A Fiesta of Hot Air Balloons and Hot Springs

Aloha all,

I know many of you have not had time yet to read the last blog post, but it’s been 10 days, and before I forget what we did, I want to put it in writing. Should be a short update anyways: We looked at some hot air balloons and mostly sat in hot springs for the rest of the time. But  the days at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta and at the Riverbend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences, NM were probably the most colorful and the most relaxing days we have ever spent. 

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta 2024

We expected the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta to be fun. Ursula had told us. We knew they would launch hundreds of hot air balloons and obviously, that would be fun to see. But we were not prepared to be so in awe. The first time we went to the festival grounds was for an evening session, when they don’t actually launch any balloons at all. So why would you go to a balloon festival when no balloons are launched? And why were we so in awe?

That pumpkin is having way too much fun
looking up that cow's butt

You go there to see an elephant hug a bear. You go there to see a 50 foot wide butterfly and a 130 feet wide cement truck. They even have a floating lighthouse, a snorkeler and a clown from Germany and pretty much any cartoon character and any animal you can think of: frog, fish, unicorn, pig, turtle, bee, sea horse, parrots, mice…all about 60-80 feet tall, all beautifully illuminated from the inside and all very, very colorful. 

We talked to the crew of these two hot air balloons.
This snorkeler and the clown came all the way from Germany

They inflated over 100 (!) special shape balloons for the evening glow event. Ask not, what kind of balloon shapes they had. Ask what kind of shapes they did NOT have! I did not see any hot air balloons shaped like a unicycle or like a can opener, but they had pretty much everything else. Two more reasons to go to an evening session at the Balloon Fiesta: A very cool drone show and spectacular fireworks. 

It's surprisingly hard to get 500 balloons
on one picture

Very early on Saturday morning, we watched the mass ascension from the Sandia Resort, where we were parked for the weekend. Around 500 hot air balloons took off that morning, including some of our favorite shapes from the night before. And yes, even pigs fly. More impressive: Elephants and bears are able to fly even while they are hugging each other. Judging from our experience at the Balloon Fiesta, almost anything can fly, just not cows and cement trucks. Don’t be silly, just because pigs and pumpkins go effortlessly up in the air, it does not mean cement trucks or cows can fly. But that didn’t stop them from trying. 

They almost made that cement truck fly!

We went back to the festival grounds for another evening session on Saturday and for the farewell mass ascension on Sunday morning. As much as we enjoy sleeping in, we wanted be there to feel the excitement of hundreds of hot air balloons being inflated, illuminated and launched. Some of them landed just minutes later in nearby neighborhoods, others took off as far as the eye can see. A handful managed to land right back on the field where they started, thanks to the “Albuquerque Box”, where the winds often blow in opposite directions depending on the altitude. Of course that is ideal for a mode of transportation with no propulsion of its own. No wonder Albuquerque has the biggest balloon festival in the world and we are so glad we were able to come here so spontaneously. Thank you, random cowboy at the parade in Durango!

Next, we visited the three sites of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. All three sites have fairly well preserved ruins from catholic churches that were built by the Spanish about 400 years ago. Actually, they were practically built by slave labor since the Spanish treated the native population terribly. Many were even killed, all in the name of the lord. But as a German-American, it is a somewhat refreshing change that in this case, the bad guys weren’t German or American. I’m surprised how many native Americans have embraced at least some aspects of a religion in which name they were so mistreated.

One of many Catholic churches
the Spaniards made the natives build

The Valley of Fire was our next stop. These are some of the most recent lava flows in the continental United States. Probably the freshest lava flows Joy will ever see. Depending where you look it up, the lava here is 1,500 to 5,000 years old. We were surprised how fresh the lava still looks, thanks to the dry desert climate. Other than the cacti growing on it, it very much looks like a lava flow in Hawaii from a few decades ago.

Lava flow at the Valley of Fire

While it was nice to see some lava to make us feel home, the main attraction at the Valley of Fire came at night in form of the comet Tsuchishan-ATLAS. By pure luck, our camp site was perfectly located; west facing on a ridge, many miles from any sizable city. The comet was very clearly visible with the naked eye, but I will admit not as bright as the iphone camera makes it look. But it was my third favorite celestial event; right after our fireball experience on Kauai and a memorable moon rise on Haleakala.

