We don’t generally go out for breakfast but today we decided to give another Albuquerque restaurant a go. Although I am sure that my selections for breakfast fare are bad for me, I persevered to continue my quest for the best chicken fried steak in the nation. Currently, Jake’s in Bend, OR, and Dean’s in Clackamas, OR, are the undisputed leaders in serving this very tasty but possibly unwholesome meal selection.
I started by accessing the internet using our terrible phone and phone service provider, both of which seem to work in this locale but few others. I was able to find a website that purported to illustrate the 15 best places in Albuquerque to get chicken fried steak. Murphy’s Mule Barn led the list but, in the interest of fairness, we selected a place called Tim’s. This place was supposed to have large, fat person-sized portions of this tasty meat dish. We hopped into Charlotte’s cab and drove the 25 miles or so to Tim’s.
Right after arriving in Tim’s parking lot, I began to suspect something was fishy because there were signs out front indicating the place offered free hugs. I do not cotton to free hugs from strangers since 1. I don’t know them and I do not normally touch people I don’t know. 2. Hugging offers an opportunity to savor the B.O. and stinky heads of strangers. 3. Hugs instead of food are not what we were seeking.
We were promptly assigned a waiter who turned out to be a tubby little twit that grinned maniacally as he approached. The other waiter had big wood platters in his earlobes that closely resembled round plastic laminate tabletops. When queried on what we wanted, I explained that we had found this restaurant by perusing the web and they were way up on the list of restaurants that served chicken fried steak. He revealed at this time that they no longer served chicken fried steak because it had been removed from the menu two weeks prior by the manager. Things went downhill from here.
The twit was a competent waiter but the food we ultimately ordered after dealing with my heartbreak was mundane and nominal. I had a bone-dry breakfast burrito and Peggy had a Reuben that she described as “unsatisfactory.” The fried potatoes were okay but, all in all, the food was unremarkable.
We left only partially satisfied (no longer hungry) and decided to wander over to the part of town where the annual Balloon Fiesta was supposedly taking place after visiting the bottom station of the Sandia Aerial Tramway. We accidentally took the longest route through town due to some road selections based entirely on ignorance and, after circling the balloon launching area several times, finally achieved our goal. Unfortunately, the weather in Albuquerque has not been ideal for ballooning so there was absolutely nothing to see except a big empty sky.
Balloon watching found to be boring and hard-to-see, we then drove to the National Museum of Nuclear (nucular if you are W.) Science which is right across the street from the local Costco. Because of my geezerism, they knocked $2 off the regular entry price for my ticket. Peggy is not ancient so she had to pay full price of $12.
The museum starts with a lot of reading of nifty plaques on the walls with text explaining who was the funny-looking guy in the adjacent picture. They are not real forthcoming on nuclear theory or physics. After reading a bunch, you enter the more entertaining parts which have models of reactors, replica Fat Man and Little Boy atomic bombs that were used to barbecue about a quarter million Japanese, cannon-fired atomic shells (hope they don’t fall short), rockets, bomb control units, a Packard military limousine(?), interactive experiments, weird tubes that used to emit ionizing radiation and an outdoors section where they have some fighter-bomber and bomber aircraft along with a selection of missile systems. They also have some exhibits about alternate forms of energy like solar, geothermal, coal, gas and wind.
This museum was a great place to spend a few hours when the weather outside was being uncooperative and would probably be just as good on nice days. The docents were sharp, the exhibits were interesting although sometimes terrifying, the aircraft are fun to look at and the price is very reasonable.
We went back home and are returning to our policy of not eating out unless seized by a desire to be disappointed. Peggy is a much better cook than most of the chefs in the places we have visited. The remainder of the chefs might get a tie but I’d bet they can’t do it regularly.

