Albuquerque

If there is any major interest of mine that New Mexico is not known for, it's skyscrapers—of which there are basically none in this state. This depends on your definition of a "skyscraper," and technically at least a couple of buildings in Albuquerque qualify—the tallest building to the far left in the above shot, Albuquerque Plaza, contains all of 22 floors, and with its four-sided pyramidal roof rises to 351 feet in height. It is the tallest building in the entire state of New Mexico. The second tallest, of course also in Albuquerque (a city of 564,000 and the only city in the state with more than 112,000), is The Clyde Hotel, which stands at 256 ft and 20 floors. It has a similarly four-sided pyramidal roof (it can be seen above to the right of the tallest building at far left), the two buildings having been constructed in 1990 as part of the Albuquerque Plaza mixed-used complex.

I managed to get this shot from the freeway (while Shobhit was driving) on our way downtown on Saturday. We have buildings of similar height in Seattle that aren't even downtown—but, to be fair, Seattle's 4 million metro population is four times that of Albuquerque's (which doesn't even quite reach 1 million), and twice that of the entire state of New Mexico (2.1 million). There's a lot of space here and no particular need to build vertically.

Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta
Saturday, October 3: 5:45am Drone Light Show

I looked it up, and the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta—the entire reason for this trip—is indeed the most popular event that happens in Albuquerque. In 2025, there were nearly 852,000 guest visits for the weeklong event; and in 2024, there were over 712,500 tourists from outside the Albuquerque area. This means that, when Balloon Fiesta happens, the population of Albuquerque more than doubles (126%)—although, to be fair, the festival stretches over nine days (just like my Birth Week!) so with not everyone going in every single day, that percentage is likely not quite as high on any given single day.

Anyway! The first weekend is probably the biggest deal, and that was when we were there (the festival is still going even as you received this email). To say we all got up early that first Saturday would be an understatement: I got out of bed at about 3 a.m., and I would like to stress that I live in the Pacific time zone and New Mexico is in Mountain Time, which means I got up when my body would have been acclimated to it being 2 a.m. On the upside, I was extremely tired after our travel day the day before and did manage to get to bed and fall asleep quite early. That helped.

We very deliberately chose a hotel that was only a mile from Balloon Fiesta Park, which made it easy for us to walk there rather than deal with packed early-morning traffic and parking. We had our continental breakfast at about 4:30, right when the hotel's kitchen opened for Balloon Fiesta hours, and we were headed out to the park by about 4:50, getting us there at a quarter after 5:00. With the bottle necking of ticket holders, we were in the park at about 5:30, and then the first event, a drone light show—clearly a wide-ranging fad that I find myself wondering how long it will continue being a thing—happened between 5:45 and 6:00. Fad or not, I love a drone light show; and besides, I wanted to make the most out of our time at the festival and experience all the events taking place, especially on its first morning.

Saturday, October 3: 6am Dawn Patrol

Our first balloon sightings: Dawn Patrol happens at 6 a.m., with inflations beginning at 5:45—concurrent with the drone show. These guys ascend early to get a sense of wind speed and safety for the "Mass Ascension" happening an hour later. This makes it the only time you can see any of these balloons flying while it's actually dark out.

Saturday, October 3: Mass Ascension

There really is no good way, even with pictures, to illustrate what a magical experience this was. Especially if it's your first time seeing it, the "Mass Ascension" is an unforgettable sight—especially after Amanda at work heard the phrase and immediately asked if it was a cult. Ha! So, now I like to call it the "Balloon Rapture."

It's entirely possible it's not nearly as magical for locals, who see the balloons every year and are desensitized to the festival's magnificence. We did talk to multiple people over our time there, both local and from out of town, with varying levels of familiarity with this festival. The general sense we got was that there is predictable ambivalence among locals, who are both irritated by how crowded the city gets for this week, and appreciative of what a boost to the local economy it is.

This first morning began at 7 a.m. (after the Drone Show and Dawn Patrol) with Opening Ceremonies that had Balloon Fiesta's own official balloon and major sponsor ExxonMobil's balloon launching while the National Anthem was performed. Side note: the Fiesta balloon said "Fiesta 50" on it, but 2026 was actually its 54th year. It began with 13 participating hot air balloons in 1972, and now has more than 500 participants each year.

Sunday, October 4: Mass Ascension

There are balloon launches every morning of the festival, weather permitting (the Opening Day Mass Ascension was canceled just last year due to high winds—which cannot exceed 8mph in order for ascension to be safe), but only the weekend ones are billed "Mass Ascensions" (or: Balloon Raptures!). I wasn't even thinking about this when we got up on Sunday morning with no festival plans until the evening—only to discover dozens of hot air balloons floating right over our hotel.

