We spent the next several days at Casa de Pat where she had decided to adopt a new rescue cat. While I was not particularly popular with the cat, Joni and Pat slowly worked their way onto the kitties good list. After suggesting that he might bite off my face or scratch out my eyes, he finally came over and sniffed my hand but that was the extent of our relationship.
We spent most of the morning catching up on laundry and just hanging out as did Joy and Larry. They were settled in the Bernalillo KOA about 15 minutes north of Pats house. Eventually, we got everything together and made a trip to Old Town Albuquerque after a lunch stop at Tako Ten. We headed downtown for some shopping, sightseeing, a stop at the favorite winery and at the favorite home accessory store. Joni got chili infused wine, and we picked out a new wall runner, metal wall art for the bunk room and a metal roadrunner for the outside wall. A great dinner at Pats and always great sunset from her location brought the day to a close.
We had been looking for a hike to get us out and get a bit of exercise. There are literally hundreds of hikes in the vicinity of the Sandia Mountains. Unfortunately, most of them start at 5200+ ft and climb 3000 ft up. My old and only partially functional lungs are not the best at that elevation. Last time we hiked at those elevations, Joy and Larry were commenting on my beautiful blue lips. Pat recommended a City of Albuquerque Open Space Park just about 1-mile south of her place called Elena Gallegos Park. What a gem! The city did a great job with the park and trails for a reasonable price ($1 admission for the car with 4 people). We chose the Pino Trail Loop, a 2.5-mile loop with 305 feet of elevation gain and a maximum elevation of 6760 ft. It climbs the alluvial fan to the rock fans at the base of the Sandia Mountains. At this time of the year, there is a flowing spring/stream at the trail top that flows down slope and is crossed at both the high and low point of the trail. The pictures below are of our hike on the Pino Trail Loop.
The geologic formations that are found in the Sandia mountains are literally older than most dirt. The granites that you see as the majority of the mountains are estimated to be at least 1.4 billion years old and there are older formations both north and south of the main range. At the top of the mountains are conspicuous layered sediments that are about 320 million years old. A quick calculation shows that there is about 1-billion years of rocks missing from that geologic sequence. The Sandia Mountains landscape as we see it today is relatively young (5-10 million years old) and is an east tilted fault block on the eastern edge of the Rio Grande Rift. They mountains are steeper on the west side with a shallower east dipping surface on the east with approximately 35,000 feet of uplift along the eastern margin of the Albuquerque Basin. The geology and tectonics of the whole area are incredibly interesting, perhaps contributing to the seemingly large number of retired geoscientists in the area.
Wednesday was a day we had been looking forward to. Joy, Larry, Joni and I headed to Santa Fe to visit our friend Johnny Walker. Johnny is a 92-year-old Scottish geologist with a couple of PhD degrees in geology who confided in me on this trip that he was thinking about cutting back on work. He is one of the last renowned gentlemen field geologists having worked in mining exploration geology all over the world from Africa to Australia. One of the most polite, articulate and entertaining people we know with stories of deepest darkest Africa, aboriginal Australia, United Nations and World Bank assignments, US and British Embassy parties and meetings in the New York corporate boardrooms of some of the largest corporations in the world. I do get a little jealous though when he holds those goodbye hugs with Joni extra-long. I think he is gauging if he has a chance with her if I die before he does. We had another great dinner at Pats and then took Joy and Larry back to the RV so they could get set to head further north into the wind and snow.
Thursday was a travel day. Our flight left later in the day, so it was a very relaxing and slow morning. We worked out the details of the trip east for the 50th high school reunion, packed our bags and headed out. Pat is such a great hostess! We always enjoy our visits at her beautiful, comfortable, relaxed home. An uneventful pair of return flights except for minor delays got us back to Orange County with all of our checked bags by 7:00 PM with Kylie providing shuttle service to the boat.