Today will not be a big day for my faithful readers. We went nowhere but we did get in some football watching. I also dumped the holding tanks but there are no interested parties who can be thrilled by long manuscripts describing the technique used to get rid of sewage.
Therefore, I shall use this space to give my usual description of the RV park where we are staying.
Name of facility: Hidden Valley RV Mountain Resort
Pithy comments about facility name: It is not in a valley, is not really a resort and “resort” may be stretching it when describing the place.
Facility roads: There are no roads, as such, and gullying is rampant where adequate drainage structures have been omitted during grading.
Pool: Covered with a nice blue tarp. No swimming.
Facility wi-fi capability: Negative.
Facility cable TV hookups: None.
Facility public pavilions or recreation availability: Limited to rock collecting, mostly from the roads.
Facility wildlife: Moles, small birds, rabbits, rednecks, Harley riders, old people, some dogs.
Cost: We have an RPI membership so the cost is $10 / night which is about right when taking the amenities into account.
Other: The nearby freeway traffic can be heard but only rarely.
Facility appearance: Rustic but weedy.
Nearby tourist attractions: None.
Facility administration: Unknown. No apparent management interference in daily operations or maintenance. Maintenance activity unrecognizable by the naked eye.
Overall rating: Nominal. This is a high-altitude parking lot with spaces the size of an ordinary postage stamp accessible over roads of dirt and gravel. Reviewer was assigned a spot adjacent to asshole who warms up his/her diesel pickup truck by idling for 20 minutes at 5:30 AM. Dumpsters are regularly, if noisily, emptied. Posted facility rule violations are rampant because of management disdain for doing anything requiring the burning of calories. Reviewer noted the following regulation violations because management didn’t: nighttime open ground fires, widespread “quiet time” violations, machinery repair within the park, outdoor welding operations despite high fire danger, permanent residents with substantial junk scattered about their and others’ sites, unclaimed dog doo.

We took another drive of exploration today but very little exploring was actually accomplished. We started out by going west from Hidden Valley RV down Historical Route 66 that is called 333 by New Mexico. At the non-town of Tijeras, we turned south on NM-337 and climbed up to the two collections of non-functioning junk cars of Escabosa and Chilili.
The towns of Escabosa and Chilili seem to be little sovereign nations where new blood, operating automobiles, paying customers and conventional residential construction are unwelcome. They even have large, misspelled signs with pithy messages indicating nobody is to trespass, hunt, gather anything, look funny, think or otherwise disturb the stagnation. We scooted through these towns trying not to look any funnier than normal and continued south on NM-337 until we hit NM-55. A few days ago, we turned west at this intersection. This time we went east and, after crossing over about 10 miles of prairie, we arrived in Estancia.
The drive through this country is pleasant but the towns are just plain old agricultural towns and Estancia is no exception. Estancia is big in pinto bean production. We turned north in Estancia and drove until we arrived in Moriarty and at the intersection with I-40. Moriarty is similar to Estancia except larger and they have a big graveyard next to the freeway that has markers representing unfortunates who were slain by drunk drivers. I didn’t investigate to ascertain whether the drunks were also represented.
We turned west on I-40 back to our spot at HVRVMR. Not a big day today but the stress level certainly was low.

We had a full agenda of loafing proposed for today and we followed it closely. We started our fooling around by making reservations for the segment of our trip between Albuquerque and Sedona which will commence on 10/8/15. We will be staying near Petrified Forest for a couple of days followed by a couple more days at Meteor Crater before heading into the Flagstaff area for about 10 days.
Forethought completed for the next three weeks, we drove down into Albuquerque to a Costco store and we only got lost once. A hundred and a half dollars later, we departed and were free of our pressing commitments for the duration.
Peggy had been looking out the Barbarian’s windows for a few days and had spotted some roads she wanted to try so, after cramming our Costco purchases into the fridge, we departed on a journey of exploration in the ‘hood around our camp at Hidden Valley RV Mountain Resort.
Folks may be a bit strange here because during our journey we spotted a residence with an Xmas tree in the yard made entirely of antlers, a really big chrome agave plant, one place where the owner had his own private observatory and another place where we photographed the owner’s ample collection of old, dead Pontiac Grand Prix automobiles parked alongside his collection of old, dead International, Ford and Chevy trucks. There were also some really nice homes with spectacular views looking west down the pass to Albuquerque.
Our imaginations ran out of steam and we ran out of daylight so we headed back to our RV park and arrived just in time to see another magnificent sunset. The sunsets here are very colorful and we end up spending quite a bit of time standing in our driveway looking west watching the sky do it’s thing. It is wonderful having enough time to just watch nature go by. I think we will continue this unless we get caught.

