Last week I tagged along on Christopher’s work trip to Northern New Mexico. We flew in and out of Albuquerque, so we did a little sightseeing there, but spent the majority of the week closer to the Colorado border, in Farmington.

Saturday - Albuquerque

After we arrived in Albuquerque we had lunch at Sawmill Market, a food hall. We ordered from the following locations:

Flora Taco-To-Go: We had 6 tacos, mole chicken x 2, carne asada, cochinita pibil, Baja shrimp, carnitas
Lemon and Brine co - We got regular lemonade, raspberry lemonade, and a roasted green chili pickle. I really liked the raspberry lemonade. Both could have been a little lemonier, but I also love lemons and could just eat them straight.
Hiro sushi - Chris had the dragon roll, it looked really cool.
Neko Neko - We shared a taiyaki cone with Nutella, strawberry soft serve, sweetened condensed milk and graham cracker crumbs. I’ve been wanting to try one of these cones for years, and I’m glad I was finally able to get one.
Plata coffee - I got my usual, plain hot latte.

While we were eating I accidentally hit the voice to text button on my phone and recorded this random little diddy: “00 on me I’m sorry yeah you are octopus sure what’s in that role as it was cute and so I marry you.”

After lunch we stopped by Pennysmiths Paper and I got a few postcards to send to my family and a couple of new pens. I am such a sucker for pens. I just love them.

We decided to get a little culture and went to Petroglyph National Monument. The visitor center had a video on the history of the Petroglyphs and a gift shop/info station. We watched the video, picked up a trail map, and of course a souvenir, then drove to one of the trail heads.

We hiked up a hill to see the petroglyphs, the cool volcanic rocks, and to see the view from the top. We ended up being the last ones to leave the park and the park ranger waited for us to leave and followed us out. Oops.

We wanted to see more big views, so we bought tickets for the Sandia Peak Tramway. The tram takes you up to the crest of the Sandia Mountains, a little over 10,000 ft. You can see so much from the top and it’s breathtaking. It was even more special because we went up right at sunset and got to watch the sunset from the top of the mountain, surrounded by the snow covered trees and ground. It was magical. And so fucking cold.

We picked up dinner from the Golden Pride BBQ drive thru, based on a travel blog recommendation. The line was crazy long, like wrapped around the business next store long. We took that as a good sign. Chris had the rib plate with fries and green beans, I had the bbq chicken plate with mashed potatoes and gravy and mac and cheese. We also got a sweet roll to eat as a snack on the drive back to the hotel. The roll was decent, the meats were good, and the sides were all absolutely trash. It definitely was not as good as the reviews said it was.

As we were unloading our stuff at the hotel, we saw a desert kit fox. It was so cute.

Sunday - Albuquerque + Farmington

Weather in the desert is wild. We woke up to a High Wind Warning. A couple hours later NWS issued a Dust Storm Warning and a Snowsquall Warning. I didn’t even know what a snowsquall was so I had to google it. And considering it was almost 50 degrees outside, the idea of a wall of snow coming through boggled my mind.

We did end up getting to see a dust storm. It was like a dry, dusty, hurricane with wind gusts up to like 65 miles an hour. The wind was opening the doors to the restaurant where we were having brunch, made it hella hard to get in and out of the car depending on how you were parked, and the dust basically sanded your skin off. It was rough.

We had brunch at The Daily Grind. Chris had the breakfast burrito with red and green chili on top and I had the Sweet Tooth breakfast: pancakes with syrup, raspberry sauce, and whipped cream, plus eggs and extra delicious bacon. I also loved the little milk dispenser they brought with my coffee, so cute.

After playing in the dust storm, I wanted more coffee. We headed to Humble Coffee for a plain hot latte. It wasn’t my favorite. And that made me sad.

The dust storm and cool temps made it a perfect museum day. We went to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History to learn all about Nuclear weapons, power, medicine, and such. It was a really cool museum and they even had a big yard with planes, missiles, rockets, and part of a nuclear submarine.

We drove by a Spaceship/UFO house on our way out of town. It was funny to see this epic place on a block of regular square houses.

We went to El Pinto Restaurant for dinner, again based on a travel blog recommendation. I had the rolled chicken taco plate and Chris had the green chili queso burger and of course we had chips and salsa for the table, but they also bring sopapilla for the table and have local raw honey to put on them. The sopapilla was the best part of the meal, hands down. Our entrees were meh, not bad but not special.