Anna and George

When I worked at the HSA at the county I worked quite a bit with Anna McDade. Anna worked for one of the directors Linda Henderson. Linda said some very nice things at my retirement party and Anna was at the party.

Even though Anna was not a Facebook friend of mine, she was a friend of a friend and I happened to notice she had moved to Albuquerque after I retired. 

I Facebook messaged her and told her we would be in Albuquerque for a week. We decided we would try and get together and catch up while we were here. We agreed to get together after we went to church on Sunday.

We found a church called Legacy Church not to far from where we are staying. It turned out to be a huge church of about 12,000 people! WOW!

Sorry about the picture quality but I took it with my phone and with the lighting on stage pointing at me it didn't come out well.

Legacy Worship band

Legacy seemed to be a great church! It reminded us a lot of New Life, just larger. Great worship, great message  The pastor reminded us of Pastor Steve (his name was Steve), in that he preached the Gospel and did not water it down. Not afraid to offend! Amazing the church has grown so big. It seems that some of the "Mega churches" are just 'positive' message feel good meetings!

After church we went to Anna and George's house. George also worked at HSA with veterans. I had seen him but never met him. After catching up we went to the Frontier restaurant to eat. This was on Adam Richman's Man Vs Food TV show.

Anna, George, Patty and Brian

I had the Adam Bonanza Burger that Adam had on the show. It is a double bacon cheeseburger with green chili's!

Adam Bonanza

Patty got the enchilada plate. New Mexico always puts chili sauce either red or green on their enchiladas. If you want both it's called Christmas. Note to the server, Green is the hot one! Lol

Christmas enchiladas

We normally don't get soda's anymore. First it's not good for us, and second it is an unnecessary expense to the dining bill. However they had the Coke Freestyle machines which we had never seen before. Apparently Toppers in Oxnard has one, but we have never seen it. You can pick abut 150 combinations of soda!

Coca-Cola Freestyle

They make a killer cinnamon roll that they end up also soaking in butter. Can you say heart attack?!! George decided that he and Anna had to have one, and decided to come back with one for Patty and me also! 

Yummy!

They are ridiculously good!!!

George had to go back to California for a few days to take care of some business, so on Tuesday we asked Anna to come over to the 5th wheel to visit and Patty made spaghetti. We had a nice evening visiting again.

On Wednesday we went to the Hard Rock casino with Anna. It is Senior day on Wednesday. Seniors count as 50 year old plus. They have a $4.99 lunch special. 2 choices pot roast with all the fixins or open faced turkey sandwich with gravy. Anna and I had the pot roast, Patty had the turkey. It was very good.

Anna was nice enough to treat us! Thanks Anna.

For new players card members they give you $25.00 of free play. Also because of senior day they give you an extra $5.00 to play. You do not have to play any of your own money so we did not!

We ended up cashing out about $45.00. Not bad. Had a good time for about 3 hours with Anna and made a few bucks. 

What's really nice is that we made new friends with old acquaintances. Pretty cool!

God Bless,

Brian and Patty

Albuquerque, NM

We arrived in Albuquerque from Amarillo, Tx on Thursday, April 18th. We haven't been able to update the blog because the internet was bad at the Enchanted Trails campground we have been staying at. Even though we had good cell phone reception, tethering the computer to the phone proved to be slow also.

New Mexico, Land of Enchantment

On Saturday we decided to take a LONG drive on the turquoise trail drive and continue to the loop through Los Alamos and back to Albuquerque. Over 200 miles!

While in Amarillo, if you remember we went to the Alibates flint quarry. We hiked the tour with another couple. Jay Wilson who was from Canada told us his step sister Carla had a 'weird' museum on the turquoise trail by the name of 'Tinkertown'. 

We of course had to stop and see Carla and Tinkertown!

Tinkertown

Carla was excited when we told her that her stepbrother had told us about Tinkertown, so she gave us a discount to the museum. The discount excited me! Lol!

The museum is interesting and worth seeing if you are in the area. It is filled with models of strange characters  some of them are animated and play music like this diorama. These were hand carved by Carla's husband who has since passed.

Diorama

Others had just two or three characters that were animated.

Diorama 2

There was also a lot of Circus memorabilia. This display had the tallest man in the world at the time at 8'4'' pants and shoes on display.

The Big and Tall Rack!

There were many collections from Flat Irons, to Wedding Cake toppers to these swords!

Sword Collection

As I said it was a weird and strange collection but worth seeing!

We then continued on towards Santa Fe, NM. We didn't really have much time in Santa Fe but we did stop and have a picnic lunch and enjoyed the view.

Santa Fe

We continued on towards Los alamos. It looked like it was raining the way we were going!

Towards Los Alamos

We did not realize that Los Alamos was so high in the mountains. The views were spectacular as we headed up towards Los Alamos.

On the way to Los Alamos

This is the town of Los Alamos.

Los Alamos

We were planning on continuing to highway 4 which would take us to the Jerez Indian Ruins and finally finish the loop to Albuquerque. I was following the GPS when I came upon a road block with a dozen security booths blocking the road. Patty noticed that one of the booths was being manned so we drove up to it.

It turns out the the Los Alamos National Laboratory is on this road! This is where the Manhattan Project was researched and developed to create the first atomic bomb.

We had to show ID and state we were U.S. citizens to drive on the road to complete the loop. 

As we were sitting in the truck talking to the officer, and although it was about 50 degrees out, it started snowing on us. Weird!!! Well after a few jokes by the officer that we seemed totally lost he cleared us to continue by the labs!