Exploration was the agenda for today. We frequently find the best stuff when we head off without a destination in mind and also find often when we closely plan our routes we end up disappointed with our selection. This speaks volumes about our abilities to plan excursions.
Today we started by going to a fixed destination. We drove just a short distance from our campground towards a place called Travertine Falls. As we approached up the narrow road to the parking lot we noted that there was not a drop of water in the creek below the falls so we gave it a pass. Maybe we will return after it rains which it is supposed to do right as the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta starts on October 3. They also expect lightning and I am sure the fools who ride in hot air balloons will appreciate this form of weather phenomena. Up….up….bzzzzt….thud!
After not seeing where Travertine Falls isn’t, we took off south on NM-337 through Escabosa and Chilili, both authentic, rustic junkyards with some historic condemnable buildings just waiting for some idealistic buyer or idiot to see through the ugly all the way to the even uglier. The countryside along the highway is quite pretty but the hamlets are genuinely hideous. Many non-functional vintage automobiles have come here to die. After some more pretty countryside, we hit NM-55 and continued south through more sad, decrepit towns called Tajique, Torreon and Manzano before turning off into the Quarai segment of Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.
At Quarai, there is the ruins of an old church and some foundations of Pueblo Indian home structures. The church was built by the local Pueblo women who were enslaved by the Catholic missionaries who brought the benefits of slavery, smallpox, flu and the Inquisition. The Pueblos had gotten along very well for 300+ years until Spanish missionaries and soldiers brought the benefits of Christian religion to the region. The advantages brought by the Europeans were quite effective, annihilating the population in 40 years. The ruins and scenery here are very nice. The history is a bit disgusting.
We continued south on NM-55 to Mountainair, a small town with fragrant air but no mountains, where we turned west on US-60 to the Abo segment of SPMNM. Here there is the ruins of another church, the most recent construction, since shortly after the construction the population was again eradicated by modernization of their lifestyles and beliefs. The tangible benefits of introducing European traditions and cultures to people who had a cooperative, peaceful society are clearly ascertainable through the improved death rates, loss of property and forced labor for outsiders.
We continued west on US-60 to northwest NM-47 to I-25 north to I-40 east back to our camping spot. Right as we got home, the western sky put on another fantastic light and dark show as the sun set. I took way too many pictures.

We had no fixed agenda today and the result was quite a bit of loafing around.
Peggy generously took all our dirty clothes to the Hidden Valley RV Mountain Resort’s laundry facility where, in addition to washing the clothes, she head-butted the coin mechanism used to power up the dryer leaving her with a nifty bump on her forehead. My Peggy is a dedicated trouper and finished this horrible task, despite the blood.
I performed a task more in accordance with my skills – I dumped the black and gray water tanks without getting any contents on my clean clothes.
Other than these necessary functions, we did nothing worthwhile for the remainder of the day choosing instead to nap, read and loaf. It was difficult but the food from yesterday’s stop at Trader Joe’s made it possible for us to endure the torture of doing whatever we wanted.

