutes before the train leaves the station, claiming every available bench. This would be even more pronounced coming home later in the day.

The trip itself was uneventful, which is how train rides should be. The kids read the comics (I had wisely picked up a newspaper at the station) and enjoyed watching the mesas and mountains fly by.

We disembarked at the Santa Fe Depot stop, the end of the line. The railyard area is undergoing some exciting development, and in a year or two it will be a rather hopping place (by Santa Fe standards, at least). We, however, were thinking of but one thing: food. So we ran across the parking lot to Tomasita's, a pretty standard New Mexican eatery, of which more in a few days at Table for Six. The Cliff Notes version: fast, filling, unimpressive.

Then the fun began in earnest. We walked the 3/4 mile to the plaza, eschewing the shuttle. It's a fine walk, and the day was nice--not hot, a gentle breeze. Along the way we spotted some nicer dining options for the next time we make this trip, along with a frozen yogurt establishment that we would patronize later in the day.

We strolled past the New Mexico Museum of Art, a swell place that we've been to before, on the way to the plaza and our true destination: the new New Mexico History Museum, which was completed a few years ago, adding a marvelous jewel of a museum to the already-great Palace of the Governors.

The museum was great--well organized, just interactive enough, educational and fun. And we were smart about our museuming, not trying to do too much, focusing and making the experience meaningful.

It was now a shade before 3:00, so we starting making our way back to the depot, stopping to pick up some kettle corn from a vendor on the plaza and getting frozen yogurt at the aforementioned place. Then we got the station and caught our ride home. We meandered home happy with the day and vowing to do it all again--both the hooky and the train to Santa Fe.

And now, a few pictures from the trip:

Summer and Allyson at the ABQ downtown station

Scenes from the train--Allyson and Ryan doing a crossword puzzle, Isaac with his Kool-aid mustache

Summer and the kids resting in the musuem

Eating frozen yogurt, hobo-style (in the parking lot)

Waiting for our train home

Evan on his way home

Futbol

A few weeks ago some friends asked if Isaac would be interested in joining a soccer league, and he jumped at the idea. I was a bit less enthusiastic; I've never had a great relationship with organized sports, and I was a bit hesitant to add more obligations to our family's life. But after two practices, Isaac was so happy to be involved that I had to drop my concerns. Today was the first game of the season, and it was a lot of fun.

Summer and the older kids had to be elsewhere, so Evan and I took Isaac to the game, which was held at a park on the north edge of town, not far from the foothills. A half-dozen or so games were going on at the same time, and the atmosphere was fun. Isaac's team, the Tigers, includes two other kids from the ward, one boy whose family moved to the other side of town from our ward last year, and three other boys.

Here are some pictures from the warm-ups and game:

Isaac in the game for the first time

Shooting and scoring during warm-ups

Lining up for practice before the game

White Sands 2010

It’s hard to believe that the last update to this blog was over two months ago. The era of frequent blogging seems to have come to an end-or at least have been interrupted. But, since last week was Spring Break around these parts, there’s a fair amount to recount.

The big plan for the week was to drive to Phoenix for some Spring Training, but that changed pretty quickly. The condition for the trip—finishing the retaining wall in the backyard—showed immediately to be more time-consuming than expected. So we scrapped that plan and stayed in town most of the week.

In addition to the wall, we also made some little outings. Bowling Monday, Explora and a picnic Wednesday, and a hike at the volcanoes Thursday. The weather for most of the week was great, and it very much felt like Spring was on its way. This, of course, changed Friday evening, and we awoke Saturday to a decent snow storm that left us with over an inch by 10, all of which melted by noon.

But Friday was the day. We decided to make a trip, albeit a shorter one than we had initially planned. We drove to Alamogordo and White Sands National Monument, a place we visited four years ago. It’s about a four-hour drive, so we spent a lot of time in the car, but it was worth it.
White Sands is a great sight—the sand is gypsum, and the dunes extend for miles. After driving in to the big dunes, we ate lunch and then sledded and played. Here are some scenes from the dunes:

Ryan aboard the sled

Summer and Isaac in the dunes

Evan amid the sand

On our way out of the park, we stopped by the dunes nature trail, a one-mile loop through the ecosystem of the dunes, where tenacious and adaptable plants and animals have made a home amid grueling conditions. The most amazing thing here was where shrubs rooted and created islands where other plants, followed by animals, make home. In some places, these islands include compacted sand that forms rock, a truly amazing sight.

Isaac on the hike

Ryan, Summer, and a wall of sand rock

The boys at an island

Driving home, the kids fell asleep, and we hit wind, rain, and a bit of snow. It was a long day, full of all four seasons (I got sunburned at White Sands and drove through snow that night), and a lot of fun.

On Being Impetuous

Here's the thing about our family: we plan our trips. Obsessively. Sometimes I think we go on trips just as an excuse to plan them out. When Isaac was one year old, we went on our longest trip ever, up to Yellowstone and down through Utah, lasting about 12 days. We planned every night's say, every lunch, every rest stop. And we do something similar with just about every outing longer than taking the kids to school.