Los Alamos National Labratory

We continued to climb and actually achieved 9000 feet in elevation.

9047 feet

Highway 4 almost looks like Oregon or Washington. It is totally different then the other side of the mountain.

Jemez Byway

We arrived at the Jemez State Monument.

Jemez State Monument

The Monument consists of the 14th century stone ruins of Gisewa Pueblo, and the 17th century San José de los Jemez Mission Church. The Jemez People once occupied Gisewa Pueblo and many other Pueblos in this area.

The people of the Jemez Pueblo manage the monument and charge $3.00 a person to view it. There is a small museum in the building. They 'loan' you a booklet that has numbered sites in it to explain what each area of the ruins were. You walk the path and follow the numbers on the walkway and read the booklet.

Jemez Ruins

The booklet was well laid out to follow the path. A lot of information about the pueblo life.

Ruins

Spanish Franciscan missionaries built the San José de los Jemez Mission Church between 1621 and 1625.

Church

You could walk into the church ruins.

Inside the church

Here is the belltower for the church.

Chruch Belltower

These rooms may have been were the priests lived.

Rooms

We just like how the sun made a prism through the window on this wall. Pretty cool.

Window

These doorways and windows made a nice picture!

Doorways

Back at the bottom looking up at the ruins. This was really worth going to! Well preserved and great history.

Jemez Ruins trail

We continued on highway 4 to the 25 and on to Albuquerque. We did put on a lot of miles but the scenery was really beautiful so the drive and sites was worth it!

That's it for now,

Love you all,

God Bless,

Brian and Patty

Amarillo Livestock Auction and Texas Air and Space Museum

Every Monday Amarillo has a livestock auction. The auction is open to the public. It is held in the same building that the Stockyard Cafe is at. Patty wanted to go see the auction so if we were to see it, this Monday was the only chance. It is supposed to start at 10:00 AM.

Livestock Auction

 We showed up at about 10:45 and it seemed that it had not yet started. After a few minutes they let the first cows in. As you can see there was not many bidders. They would just hold up a piece of paper that had their bidding number on it.

Here come the cows

Behind the auctioneer was an electronic board that showed how much was paid for the cow or bull. The price was based per 100 pounds so this `105.00 bid is actually $1.05 per pound.

Price board

Sometimes they would have multiple cows in the pen so there would be more pounds. It may still say $90.00 or $105.00  but the overall sale would be more because there was more weight involved.

3 cows

We noticed that some cows went for as little as $28.00 per 100 pounds. We were told those were sick cows. The bulls as seen here would go for a much higher price.

After we left the auction we went to the Rick Husband International Airport. Rick Husband was a local Amarillo astronaut who lost his life in the Space Shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated while re-entering earth atmosphere in 2003.

Commander Rick Husband

The Texas Air and Space Museum is located at the airport. The museum is very small and although we were enjoying it and liked talking to the docent it was not overwhelming.

Air Museum

As you can see there are a few exhibits of Amarillo air and space history.

Historical documents

Then docent Bud took us outside to show us some planes. Then it got REAL interesting. Bud is a retired Air force and United Air Lines pilot so he really knows about planes!

This is an experimental race plane called the "Beercat". The problem is that top speed is 150 mph, but it took 140 to get it off the ground! LOL

Beercat

This P-51 Mustang was never flown in the war, but the 'kills' that are shown on the side are actual from the owners real history.

P-51 Mustang

Next to the museum is a Bell helicopter factory. They make the V-22 Osprey here. This is a Tilt Rotor plane that works like a helicopter taking off and landing and then the props can turn forward and it becomes a Turbo Prop plane. As we were going outside to look at some more planes this Osprey took off for testing. It hovered for awhile and then took off.

V-22 Osprey

The museum is fortunate to have one of only 4 ever built NASA Shuttle Training Aircraft. They have been retired since the Space Shuttle program has been scrapped.

NASA Shuttle Training Aircraft

You are allowed to board this plane. In the above picture you can see a white ramp at the rear of the plane. After climbing the ramp you have to get on you hands and knees and crawl in the small door to get in. Then you can stand up. They would take up several astronauts for training.

NASA STA

That's Bud on the left. The box you see is hooked up to computers to analyze how the astronauts do on their test missions.

Bud and Brian

A pilot would sit on the right and fly the simulator to 35,000 feet. The astronaut would sit on the left which has "space shuttle' controls. At 35,000 feet The astronaut would glide the plane down using the shuttle controls.

Shuttle Trailer controls

Commander Husband flew 49 training missions on this exact training aircraft! It was pretty cool to be able to enter the aircraft that our astronauts trained on.

The Osprey returned! You can see all the dust it is churning up. We could feel the wind from those massive blades!

Osprey landing

They also had a C7A Caribou on display. 

C7A Caribou

The Caribou was mainly used as a cargo and personnel transporter. The back of the plane opens up for unloading. On the roofline you can see a cable. Paratroopers would hook their lines to the cable which would pull their chutes on the way out the back.

Transporter

I tried to take off, but the batteries were dead! Maybe next time!!

Put the charger on the batteries!

This military jet landed when we were getting ready to leave. Bud told us they open their cockpits to cool themselves off.

U.S.A. , U.S.A. !!!!

I mentioned in another blog that their is folk art around Amarillo. Another folk art that is around is the painted horses. Many businesses will have them with their logos on them. The Chevrolet dealer has a blue one with a gold colored Chevy logo on it. These are full size horse statues.

Because Bell makes the Osprey they have a painted horse in front of their buildings.

Bell painted horse

 That's it for today.

Love you all!

Brian and Patty