Peggy and I normally choose to prepare food and eat in our Barbarian Invader because eating out regularly results in one or both of us getting the shits. However, for no clearly identifiable reason, we elected to try a restaurant for breakfast with the strange name of Murphy’s Mule Barn today and we started out by putting the address coordinates into the Garmin. The Garmin calculated the best or worst route or shortest duration or shortest distance to the breakfast joint and finally arrived at a solution. The place was about 25 miles away but we were committed and we departed Hidden Valley RV Mountain Resort and embarked on today’s explorations.
Murphy’s Mule Barn ended up being a fairly large masonry building with a nice truck stop-type clientele. We went into the place and cozied up to the front desk for a minute until a staff person came over to us and gave us a funny look. When we asked where she wanted us to sit, her eyebrows went up and she replied that we could sit wherever we wanted as long as it wasn’t on some other customer. I had checked out the Barn on the internet and found they served chicken fried steak. That was no idle boast because when they brought my steak, it covered the entire plate such that the rest of the food that comes with it had to be plopped down on another plate. It was definitely large – maybe a square foot.
Peggy went for enchiladas in verde sauce which in New Mexico means green chiles, not tomatillos. She stated that they were very tasty and they must have been because I didn’t even get a bite. I was busy devouring my amply-sized steak and eggs and hash browns and they were all very tasty although the steak could have stood one or more additional passes through the meat tenderizer. I congratulate them on the prodigious portions but they are not in a class with Jake’s in Bend, OR, or Dean’s in Clackamas, OR, where the chicken fried steak, despite it’s mundane origins, is truly joyous in texture and taste. The bill, all in, was less than $20 and we waddled away fat and happy.
We departed the Mule Barn and went looking for a spot to view the upcoming Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta which is scheduled to start this Saturday, October 3. The Balloon Fiesta grounds are located on the east side of the Rio Grande River (which is really not very grande here) and so we scoped out the west side of the river and found some likely candidates for watching the Fiesta without being obliged to commune with the millions of tourists and balloon fans who come to watch whatever it is they watch.
From the west side of the Rio Poquito, we headed for Petroglyphs National Park which was only about 4 miles away. We stopped in at the visitor center, obtained some maps and a T-shirt and then drove off to a section of the park called Boca Negra Canyon. There are some short trails here where folks like us can see the petroglyphs, or carvings on rocks, without having to take extended treks. The short trails were just right because it was about 90 degrees today and the ancient rock carvers had not had enough foresight to build shade structures for contemporary tourists to use. The petroglyphs you can see are pretty neat and we took a lot more time than the brochure indicated we should while looking at the ancient runes and pix.
After Boca Negra Canyon, we drove around to the west side of the park to see some extinct volcanos which were quite extinct volcano-like. From here we went to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History. It is located in a very modern building that is so modern that finding the door to access the place is more difficult than we expected. We ultimately found our way in, parted with $6 a head and took off for a tour of the museum.
This museum is very nice with exhibits about coal, planet creation, volcanism, lots of dinosaur skeletons, a section covering computers and communications, brilliantly colorful salt water tropical fish in tanks, minerals and gems and a thing called an “Evolator Time Machine” which we missed for fear of emerging looking like Arnold Schwartzenegger. This was really a pretty good natural history museum and worth the $6.
We stopped by a Trader Joe’s on the way home and bought more food to augment our already ample stocks of stuff that is probably not good for us but tasty. Only $100 went to this worthy cause but it will probably prevent us from taking another trip to the Mule Barn.

Many cities in the Southwest have sections they call Old Town and Albuquerque is no exception. In San Diego, the Old Town has some historic buildings and structures with shops vending touristy crud but also has some old buildings that have genuine old stuff in them, like stables and hacienda residences. In Santa Fe, the Old Town has some historic buildings that you can find, if you look carefully, but most of the buildings have contemporary construction with brown plaster on them so they match the rest of the buildings in town. The Santa Fe Old Town has upscale boutiques and artsy-fartsy shops selling turquoise jewelry that is less than eagerly scooped up by undiscriminating visitors to this retail hell.
The Old Town here in Albuquerque is very similar to the Old Town in Santa Fe except the stuff is not so upscale, more candy shops are located here and maybe a few of the buildings might be old. Parking here in Albuquerque is much more abundant than in Santa Fe and we were able to get a nice spot at the curb right on the square without having to pay.
We bailed out of Charlotte and decided to take a stroll around the square. It was very square. It was also very shady because there is a grove of mature trees taking care of the air conditioning aspects of visiting here and there are also lots of benches where old geezers like me can relax while suffering through the horrible experience of shopping. There are shops more geared to cheapskates and the middle class here than we found in Santa Fe so I was fairly content to amble along beside my beloved spouse while she scoped out the possibilities for draining the wallet when I wasn’t loafing in the shade. We did find a visitor information center in a mini-mall with clever architecture designed to resemble old Albuquerque mission style buildings where we were able to get a full complement of published poop about the area. I love the visitor info centers because they cut down on our aimless wandering about in cities where activities we may be interested in can sometimes be difficult to find.
The Old Town here looks very oldish and we mutually decided to escape the area after Peggy bought me a very tasty mint truffle fudge chunk about the size of an address label that mysteriously disappeared once in my possession. We also ran into several dogs in this neighborhood and that made us happy since we got to pet them and hobnob with their owners. New Mexico Old Towns we have visited all have very reasonable dog policies and we have met many dogs here, much to our delight.

