7/4/12 - Road Trip pt. 2

Alright, so I last wrote before the bat flight.

The bat flight was cool, but totally underwhelming.  There weren't nearly as many bats as we had hoped for, and they were a lot smaller than we thought, so it was really hard to see them.  We blame the noisy crowd, as did the park ranger who was there.

The next day we drove through Roswell, NM to Albuquerque.  Roswell was actually a decently sized town, and had a lot of alien shops, but we didn't go see where whatever-it-was crashed, because we wanted to get to Albuquerque.  When we got to our hotel in ABQQ (it's too long to spell every time, so I shortened it) we settled in and then dad went to go get the oil changed at the local Toyota dealer while I stayed at the hotel and a) watched shows because I'm boring and b) looked for a place to eat dinner.  I chose a French restaurant, where I had this crepe:

(Basically, spinach with cheese and garlic. Omnomnom)

...and then we split this crepe:

(Crepe Suzette, an orange-y delight)

After dinner, I went swing dancing!! However, I have learned my lesson to do my own research on when and where there is swing dancing rather than just listening to my dad....he found the west coast scene....I don't know west coast very well....but the people were nice!! I did manage to find about 3 other people who knew lindy hop who weren't bad, and I danced through the west coast for a few hours before heading back to the hotel and passing out.

Today, we went up to Sandia Peak.  We took a tram up to an elevation of over 10,000 feet, and when we got up there we were going to hike around, but when we realized that due to living in Florida and rarely coming above sea level, the air was way too thin and neither of us was breathing well enough for any real exertion.  So we did this instead:

(Me, getting on a mountain bike)

Or, well, we tried to.  See, it had been so long since either of us had ridden a bike, that when we got on the super thin, super bumpy trail, I pretty much immediately fell down a small hill (got a nasty bruise on my inside thigh, it hurts to sit down now) and my dad went off the trail twice.  So we took the bikes back (not very far, mind you) and took the ski-lift down instead (we're very lazy people).  It was a half hour ride down and another half hour back up, but at least it was a scenic view.  Case and point:

(The bike trail we didn't take, yes, it was that small)

Yup, super pretty.  So after that, we went to the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History, where I found a shirt that says "Talk nerdy to me" with a picture of taped glasses.  I wanted that shirt so bad but they didn't have my size in anything but an obnoxious pink color (which we all know I don't like).  So I got a different shirt instead, that makes a reference to the periodic table of elements, which we all know I love (or you should, anyway).  Anyway, the museum had the history of the atomic bomb, and a bunch of information of WWII and radioactive elements.  They didn't have much of the science behind it, which disappointed me a little bit, but it was still really cool.  They even had replicas of Fat Man and Little Boy, and a couple of emptied missiles that had been damaged and never actually detonated.  Along with that, they also had retired bomber planes, including a B-52 (which was totally awesome)

After the museum, we were going to go look at the Petroglyph monuments, but we weren't aware that it was at least an hour and a half walk to any of them, and it looked like a storm was brewing so we didn't manage to go do that.  So we went to a Walgreens in search of a couple of things, and then came back to the hotel so I could eat the rest of my spinach crepe and dad could have (whatever he had) his dinner.  So now I'm sitting here, writing this, waiting for the rest of my laundry to dry and hoping maybe someone will set off fireworks so I can see them from my hotel window, and then packing my stuff so we can head to the Grand Canyon tomorrow (yay!!).

Happy 4th of July!!

-Panda:)