The comet over Joy

The Three Rivers Petroglyphs were probably the best petroglyphs we have ever seen. They say there are over 21,000 in the area. Our problem is that it seems very hard for the layman to determine which symbols were etched 1,000 years ago by native tribes and which were etched a few weeks ago by some idiot.

Approximately 1 to 1,000 year old petroglyphs
at Three Rivers 

We had been to White Sands NM twice before, but we rarely drive past a National Park site, definitely not such a unique one. Surprisingly, these dunes formed only about 10,000 years ago. So geologically speaking, they are roughly the same age as the lava flows at the Valley of Fire or the petroglyphs at Three Rivers. We enjoyed two walks around the sand dunes, which really look like snow. However, our attempts at sledding were comically unsuccessful.

The appropriately named White Sands 

Las Cruces is not our favorite city, but they had nice pickle ball courts, a nice little slot canyon hike and a Cracker Barrel to spend the night. Then we were off to our real destination: Truth or Consequences, NM. The most avid readers might remember that this was one of our favorite places of the 2019 road trip (https://www.bestofbothworldsroadtrip.com/2019/06/from-top-of-texas-to-our-new-happy.html). 

Slot Canyon hike outside of Las Cruces, NM

The town of Truth or Consequences itself is not that spectacular. The name is one of the most interesting things about ToC: They officially changed their name in 1950, basically on a dare of a popular radio show. Before that, they were called Hot Springs, NM. That made a lot of sense, since they have a lot of hot springs, including our all-time favorite hot springs.

When we were at Riverbend Hot Springs five years ago, it took us less than an hour before we decided to extend our stay by another night. This time, we booked two nights to begin with, but quickly decided to book another two. It’s just so magical and they managed to improve the almost perfect setting by adding two hammocks in one of the hot pools. If you ask me, this is pretty close to heaven on earth.

Our Happy Place got even Happier!

The RV Park at the hot springs was full on Saturday night, so we had to leave for a day before returning for our next two night stay. We decided to go to the Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge. That was one of our favorite places on our practice road trip in 2006. Back then, we saw tens of thousands of sandhill cranes and snow geese here. We knew we were here a little too early this time, but were still a little disappointed that instead of thousands, we saw exactly five sandhill cranes and zero snow geese. We actually saw more wildlife along the river in the comfort of the hot pools than at the wildlife refuge. 

Night magic at Riverbend Hot Springs 

But besides the five birds, we also saw a German RV at Bosque del Apache. We got talking to the owners and ended up in their very unique RV drinking beer and chatting for four hours, through rain, hail, a rainbow and sunset. Compared to Markus and Sabine, we are just on a little weekend trip. They’ve been traveling around the world for five years now. Talking to them was probably as interesting as seeing 10,000 birds.

Our favorite part of the Bosque del Apache
National Wildlife Refuge

Before we could return to our hammocks in the Riverbend Hot Springs, we visited the local history museum in Truth or Consequences.To be honest, the museum itself would have been disappointing. But again, a friendly, interesting human came to the rescue: We talked to Harold, who worked at the museum and is Apache, for way longer than we spent looking at the museum and talked about almost anything but the history of the town.

Now we are back in our Happy Place. We spend most of the day in the hammocks in the hot pools, with brief breaks to eat, sleep or write a blog.

Notice they even put Diamond Head
in the background for visitors from Hawai'i

And that’s the news from Lake ToC, where all the springs are hot, all the hot air balloons are good looking and every day is more relaxing than average.

Chris & Sandra

Mountain Towns, a Surprise Trip to Another Planet and the Sky City

Aloha all,

it’s no surprise that we loved our last week in Colorado: We re-visited five of our favorite places that we enjoyed so much the last time that we wanted to come back: Telluride, Ouray, Silverton, Durango & Mesa Verde. 

