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Published: October 31st 2008
It's been a while since I have written, and I'm sure all of you have been waiting on the edge of your seats for my next entry... It's going to be pretty long because a lot has been happening, so get ready to procrastinate from whatever you were doing!
Almost 3 weeks ago, Sarah, Brandy, and I decided we were going to go to the International Hot Air Balloon Festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Well, actually, Brandy decided we were going this past summer before she even met us, and needless to say, we all had been waiting for this for weeks! We decided to leave on Friday night after work and drive down to Albuquerque. Because we are volunteers on a budget, we were hoping to stay over in NM for two nights for as little money as possible. We had planned to camp on Saturday night near Santa Fe, but we weren't quite sure what to do about Friday because Albuquerque was going to be packed full of people going to the Balloon Festival. So, it turns out...you can sleep in the parking lot at Wal-Mart... Because it's open 24 hours, and Wal-Mart is the devil, they want
as much business as they can get. So, they have actually made it legal to sleep in the parking lot, in the hopes that people in their RV's and cars will buy things because they feel guilty for sleeping there for free. Anyways, we had planned to get up at 3am to get into the Festival to see the sunrise balloon show. We didn't want to pay to sleep at a motel for only 3 hours. So, Sarah, Brandy and I "slept" oh so comfortably in my car in the parking lot at Wal-Mart. Oh, and Mom, there is 24-hour security, so everything was safe!
Moving on, we woke up super early, brushed our teeth in the bathroom at Wal-Mart and were on our way to the Festival. It was pretty cold, and getting a little windy, but we were pretty happy eating our breakfast burritos and waiting for everything to start. Two hours later, after watching some guy fire up his balloon's flame to test the wind, we find out that it was TOO WINDY for the balloons to fly!!! Man, were we mad!!! We had been waiting for months to go see over 700 balloons from all
Testing the wind
This is what we watched for at least an hour, while the guy was trying to see if it was too windy to fly.over the world take off at the same time, and we got NOTHING!!! We saw one balloon almost being blown up, and that was about it. I'll spare you more details of our disappointment, but we moped around the Festival a bit more and went to take a nap in my car. The rest of the day was spent wandering around Albuquerque and driving to Santa Fe. Upon our arrival there, we were going to go check out a nearby Indian Pueblo and set up our camp site. Unfortunately, our day continued in the way it began as it started storming directly over the mountains in which we were going to camp - heavy rain, hail, and lightning striking the ground. So....we turned the car around and went to find a Motel 6...
As unfortunate as Saturday was, Sunday was definitely better. We hung out in Santa Fe, had a delicious lunch, and visited the Georgie O'Keeffe Museum. We, of course, did some unnecessary shopping, and then it was time to head home. Fortunately, we took a bit of a detour and got to pass through Abique and Ghost Ranch, two of the places Georgia O'Keeffe lived and painted.
It's no wonder her work is so beautiful! Finally, perhaps the highlight of the trip for Brandy, we were crossing over one of the passes that leads back into the Valley, and we saw snow!! Sarah and I were able to witness Brandy's very first experience of snow, in her entire life!!! She couldn't stop screaming as we stopped the car so she could go play in the snow. It was an awesome end to what began as a less than ideal weekend!
The next week was pretty busy with activities both at work and in the evenings. On Monday night, a group of us went to the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge to see the cranes, that migrate through the Valley every fall and spring. It was an awesome sight as the sun was setting, hundreds and hundreds of cranes just kept flying from the mountains to spend the night at the Refuge. The next day was also pretty exciting, because Alamosa received it's first snowfall of the season!!! We all woke up to the ground dusted with snow, and I got to ride my bike to work in the snow for, what I'm sure, won't be the last
time this year. Then on Wednesday, I got to make a delivery to our San Luis food bank. The woman who works there is this awesome older woman who is so incredibly generous! She also spins llama yarn, so if anyone is interested, I have also taken up knitting and may be able to hook you up with a scarf :-) I had a beautiful drive to San Luis and back, and there are some pictures posted to prove it.
The following weekend, we had a volunteer (Emily) visiting with us on her Fall Break and needed some way to entertain her. So, we decided to go visit the Great Sand Dunes National Park - these crazy big sand dunes are the tallest in North America and formed at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountain range. We hiked all the way to the top of the second tallest dune which measured 650 feet (or at least Ben and I did...). The view was amazing, and we enjoyed playing in the sand!! After our climb down, we decided to take Emily to Zapata Falls, a nearby waterfall, that was only a short hike off the main road. It
sounded easy enough, until Ben informed us that we had to walk through the creek to get to the waterfall. This also may not sound too terrible, until you realize that the water was coming from snow that was melting off the top of the mountain!!! It was FREEZING! We took off our shoes so they would stay dry, and by the end our feet were so cold it hurt! But, the waterfall was beautiful! It was located inside a little cavern, and luckily there were some dry rocks to stand on to enjoy the view. We had timed our finally adventure perfectly, because as we were walking back to the car, we witnessed the most beautiful sunset I have seen since arriving in Colorado. The sand dunes were tinted pink on the East as the sun lit up the sky over the mountains all around us!! Brandy and I were going crazy on our cameras, and we still couldn't do it justice. Emily definitely got to see some awesome parts of the Valley on her fall break trip!
The next week, I got to go on a couple educational field trips within the Valley. The first one
Chainsaw Carving Contest
This was one of many pieces of art that was being carved by chainsaw artists as a sideshow to the balloons. was to the a local mushroom farm. My first impression was....EXTREMELY SMELLY!! Some days, if the wind blows just right, there is a horrendous smell that drifts into Alamosa. Well, I found out that it's the mushroom farm. It's a mixture of compost (which is mixed in HUGE mounds outside the building) and the mushrooms in their various stages of growth. We got a great tour of the facility, and it was interesting to see how many rooms of mushrooms they have growing at one time. Each room has rows upon rows of shelving that have at least 6 shelves of mushrooms growing almost to the ceiling. The workers must climb up the shelves, straddling the aisles, to harvest the mushrooms. It's a crazy balancing act, and I tried not to think about what happens if they fall. On top of that difficulty of the job, the whole building is damp and humid, with who knows what floating in the air, because the mushrooms need a certain amount of moisture to grow. As a public health student, I again was curious as to the actual workplace hazards...despite our tour guide's claim that no one has gotten sick... With many of
my clients working at places like this, it was interesting to see exactly what they deal with on a daily basis. From what I understand from people in the community, that particular job is one of the less favorable ones in the area (surprise, surprise).
The next day, we visited a local potato farm, which was probably one of my favorite days so far in the Valley. Our hosts were extremely generous and very knowledgeable! We began the tour inside the greenhouse, learning how the potato sprouts are split multiple times to created thousands of plants that are certified and free of disease. We observed potatoes in each step of the process of becoming ready for distribution to the packing plant. The son of the farm's owners showed us all of the planting and harvesting equipment. By far, my favorite part was going into the warehouse in which they store all of the potatoes after the harvest and before they get loaded into trucks to be distributed for packaging. It was a MASSIVE warehouse filled to the ceiling with PAPAS!!! It was crazy! Check out the video I have posted to see some of the process of loading the
potatoes in the trucks. We finished off our tour with an absolutely delicious lunch of, you guessed it, potatoes! Backed potatoes with chili and tamales! Sooooo good! As we were eating, the owner of the farm talked to us about sustainable agriculture and how our countries farming system is basically doing away with family farms. There is so much to say about what I learned at the potato farm (and since I have arrived here) that perhaps it should wait until another entry...
Congrats if you made it all the way to the end of this! More to come soon about my adventures from this week!
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