We had no agenda today and we followed it closely. There was a late wake-up followed by a leisurely breakfast that gradually transitioned into extended loafing. We did fix the shower head support in the shower since the screws securing it into the cardboard-like interior wall material between the living area and the shower enclosure had become loose after failure of the substrate. It was pretty hot outside today so we were forced to hunker up inside our Barbarian while the air conditioning system kept us comfy.
There was a lunar eclipse tonight and we watched the almost dead slow action until the full moon went from white to red. I tried to take pictures but there wasn’t a lot of light so holding the camera still enough to get an exposure that wasn’t fuzzy was problematic. While we were watching the non-action, we noted there are some kind of critters living in the trees near our trailer that must be photoluminescent. It is either that or some person has put little dull lime green LEDs in the trees that require no power to run them. I have doubt about the second theory.
I will check to see if I can ascertain the species of bug or LED in the trees but I think I will be unable to unwind the mystery of the green lights in the trees. Such mysteries are rarely unraveled by idiots so we may be obliged to just enjoy the lights without an explanation.

It was time for Charlotte’s engine to get some TLC so we started the day taking our wonderful vehicle to Rich Ford in Albuquerque for an oil change and an inspection. Our powerful and durable truck has been a trouble-free worker throughout this trip and some preventative maintenance seems to be a good thing. After getting assurances that Charlotte was in tip-top shape and had new oil in her crankcase, we parted with $110 and left the Ford dealership and immediately set course for a local discount liquor store. Running out of either Irish Cream or porter is a cardinal sin for us so we felt compelled to keep our supplies at an ample state for fear we would be condemned to hell or be thirsty. Very bad.
We departed Total Wine and More, a veritable Toys-R-Us for drunks and all-around wonderful place, only $60 poorer and well-stocked for the next few days. We decided to drive to Sandia Crest which is the vividly colorful mountain east of Albuquerque. The road passes through Tijeras on I-40 and then turns north up NM-14 until you reach the turnoff up to Sandia Crest. It is a very steep climb ascending 5000 feet in 14 miles but the views from the top are extraordinary. It was pretty clear today and views from the crest extend to about 100 miles in all directions.
I seem to be a bit wimpier than I used to be because I started to encounter some of the classic signs of altitude sickness once I got out of Charlotte in the parking lot for the itty-bitty hike up the last 100 feet of altitude to the best vantage point on top of this mountain. Peggy said I looked a bit gray or grayer than usual and I noted a distinct lightheadedness and a bit of nausea. I am becoming quite a weakling in my old age. It is disgusting.
In any event, Peggy and Mr. Fifty Shades of Gray wandered up the walkway to the ridge and we were rewarded with absolutely magnificent views across New Mexico. The views are great in all directions. Rocky Mountain National Park, Mount Acadia and lots of other places have spectacular views but only Mount Washington in Mount Acadia NP has unobstructed 360 degree views like this place and it is 8500 feet lower so the horizon is a lot closer. This place is another candidate for possible inclusion in the bucket list.
We put Charlotte in Jake-brake mode and descended back down to our camp site in Tijeras where we soon were treated again to the luxury of naps. This retirement stuff is rugged.