Then, when we didn’t know in which direction to continue, a stranger at a Cowboy parade told us where to go. And along the way, we discovered two of our new favorite places: The Acoma Sky City, which felt like we were in a different country and the Bisti De La Zin Wilderness, which felt like we were on a different planet.

Who wouldn't ride the free
Telluride Gondola four times a day?

When we were in Telluride on our first big road trip in 2008, this mountain town seemed almost too perfect to be real…and this time we even got to see it with the brilliant yellow fall colors! One of the unreal things about Telluride is that they have a gondola that is absolutely free. We rode it up to the summit and down on the other side to the resort town of Mountain Village four times for exactly $0. In Aspen, just riding the gondola up and down once would have been $37 per person. 

Even Mountain Village,
 the 'fake' counterpart of Telluride, is pretty scenic 

I guess we’re not the only ones who like Telluride, that’s why we could get only one night at the campground in town. But that was enough time to ride the gondola often enough to save about $300. While we were on the other side in Mountain Village, we played our usual game where we pick out our favorite apartment that we will then not buy. Except that this time, the listing we found sounded so enticing that we actually went to a real estate office to inquire about this mysterious place for “only” $440,000. 

Sunset at the Summit

What sounded too good to be true, turned out to be just that: You’re not allowed to live in the unit for more than one month per year and for the rest of the year it’s rented and literally makes more money for the hotel management company than for the owner of the unit. So in just 24 hours in Telluride, we saved $300 by riding the gondola and another $440,000 by not buying the condo.

Hooray, we're back at Ouray!

Ouray is another beautiful Colorado mountain town. But since they don’t have a ski area and there’s no gondola, it’s a lot more low key. We did a very short hike to a waterfall and to get a nice view of the town and had a fabulous Mexican lunch. From there, we took the fabulous “Million Dollar Highway” to Silverton.

The million dollar views
of the Million Dollar Highway

Last time we were in Silverton we came by steam train from Durango and had barely enough time to have a beer and walk through town. This time we took enough time to visit a gold mine, a gold mill and the heritage museum. Our tour guide at the mine was a retired miner and while I am sure the working conditions today are way better than they were 100 years ago, my main takeaway from any tour in any mine is always that I am very grateful that I don’t work in a mine. 

We're only smiling because we are taking
the train into the mine as tourists, not miners

The Old Hundred Mine at Silverton

This was the first time we also visited a gold mill. Well technically, it’s a gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper mill, since they recovered all of these metals from the ore they milled. They say the mill ist still functional, but it’s inactive. We walked through the various very impressive machinery that was used to break up the ore. I cannot even imagine the noise, the dust and the pollution that crushing and milling the rocks must have caused. Maybe working in a mine would not have been so bad.

The Mayflower Gold Mill in Silverton

On our way to Durango, we did a beautiful hike to Cascade Creek. It offered pretty much everything except cascades. While the creek wasn’t really cascading, it was just deep enough, cold enough and remote enough for a very quick cold plunge. And we were once again in awe by the amazing fall colors, not knowing that those were the last really bright yellow Aspens we would see on this trip. The scenery was about to change as we left the Rocky Mountains and entered the Colorado Plateau.

Fall Colors at Cascade Creek

Durango has one of the prettiest river trails we know. We were lucky to get a site at the Fairgrounds RV Park from where we could scooter/bike on the river trail into town. We had beers and dinner at the same brewery where we went with our friends Wassem and Christina when they still lived in Durango a few years ago. The next morning, we scootered and biked the river trail again because we had discovered that we were in town just in time for the annual “Durango Cowboy Gathering”. We watched a Western style shootout and a parade with over 100 horses. 

The parade at the "Durango Cowboy Gathering"

Then we visited the Durango-Silverton Railroad Museum where we stumbled across a delightful behind-the-scenes tour of the rail yard and roundhouse. After learning how much effort goes into maintaining century old locomotives, I will never complain about ticket prices for a historic train ride again.

