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It’s been 5 years since we made our move to Albuquerque. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day and as I reflect on all that I have to be thankful for, a hike that we took today reminded me once again of how thankful I am that we chose this city as our home.

We have so many options for day hikes in this part of the state. But sometimes, like today, we aren’t in the mood to drive very far. Then we can just go across town to the Sandia Mountain foothills and find all kinds of good trails. Some of them are official, named trails, but others wander off up and down canyons and ridges, overlooking the city and keeping you from getting lost because the mountains ahead and the city behind are always in view.

The trails we explored today were some of both. We had been on most of them before, but today we made a loop, connecting a couple of areas that we hadn’t been sure were reachable. You can see from the map how close to the city we were.

It was hard to get excited about the photos I took today because everything is so brown. Looking at the last couple of blog posts I did I see how beautiful the colors were at Balloon Fiesta and the Aspen Ridge hike. I failed to post anything from two weeks ago when we were hiking in beautiful Sedona, Arizona. So to add a bit of color to this blog post I picked 4 pictures from our days there.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving and I hope you can get out to see some of God’s creation and realize how much beauty there is in this world for us to be thankful for.

There are 9 days to attend the morning launch of balloons during Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It’s always a gamble to outguess the weather on a particular day and be there when conditions allow the balloons to get airborne. This year’s fiesta week has been the best weather we have experienced so far in our times of attending.

We were there Saturday for the mass ascension on opening day and then again today for Special Shapes Rodeo. Although the balloons were able to launch on Saturday, the effect of hundreds of balloons overhead wasn’t evident like it was today. Balloonists enjoy Albuquerque’s weather because of a “box” effect where the wind takes the balloon up in one direction and then at a certain level the wind will catch it and blow it back in the opposite direction. Saturday it was just a straight wind and the balloons quickly passed into the distance. Today many of them went up in one direction and then we saw them float back towards us again, even sometimes landing back on the field again an hour or two after they had launched.

I’ve always enjoyed seeing the balloons, but didn’t think too much about riding in one. This year my imagination has been captured and next year I’m planning on being up there in the air in one of those awesome, huffing, colorful, floating airships.

Some of the photos I took.

Lee has a better camera and his special shapes are closeups.