Thursday, November 09, 2006
Hidden Valley RV Resort, Tijeras, NM - Oct 31-Nov 8
This is a less-than-perfect (but okay for the money) Passport America park about 15 miles east of Albuquerque. They limit you to 7 nights at the PA rates, but since some parks relax this during the off season, we called ahead and were told we could stay a second week at the half-price rate. When we got there, however, we were told we could not. They relented a bit, allowing us to stay two extra days. This worked out fine, since we were tired of Albuquerque anyway. There was construction between Tijeras and Albuquerque, which made our frequent visits to Doug's brother Bob & his girlfriend Paula quite tedious. We enjoyed seeing them a lot and had many delicious meals together.
The main reason for this stop was so Willie could visit her mom in MS. It is fairly convenient to fly from Albuquerque to MS. Willie flew to Columbus, MS, this time and spend 3 days visiting. Ann is doing well at Winston County Nursing Home. It is providing exactly the type of care that she needs. Ann had just celebrated her 87th birthday and seems to be looking better than when she moved in. Willie's rental car was a very sporty red Chevy Neon. It's a good thing she didn't need to do anything practical in it! No room for hauling or elderly riders. Willie enjoyed seeing the fall colors, both from the airplane and on the ground. In addition to visiting Ann several times a day, Willie also enjoyed visits with other family friends and relatives. Since this trip was using a "free ticket", Willie was routed through Atlanta (not exactly the direct route) where she had a 5-hour layover on the return trip. 
Luckily, her former college roommate, Lucy Hinman, lives in Atlanta and was available for lunch & visiting at the airport. It made the time fly and was a great visit. After re-entering security, Willie walked instead of taking the train and was rewarded with a lovely display of African sculpture along the walkway.
We went to Petroglyph Natl Monument for a day of hiking. There were several short hikes that we hadn't done before because it had been too hot, but the weather was perfect the day we visited, almost too hot even. We hiked to the top of one of three small volcanos on the West side of the park, then drove around to the East side and hiked the Rinconada Canyon trail, which has an abundance of rock art, some of it quite unusual, done on tumbled & scattered boulders, not on large canyon wall surfaces.
Another nice outing was a drive to the top of Sandia Crest. We had considered taking the tram to the top but found it was closed for its yearly maintenance. The drive was lovely, and we enjoyed a couple of short hikes at the top. We had hoped to get our first sighting of brown-capped rosy-finches at the feeders, but we seemed to have missed them by about 10 minutes.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 6:14 PM 