Someone actually knows how to put that old engine back together:
Historic, but still working train yard in Durango

It doesn’t happen often that we have no idea in which direction we want to go next. Well, actually, we had a lot of ideas: We could head west to see some new national park sites in Utah and Arizona, we could head south to New Mexico or east to re-visit some of our Colorado favorites such as Pagosa Springs and White Sands. But we were truly undecided where we’d be going the next day until we talked to the cowboy next to us at the parade. He made us aware that the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta was happening this week. Albuquerque is less than 4 hours from Durango and we had a week to get there. Even the slow way we travel, that’s enough time. 

We went to the Durango Cowboy Gathering...
...to find out where to go next from this guy.

We even made time for a quick detour to Mesa Verde National Park. We have been there several times before and will probably go there again and again. The cliff dwellings are so unique and we just love the guided tours by the park rangers.

The Mesa Verde cliff dwellings
are not that easy to get to

Mesa Verde is one of those places that really makes me wonder what it would have been like to live at a different time. I think we will always go back there if we are within an hour of Mesa Verde. After over a month in colorful Colorado, this was our last stop before heading to New Mexico.

Ranger guided tour of the Balcony House
at Mesa Verde NP

After some research, we gave up on our plan to visit Chaco Canyon, at least for now. We realize that this is the most important and most elaborate of all the Ancestral Puebloan sites, but the long dirt road to get there seems just a little bit too rough for Joy. We are extra careful since a washboard road once loosened our black water pipe. Not my favorite RV repair project. But we visited two of the outliers of Chaco: The Aztec Ruins and the Salmon Ruins were fascinating and we’ll just have to imagine a larger, more remote version of them until we make it to Chaco.

Aztec Ruins in New Mexico

The Bisti De La Zin Wilderness area was the biggest surprise of this trip. We had never heard of it before, but we were absolutely thrilled. The rock formations are just out of this world. I always wanted to go to another planet. And Sandra was happy that we found something so otherworldly right here on our home planet. For pure scenic beauty and geological uniqueness, this could easily be a national park. But maybe it’s good that it’s just a simple ‘wilderness area’ with a funny name and only accessible by a short, but rough gravel road. And yes, Joy made it in and out without an issue. 

Weird and wonderful rocks at the "Bisti Badlands"

Which planet are we on?

There are no official trails at Bisti De La Zin. No need, because you can walk anywhere and you will find something unique, bizarre or spectacular. The fact that you just stumble over these unusual rock formations rather than following an established trail makes it even more whimsical. We wandered around one area, spent a night at the trailhead of the wilderness and wandered around another part of the wilderness the next day. The desert was bursting with shapes, colors and textures.

You never know what you find around
 the next corner at the Bisti De La Zin Wilderness

Today, our last stop before Albuquerque was at the Acoma Sky City. This pueblo is considered one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in North America. It gets its nickname from the lofty location on top of a mesa. 

Acoma Pueblo aka "The Sky City"

Visiting native American reservations can sometimes be uncomfortable. Not just because of the obvious injustice by the European newcomers towards the native population, but also because you are intruding into somebody’s home.

Our inspiring tour guide Gubi at Acoma Pueblo

This is not really an issue at the Acoma Pueblo, because most tribal members have moved to surrounding areas. And they have built a very impressive Cultural Center that makes it clear that they welcome visitors. The pueblo has a few hundred buildings, but most are only used a few times a year during traditional festivities. Only six families live in the pueblo on the mesa top. Five of them are rotating for a year at a time, only one family lives there year round. Our tour guide was one of the few permanent residents. His informative and inspirational tour made it clear that the fascinating history of the Acoma Sky City continues to today. Instead of being uncomfortable, we felt honored that we got to visit this special place.

Our descent from the mesa top 

Tomorrow we are off to Albuquerque. Most people plan a trip to the Balloon Fiesta up to a year in advance, but we think we figured out how we can do it on short notice. We’ll tell you in the next blog post how that turned out. But even if it doesn’t work out: We have already discovered such wonderful places on our way, that it was all worth it even if we don’t get to see a single balloon.

And that’s the news from Lake Acoma, where all the colors are strong, all the pueblos are good looking and all the rock formations are weirder than average.

 Chris & Sandra

PS: Thank you for all the comments and messages in response to my blog posts, I really appreciate every one of them!