Sunday, October 4: Balloon Glow

This was one of the best shots I managed to get at the "Balloon Glow," when a bunch of grounded hot air balloons are lit up in the evening just after sunset. Except, it turns out, high winds are also a factor here, even if none of the balloons are actually flying—and at the Sunday evening Balloon Glow, winds were right around that 8-mph threshold, which had the event on hold for a while, as indicated by a flying yellow flag. At about 7:00, they raised a green flag, giving the go-ahead, but still only "at pilots' discretion." By this point, several crews with their trucks and balloon baskets had already packed up and left. We did still get to see some pretty cool sights, with the crews that did not leave flickering their balloons on here and there in the night. But it's too bad we had a scheduling conflict that prevented us from seeing the Balloon Glow on Saturday rather than Sunday, as that first one reportedly had been very successful, with no wind concerns: I had found a "Balloon Fiesta Live" streaming channel on my phone to try and get updates on the status of the event on Sunday, and I got a screenshot of their own drone shot of all the balloons lit up on Saturday, and it was clearly a spectacular sight.

We had found a small hill at the far north end of the park from which to try and watch the Balloon Glow, which took us up maybe a third of the total height of the balloons, and would have indeed been an amazing view if all the balloons had been able to participate if not for the wind on Sunday evening. There was even a hot air balloon right down there near us with a crew that made a valiant attempt at inflating their balloon, but it kept tilting over and they also had to give up.

Sunday, October 4: Drone Show & AfterGlow Fireworks

There was an evening Drone Light Show on Sunday evening as well, and in the end, that plus what of the Balloon Glow was even able to happen still made it worth paying for the "evening session" on Sunday. (Each day has a "morning session" and an "evening session," and there are separate tickets for both—the most standard, General Admission ticket price comes to $22.24 for each. This means that we each spent $44.48 total for admissions to the Balloon Fiesta. But if anyone paid for both sessions every single day of the festival—there is only a morning session on the ninth day—you could spend as much as $378.08 for General Admission tickets alone.)

Both the morning Drone Show on Saturday and the evening Drone Show on Sunday were sponsored by the Sandia Resort & Casino, so we suspected the two shows might be the same. Wrong! The sunday evening Drone Show had a completely different theme, and was dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Historic Route 66, which passes through Albuquerque—and it was very cool; I really enjoyed it. This, in turn, was followed by the "AfterGlow Fireworks," which were pretty standard until suddenly there were two fireworks displays going on at once, in different directions.

Albuquerque - Saturday, October 3
ABQ BioPark Botanic Garden - Harvest Festival

So many people come to Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta, it makes sense that other attractions would also hold special events at the same time—such as the ABQ BioPark Botanic Garden, which holds its Harvest Festival on the first weekend of the Fiesta. I would have wanted to check out the Botanic Garden regardless, but thought the Harvest Festival sounded fun—although to be honest, it didn't strike me as that different from any average day there, except that there were some vendor booths in the "Festival Garden" area; fall floral arrangements and pumpkins were scattered throughout the gardens; and there were several small stages around with live musicians playing. For the most part we just focused on walking through the botanic garden—although Shobhit did buy an orange "Harvest Festival at the Botanic Garden" T-shirt, since it was only $7.

ABQ BioPark Aquarium

General Admission to the BioPark Botanic Garden also gets you into the ABQ BioPark Aquarium, which I found myself surprisingly impressed by, given its location and distance from the nearest sea (more than 450 miles to Mexico's Gulf of California) and its fairly small size (7,210 square feet; compare to Seattle Aquarium's 119,400 total combined square footage). It exhibits Gulf of Mexico and South Pacific saltwater species.

Oh and did I mention Shobhit and I took this trip with my cousin Jennifer and her boyfriend Matthew? Well, I'm mentioning it now! I really liked this glass tunnel through one of the larger tanks, and that's them standing near the far end.

The St. James Tearoom

After the requisite task of checking out the Albuquerque Main Library which honestly isn't that special (I'm glad it exists though, support your local public library always and forever!), we went to the thing that was the scheduling conflict preventing us from seeing the Balloon Glow on Saturday evening: the St. James Tearoom for Afternoon Tea in Albuquerque, even though our 6:30 seating was really in the evening. We did not even realize until after booking the reservations a month ago that they do monthly themes and we would be there on the penultimate day of "Sherlock Holmes Mystery Teatime." Thus, above you see me puffing on my "Phyllo Cigar."

Back in August, Jennifer and Matthew and all three of Jennifer's grown children had come up from Shelton to stay the night with us in Seattle, to celebrate Jennifer's youngest, Ian's 20th birthday. He wanted to do Afternoon Tea, and Jennifer researched and discovered a place I hadn't even heard of, the Queen Mary Tea Room, located in the U District—which turns out to be the oldest independently owned tea room in the United States! That tea room has a massive memu of teas to choose from and the "Creamy Earl Grey" I had was amazing; I really loved the experience there and will be going back in December when we were told it will be redecorated for Christmas. It was after we all got back to Shobhit's and my place that Jennifer looked up afternoon tea places in Albuquerque, and we had our reservations made by the next day.

