In which the land is enchanted (Part I).

Back in mid-March, in the days when Hamburg still looked like this:

 

(Erkennst du deine Straße, BB?)...I helped myself to three weeks of vacation and hopped on a plane (make that several planes) to sunny New Mexico. Of course, in an ideal world, it would have been sunny and warm, but having just gone through these photos I am reminded that this wasn't really the case. Thankfully my parental units knew how to welcome me home in the wee hours of the night after having flown from Hamburg to London to Phoenix to Albuquerque: Pie. And a squishy bed with soft kitties and a ridiculous three-legged spaniel to snuggle me all through the night.

I had about a week and a half to stock up on desert, extreme land formations, family, thrift stores, general enchantment, and green chili everything before flying three time zones back east for a wedding involving my brother and sister-in-law.

Therefore, with no time to lose and jetlag working in my favor, I arose early the next morning and made it to the Rio Grande just in time to watch the sun climb over the Sandias and paint all the gnarly cottonwoods with its golden glow (and Mann did those cottonwoods glow!). I took pictures with great giddy until I realized that my fingers were no longer feeling nor feelable. So much for warm.

The stroll continued shortly thereafter, however, as mini green springtimes squeaked out their greetings along the acequia. The cottonwoods, those magnificent cottonwoods, how I love them and all their twisted majesty!

One thing that is both charming and convenient about ABQ is its bountiful display of mountainage. The Sandias loom pleasantly over the city and make for an excellent orientation point when navigating its myriad streets -- some of which are named after states, colleges, American presidents, or minerals, among other random themes. The mountain range, on the other hand, was named for the pink, juicy fruit it resembles just before sundown. (Although it looks pretty good at not-sundown, too.)

 

Whenever I make it to the Land of Enchantment (in case you missed it, that's New Mexico's motto), I always try to squeeze in a trip to one of my favorite enchanted places. This would be the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument -- certainly one of the most unique (and phallic) national monuments around. The weather wasn't particularly photogenic for this father-daughter adventure, but at least I ran into a couple deutsche Omas at the top, with whom I could complain about the weather in German (and thus continued the brain flipflopping).

Once we'd made it back slightly closer to sea level, we continued on across the wide, wide space to a  one-street-ghost-town-turned-artist-mecca that always manages to put a little color back into the world. The name is spelled like "Madrid" but pronounced "MAD-rid", like when you're mad at someone and want to get rid of them. (Not that that should ever happen, mind.) As far as I know there's no connection to the better-known Muh-DRID, but hey, whaddooweyeknow.

Zoom in on this one to see the pups parked on the porch. 

I love the 50-mile-or-so streck of I-25 between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, watching one set of mountains shrink behind me while another rises ahead and all the space in between, experiencing how the distance flows, being shocked by the giant pickups cruisin' by and thinkin' "Yup, this is Amuhrica". And the sky almost never disappoints, even on the dreariest of days. There's just too much of it not to be exciting somewhere -- more on that later.