New Mexico Trip!

Hello there Blog Friends!

We are, sort of, taking a break from the bookish blogs to bring you a fun 'Allison and Maggie saw each other in person!' blog!

It has been quite a few years since we've seen each other but I (Maggie) made my way to New Mexico for a fun trip to see Allison and her husband and spend some time in a new place! We went to mountains, deserts and obviously, some bookstores.

On the first day of our tired adventures, we ended up at Page 1 Books in Albuquerque, which was filled to the brim with various used and new books, among other treasures. This store had a variety of titles, genres and age levels and at times felt like a maze of books. It was truly fantastic.

On our third day, we went to Bookworks, which was also next to a great café that was perfect before going to see some Petroglyphs. This store wasn't as packed to the brim, but it did have a lot of newer books in a bunch of different genres.

At Booksworks, I found a book by a local author I am really excited to read, plus a secret cart of ARCs that were up for grabs. After the Petroglyphs, we went to Books on the Bosque, which had a café inside! Another store with all new books, and though not as packed as Page 1, had a really wide selection of books. It also was definitely the store that would have a lot of events if you are ever in that area! I found a fun bookish ghost sweater for Halloween here!

In non-bookish adventures, we visited a bunch of different places throughout Albuquerque and Santa Fe, including the Sandia Mountains, Oldtown, the Petroglyphs, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.

Oldtown was full of amazing shops, some with art, others with trinkets and others with multiple representations of New Mexico as a whole, which I learned are road runners, aliens and for some reason big foot.

We went to the crest of the Sandia Mountains to watch the sunset, which was one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a long time. We went through the trails, climbing up rocks, and looking over the city of Albuquerque (I have not spelled that right once so far on the first try). The Sandia Mountains were built by rifting, they are apart of a large mountain system known as the Sandia-Manzano Mountains, and are home to the world's second longest tramway (which was closed when I was there).

We also ventured to Petroglyph National Monument, where we walked about the Boca Negro Canyon (which is one of the shorter trails). There we saw 100s of Petroglyphs made by the Pueblo people. It was most likely that they were used as a way to communicate with other communities, but we were told that no matter how right we think we are about what the petroglyph is, we would probably be wrong. The Pueblo people lived in the region until the arrival of the Spanish (shocker), but there are some carvings associated with the Spanish as well. The rocks here are more volcanic in nature, being from extinct volcanoes made them easy to put the images in. (Also who knew there were volcanoes in New Mexico, I didn't).

After a few more days for adventures and really great food, and definitely more history I returned to the almost-same-temperature Minnesota. If you haven't been I definitely recommend an adventure to the Southwest! It's not the landscape I am used to, but it is beautiful. The Midwest kid in me definitely loves to see a mountain when she adventures.

Be sure if you ever go to New Mexico you remember to ask for 'Christmas on the side' because their salsa's are good but man can they be spicy.