Albuquerque

We left Las Vegas on Sunday, October 6^th and headed south. We stopped at a new Pilot station on U.S. Highway 93 between Las Vegas and Kingman, AZ to fuel up. It was so much easier than trying to refuel at the TA truck stop in Kingman. As we neared Kingman, the traffic was backed up over 2-miles in the left lane of U.S.93, as everyone was trying to turn left onto I-40 to head east.

We went to Williams and the Grand Canyon Railroad RV park where we met up with Mike and Marcia again. I was pleasantly surprised that the local CBS station was showing the Denver Broncos-Los Angeles Chargers football game. Usually only the Arizona Cardinals games are shown in Arizona on the CBS stations.  

Last Monday we only drove about 75-miles to Meteor Crater RV Park. We intentionally planned a short day so we could drive into nearby Winslow, Arizona. We enjoyed standing on the corner, seeing the flat-bed Ford, and the statues of Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey who wrote the Eagles hit “Take it Easy”.

We went to the La Posada Hotel next for dinner, a former Harvey House on the Santa Fe railroad. The hotel seemed very busy for a Monday night. We enjoyed a cocktail in the hotel bar while we waited for our dinner reservation. It was Mike and Marcia’s first visit to the La Posada and they thoroughly enjoyed their dinner and watching all the train traffic out the dining room windows.

We drove about 265-miles on Tuesday to Rio Puerco, New Mexico, just west of Albuquerque, where we spent the night at the Route 66 RV Resort. It was our first stay at this RV resort. The nearby casino was within walking distance of the RV resort, but they had a shuttle. When we checked in the RV resort, the clerk gave us cards to join the casino player’s club.

We went to the casino for dinner but hadn’t decided where to eat among the several available restaurants. When we got inside the casino, there were lots of people lined up at the buffet. We learned that with a player’s club card, the buffet was 2-for-1 on Tuesdays and it was only priced at $14.95. Mike and I quickly got our player’s cards, with a pre-loaded complimentary $5.00, and our coupon for the buffet 2-for-1.

The buffet was actually very good with several food stations offering Latin, Asian, Italian, American classics, Mongolian BBQ, and a bakery with desserts. After dinner, I used my player’s card, pre-loaded with the $5, on a Walking Dead slot machine and won $55.

On Wednesday, we drove to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta Park, where we had reservations in the VIP East RV lot and met our friends Kris and Jan. We made our reservations for the balloon fiesta a year ago on the opening day of ticket sales. It sold out in 2-3 minutes.

Julie and I have been to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta four times before (2008, 2009, 2010 and 2013) and had always stayed in the VIP West RV lot. We had an end view of the balloon launch field, but in the VIP East RV lot, we had a horizontal view of the entire field. It was much, much better.      

Our four-night stay at the balloon fiesta was fun. We “dry” camped (no utilities) for the four nights, but we could run our generator during the day to charge up our motorhome batteries.

We thoroughly enjoyed the balloon fiesta this year with its 550 hot air balloons. There were several special shape balloons that we hadn’t seen before. On Friday night, we saw sky divers above us in the dark and they used white flares and fireworks to show their location before landing on the balloon field.   

We left Albuquerque on Sunday, October 13^th, and drove south to Las Cruces for an overnight stay. Today we arrived in Tucson for a five-week stay to just hang out and enjoy the warm fall weather.

Steve & Julie Cornelius