We were off to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta with Alki Tours. It is a 10-day celebration of launchings, races, and contests on a plateau the size of 54 football fields. After flying to Albuquerque and spending the night at the Fairfield Marriott Hotel, we drove to the Balloon Park at 5:30 a.m. October 4th. Our early departure gave us a head start on heavy traffic and got us to the Park in time to see three Dawn Patrol balloons test the winds. At 7 a.m., a balloon was launched carrying the United States flag. During the next few days, 550 balloons [View Full Entry]

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Day 13 - We headed to Santa Fe which is a beautiful old like spanish town, i think the oldest in the USA dating from the 1600's. Small little markets and shops. All buildings have to be kept to the same colour...though they have a choice of 20 something shades of beige they may use! Here we had a look around all the little jewellery stalls along the streets...there were plenty all trying to sell their handmade jewellery from local stones. We then got speaking to some firemen who let us take a picture and one even let one of the [View Full Entry]

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Santa Fe - This will also be a longish post as we had so many adventures here. I will stick to those that inspired and lifted our hearts and expanded our minds. Let me start with an observation. It rained last night and this morning in Taos. As I packed up to leave and went outside with KC, my senses were filled with a comfortableness I rarely experience away from Rancho Murieta and I was “home”. I really love this place. The drive down to Santa Fe was uneventful except for the on and off showers. As I got closer to [View Full Entry]

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Last night I didn't sleep much. I was thinking too much. Stupid things like compiling "to do" lists in my mind, mentally packing and unpacking my suitcase, remembering I had to pick the apples and Asian pears from our trees, making unrealistic plans to prep and freeze the bounty. You know, silly stuff. Well, we did manage to pick the trees and we ate one yummy apple. The rest we put away in the refrigerator. Richard assures me they'll last until we get back... Tomorrow we head for Chicago. We have lots of time to transfer from Midway Airport to O'Hare [View Full Entry]

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That is the question... red or green chili sauce? But even the country side responds to this all over you see red soil and scattered green bushes. We slept over in Santa Rosa and hit the road to Santa Fe in the morning. There we visited the national history museum, the Georgia O'Keefe museum and strolled through the Mountain Man Fair Trade. The climate is hot and dry, after 10 minutes out in the sun you feel like your in a dehydration chamber... After a quick stop in scenic Albuquerque downtown we stopped in Grants for some fabulous sizzeling Fajitas and [View Full Entry]

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Today we had to sadly leave Rick in Alpine and start our journey back north. We had a long drive straight through to Santa Fe. As we wanted to get to Santa Fe early enough to be able to do some sight-seeing, we left Alpine early and hit the road. The drive was uneventful. We drove north through the Guadalupe Mountains and saw El Capitan, the highest point in Texas. We also drove right past Carlsbad Caverns but did not stop to visit as we have been there a couple of times before. We stopped in Roswell, NM for a nice [View Full Entry]

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Julie and I met in March of 2008 in the Cape Town neighborhood of Observatory in the Vivant Student Lodge. We bonded quickly through the late arrival of my motorcycle being shipped from America as Julie would become just as frustrated as I was when week after week it wouldn't show. We remained good friends after I continued on to Tanzania that May with Skylar and she completed her internship with a local NGO. After I spent the summer in Europe we met in Paris in September upon her return to France from Cape Town and spent a weekend enjoying the [View Full Entry]

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Today was a totally rocking day! We ate burritos at this restaurant in Santa Fe called the Bumble Bee's Baja Grill. Mom says "I had a "naked" burrito with asparagus and it was scrumptious!" My burrito had black beans, rice, pico de gallo, and cheese in it. I would give it 9.5 on my official Burrito Scale. I took off .5 because it was a little "too spicy!" It was, like all of the past burritos, perfect in every way imaginable! The restaurant looked really cool inside because there were all of these bumble bee pinatas hanging from the ceiling! We [View Full Entry]

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Greetings to all of you! My name is Hannah Elizabeth deNevers and I live in Los Alamos, New Mexico USA. In August (the twelfth) I will travel to Cologne, Germany and begin living with a Family- The Ditterts who have graciously offered to host me for the beginning few months of my Exchange. It should prove to be quite an experience and I hope that through travelblog.org I will be able to keep all of you updated as to the events of my Exchange As you probably all know this already, I will say goodnight Thanks for reading ~Hannah deNevers [View Full Entry]

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July 3, Friday We were up a bit early again this morning, although the temps had been very nice the past two days I didn't know quite what to expect the coming day to be. I wasn't sure if we'd hold the elevation or drop down low into the desert temps again. I-40 to Flagstaff, then off the dreaded "Interstate" and on to what was marked as BIA 15. I think this stand for Bureau of Indian Affairs since we were on Navajo Indian Lands. This was a very nice, but very lonely several hundred miles of traveling, and it was [View Full Entry]

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