RANAD's in the U.S. Southwest Y'all!

Hello Y'all! This is our 2015 RANAD Vacation blog. As per request - more pics than ever (use your computer or tablet -it's harder to follow on a phone).

This is actually Amtrak vacation #3 for RANAD; you’d think we work for them! This time we’re headed to the American Southwest.

Instead of sleeping in our seats
or on the floor, this year we
got lazy and decided to sleep
in cabins; 4 cots, 5 people.
Guess who doubled up?

FIRST STOP: SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO. The town is lovely, although once you’ve seen one adobe structure; you’ve seen ‘em all. We enjoyed some music in the Plaza, cooked awesome meals, and went to the fabulous Farmer’s market, complete with hipster lavender donuts (seriously).






LOS ALAMOS: Propaganda much? We learned a very one-sided version about how the Americans built the first atomic bombs and ended WWII. They glossed over the civilian toll both in Japan as well as from the testing back at home.

In honour of our visit, we had Atomic Fire balls.

BANDALIER NATIONAL MONUMENT: Here in NM they call their parks Monuments; not sure why, but they’ve all been pretty amazing. There has been a human presence in this canyon for over 10,000 years. We saw ruins from the Tyuonyi (pronounced Que-weh-nee) who built houses, some 3 stories high (see photo on left of the remains of the foundations of said structures).

Other peoples built multi-floored homes carved out of the canyon walls. Here's Rob climbing back down from one of them.

All of them built Kivas (religious structures) the modern morph of which are the kiva fireplaces/ovens that folks in NM use today.

Looks like we have an extra kid here? We’ll explain in Albu-
querque.





INTERESTING SIGNS WE'VE SEEN ALONG THE WAY IN NM:

TENT ROCKS NATIONAL MONUMENT: This place is known for its hoodoos – formations formed by the elements (also seen in Alberta). Stunning hike.

A zen moment for Aviva at Tent Rocks.








ALBUQUERQUE: So that extra kid? She’s Allie, a classmate of Aaron and Noah at Vic College. Her parents have a chocolate kitchen here in Albuquerque called Cocopotamus.

They’ve supplied truffles to the Oscars and beyond, and they did a tasting with us. YUM!!!!

And for you Breaking Bad fans, we ate lunch in this restaurant….and we even used Stevia in our coffees.









WHITE SANDS NATIONAL MONUMENT (and Las Cruces):

Enjoy the shots of this enormous park that has sand dunes for miles around.

Just one sobering element; a week before our arrival, a French family was here, and the two parents both perished from dehydration, leaving their 10 year-old son behind.

Silhouette of ANAD atop one of the dunes (R took the pic).

Chiles from the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University.

WILDLIFE: Here are four creatures photographed on some of our hikes around NM. One of these is a plastic toy that took us 5 minutes and a couple of pokes with a stick to figure out it wasn’t real. Can you guess which one it is – A,B,C, or D?

CARLSBAD CAVERNS: We had no idea how spectacular and gynormous this place would be; stalagmites and stalactites the size of massive Roman columns. The Big Room (the largest of the caverns) is apparently the size of 14 football fields with a lofty roof that we guestimated to be at least 10 stories high. These photos definitely do not do justice to the magnitude and total awesomeness of this place.

We descended 75 stories to get down into the cavern and hiked around inside for several hours.

And then there were the bats!!! Every evening the ~400,000 bats that live in one section of the cavern (The Bat Cave) exit en masse. The Park has an amphitheatre at the exit point and a ranger teaches about the bats until they swarm out about 300 bats per second for 20 minutes. It was quite impressive. We were not allowed to take photos, so this one is from the internet.

…..soon after this “Loving” pic was taken, we crossed into Texas and Rob was stopped for speeding. He got a friendly talking to (after the cop learned we were Canuks) and we were sent on our way. Welcome to Texas RANAD!


Till next time....
RANAD
PS The answer to our multiple choice question is 'C'