The St. James Tearoom is much larger, is similarly decorated with massive detail, and features booths that almost serve as private rooms. We were told by our server—a young man who I finally decided not to tell how utterly adorable he was—that we had been seated in one of the most sought-after booths, designed like a railway car. The key differences at this tea room were the memorized lines of shpiel tied to the monthly theme that the server had to recite; and the three different teas we were served with each course, each of them chosen for us—there was no tea menu to order from.

I think we threw off our server a bit when Shobhit asked for more of the first tea we were brought, an English Breakfast, which clearly offset the synchronicity of teas chosen for each course; Jennifer and I both decided to wait to continue on to the next course until we got the appropriately paired tea with it. Shobhit also asked for more of the mushroom frittatas that were part of the second course, as they were stunningly delicious. I don't think guests often do this, but I think Shobhit has a fair point when he says we're paying enough for it (about $65 plus tax per person) that they can accommodate these small requests.

Albuquerque - Sunday, October 4
Sandia Resort & Casino

The one thing we did kind of spontaneously on this trip was go to the Sandia Resort & Casino, as after having been up so early on Saturday, we were all up much later but still early enough on Sunday—and Shobhit wanted to go check it out. He kind of sold it to Jennifer and Matthew by noting that there was also an arts & crafts festival going on there. It cost $15 a person just to go inside and maybe buy some art, but Jennifer and Matthew and I went in anyway, roaming around it while Shobhit managed to win over $800 in the casino. This made it much easier for him to justify buying the $220 puzzle trivet he purchased from one of the vendors after going into the arts festival himself a little later.

Casa Rondeña

This was the one specific request from Jennifer, after I had of course proposed a ton of stuff for us all to plan on doing this trip: she and Matthew wanted to find a winery to go to. After doing a bit of their own research, they chose Casa Rondeña, which had very lovely grounds but it was just as well that I was the designated driver (Shobhit wanted have some wine too), as I took small sips from each of the flight of reds that he ordered in their tasting room, and I didn't particularly care for any of them.

I got this great shot out of the experience, though.

Santa Fe - Monday, October 5
New Mexico State Capitol

Monday was our day trip to Santa Fe—something I kind of insisted on; it's more likely than not that I will never find reason to visit New Mexico again, and Santa Fe is the capital city, only about an hour drive northeast of our hotel, and I never met a State Capitol building I did not want to tour!

And there are many distinguishing design features of the New Mexico State Capitol—not least of which is it being one of only 11 U.S. State Capitols that do not feature a dome modeled after the U.S. Capitol building. Instead, this one has a circular shape (making it commonly known as "the Roundhouse") in the design of the Zia Sun Symbol, which is also featured on the New Mexico State Flag.

I already noted New Mexico's small state population of 2.1 million, which means it also has a smaller state legislature: 42 seats in the State Senate; and 70 seats in the State House of Representatives. (New Mexico has only three U.S. Congressional districts.) There were no State Congressional proceedings in session, so we were able to just walk into both chambers, as well as into the reception Office of the Governor on the third (and top) floor.

Maybe the coolest thing about this Capitol building, though, is its New Mexico Capitol Art Collection, doubling the capitol as a massive art museum with tons of very cool art. It's hung all over the many walls in the hallways that create a cross section of the circle in the pattern of the Zia Sun Symbol, as well as on the walls of the central rotunda. The rotunda itself features a Zia Sun Symbol around the State Seal on its floor, and a stained glass skylight ceiling which mimics a Native American basket weave.

The New Mexico State Capitol building was inaugurated in 1966, making it the third-newest State Capitol building in the U.S. (only Hawaii's and Florida's came after). The history of New Mexico's capitol building is long and complicated; what is now the New Mexico History Museum was previously the Palace of Governors, and was built in 1610 by the Spanish; was later used as the capitol by a Mexican province; and then annexed by the U.S. after the Mexican-American war in 1948. This makes the Palace of Governors the only U.S. capitol building that has housed the governments of three different nations. There was a second New Mexico State Capitol building opened in 1886, which actually did have a dome, but it burned down in 1892; and a third, which featured a 105-ft tower, was in use between 1900 and 1966 when the current capitol opened. That third one is now the Bataan Memorial Building, and still houses several New Mexico state government agencies. That one has an indirect connection to a location near Seattle, as it is named to commemorate the World War II Bataan Death March in the Philippines, as was Bataan Park in Bremerton, WA, which was one of the "1976 landmarks" that had been my Birth Week theme earlier this year.