So this latest outing was a great change of pace. We had talked a lot about getting out of town for New Years Eve, in part to escape the madness of the night in ABQ (see here for a friend's account of this year's insanity), and in part because we had not left town in a long time. We were due.

But we didn't want to plan much. Partially this was because of Evan's potty-training (he'll be four-weeks dry this Monday), which made us wary of a tight schedule. So we sketched out some possible destinations, but until the morning of the trip, we didn't know where we might be going.

This was compounded by a snowstorm that swept through the state Wednesday evening. Roads throughout the central mountain chain were going to be dicey. So, Thursday morning we checked road conditions and decided to head in the one direction that looked entirely clear: south.

I had been to Las Cruces--a college town at the far southern end of the state--once before, but Summer and the kids had never been farther south than Bosque del Apache (of which more later), so this was to be an adventure.

We made our way out of town around 10 Thursday morning, and we headed south on I-25. This put us on track to arrive in Cruces around 1:30, but Evan had other plans. Admittedly, three-and-a-half hours with four kids was overly optimistic, but a potty-trainee really throws a wrench in the business. We visited every rest stop between here and Las Cruces to accommodate his bladder, plus one gas station just south of T or C. But the trip--both days--was without incident.

Just north of Las Cruces is Fort Selden State Monument, which marks a post-Civil War era military outpost that protected the Mesilla Valley from Apache raids. A tiny museum displays photos and artifacts (fun fact from this stop: Douglas MacArthur spent part of his childhood on the fort, as his farther was stationed there in the late 19th century). We strolled around the ruins and got the kids some American history.

The kids at Fort Selden

Allyson and Summer among the for ruins
Isaac at Fort SeldenRuins of the adobe walls of Fort Selden

Our next stop was the New Mexico Farm and Ranch Museum in Las Cruces. This impressive facility includes permanent exhibits of 3,000 years of agriculture in the area, temporary exhibits on rural New Mexico schools and weaving, and a livestock area. We spent two hours there, and probably could have spent two more.

The kids at the NM Farm & Ranch Museum playground

The historic Old Green Bridge at the museum

The boys get their cowboy on

Here's a sample of our spontaneity: we did not have hotel reservations. Pretty crazy for a family of six, no? We had found some good options online, so we weren't completely unprepared, and since we were only a few hours from home, driving back was not a bad last resort. Fortunately, the suite we had been spying online was available--and at the same great price--so we had lodging.

It was now time for victuals. We drove out to Old Mesilla, a small town just west of Las Cruces that missed out on most of the 20th century and resembles Albuquerque's Old Town. After walking the plaza and adjoining streets for 30 minutes in search of a restaurant, we struck gold: La Posta, a good, family-friendly (unlike the only other dining option we had found, a noisy cantina) place that served up great salsa (spicy but flavorful) and decent enchiladas. The kids must have been famished, since they all ate up.

The New Year began too early (we hadn't stayed up very late, but Evan always wakes up by 7:00, which is often too early), and by 8:30 we were out the door. Our destination today was Bosque del Apache. We got there around 10:30 and spent a few hours hiking and watching the birds. There was nothing much special (lots of ducks, geese galore, and some impressive cranes), until we began our loop out.

We came up on a field full of crows and a few cranes, but the guy pulled off to the side with a military-grade camera and lens waved us over. He said that many of what we thought to be crows were vultures, and a bald eagle was out in the field with them. A glance through the binoculars confirmed it. Two hundreds yards away, cavorting with the crows, was a bald eagle.

Pleased, we drove on to the overlook where we thought we had seen another eagle on our first trip to the bosque last March, and there, in the upper branches of a dead cottonwood was percehd another bald eagle. He was closer, so the view through the binoculars was even better. He looked regal.

But it gets better. After a minute or so, and just as we were ready to take off (we were well overdue for lunch), the eagle took off and flew toward us. About 200 feet away he awooped up and to our right. It made for a good start to the year.

Hiking at Bosque del Apache

The kids at Bosque del apache--behind them is the tree where we spotted Bald Eagle #2

The rest of the trip was prosaic: lunch in Socorro and a tour of the South Valley as we made our way home. (At one point Allyson asked if we were in Albuquerque, and after our reply to the affirmative, she said, "Yeah," so it must have been good to get home.) We found the house well, a movie in the mailbox, and clean clothes in the dryer. And we've vowed to do more unplanned vacationing in 2010.

Boo!

Halloween was tempered a bit this year by the fact that Evan spent Friday evening and night with a fever and occasional bouts of throwing up. So he and I missed the ward party and he spent much of the day napping. But the kids still had fun. Here's the crew before embarking on their day:Ryan wore the most traditional Halloween costume, a homemade mummy:
Isaac went old-school with the Charlie Brown look:
And Allyson was Nancy Drew (that's a magnifying glass, not a huge lollipop, as it appears to be):
Evan did go with us later on for a quick run through the neighborhood, and I'll post his costume as the picture of the week later on.