Cross of the Martyrs

Santa Fe is easily the most popular tourist destination city in New Mexico, even though, at a population of 87,505, it is only the fourth-largest city in the state. I still had to look up where I might find the best view of the city, though, and that turned out to be the Cross of the Martyrsits surroundings. Fun fact: the photo of the New Mexico State Capitol above was taken from here, using the zoom.

"Miraculous Staircase" at Loretto Chapel

When we were browsing the many vendor booths at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, Shobhit went up to the Santa Fe Police Department booth to ask for recommendations of points of interest. They recommended Loretto Chapel and its so-called "Miraculous Staircase," and Shobhit became kind of obsessed with adding it to the day's itinerary. We paid $5 each to enter this very small chapel while Jennifer and Matthew were elsewhere in downtown Santa Fe, and we immediately felt like it wasn't really worth it—very crowded, and, okay: what the hell makes that honestly pretty normal-looking spiral staircase "miraculous," anyway?

Well: it was constructed in the late 19th century with two 360° turns and no visible means of support—I suppose an actual carpenter might clock these details more readily. But the "miraculous" part is probably more to do with its legend, as the Sisters of the Chapel prayed for nine days and then a mysterious man appeared and, as legend has it, he left without pay or thanks. (He apparently didn't care about it being dangerous: the original staircase was built with no railing and would be far more interesting today if it had been left that way; but a railing was added by a different man about a decade later.)

Meow Wolf - House of Eternal Return

Next to the State Capitol, Meow Wolf was of greatest interest to me in Santa Fe. This chain of interactive and immersive art installations began with the one in Santa Fe, called "House of Eternal Return," which, said very oversimplified, is sort of based on a haunted house with portals into different worlds and dimensions. This is what makes it very hard to describe even with pictures unless you actually experience it—but, I could not recommend it enough. You can experience everything from walking through a refrigerator into a spaceship, to sitting in a cartoon kitchen, to walking through a geometric hallway, and much, much more. As the guy at the ticket counter said to us, "If you get lost, you're doing it right." (The above shot was taken inside the space we went into after walking through the door of an ice box.)

Shobhit and I were separated from Jennifer and Matthew for most of our time inside Meow Wolf, which was an easy thing to happen considering how distractibly interactive the place is (it seems tailor made for people with ADD). Every so often, though, we would run into them randomly, and here I used the remote feature on my AirPods to snap a group shot of us all inside this camper trailer. If you look closely at the windows behind us, it looks like we're on some sort of snowy ice world.

House of Eternal Return is the oldest—it opened in 2016—of what are now five different locations in as many cities, all of them with completely different themes; a sixth is set to open in Los Angeles this year, and a seventh is planned for New York City. The third, "Omega Mart," is a "trippy grocery store" that opened in Las Vegas in 2021—the last time I was there, and I did not think to go at the time; it is definitely on my list for the next time I visit Vegas. And hopefully that will be sooner than later; I've been there eight times in the last 22 years, but one more year, at six years, will make the longest break I have ever had between visits.

Albuquerque - Monday, October 5
Sandia Peak Aerial Tramway

Monday, the last full day of our trip, was a very long day—it included our day trip to Santa Fe, which we still managed to return from by around 3:30 in the afternoon. And then, the last thing on my list for Albuquerque: the Sandia Peak Aerial Tramway. With an elevation gain of 3,819 feet, it is the second-highest elevation gain of any tourist trams in the U.S., after only the 5,873-ft elevation gain at the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway (which I have also ridden, twice). It aso travels 2.7 miles, making it the longest aerial tramway in the Western Hemisphere, and the third-longest in the world (the other two are in Armenia and Sweden).

We meant to time this so we would be climbing at sunset, but our tickets were for the 5-8pm arrival window and we did not leave our hotel until 5:15. This was a mistake; we did not think enough about how busy it would likely be during Balloon Fiesta, and we wound up getting in a line that took two hours to get through—there are only two gondolas at a time, each going back and forth on its own parallel cable, and each one-way ride lasts 15 minutes. There are still nice views from the base of the gondola, and I got a few sunset shots from there while in line. That line was much shorter by the time we got to the front of it, and then once we reached the top, we only had time to use the bathroom and take a few pictures before getting right back in the line about half as long to come back down—by the time we actually got in a return gondola, the up-gondolas were empty as they no longer brought people up after 8:00.

The whole thing would have been far more worth the $38 per person had we been able to go up during daylight, and also stay longer and do some of the hiking the area is known for. Oh well; I still got some lovely nighttime shots of the sprawling city below us. And the shot above turned out so great, Shobhit said they should use it on their brochures. [posted 9:22pm]

New Mexico 2026

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