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Episode 3: Petroglyphs National Historical Park

Petroglyphs around Albuquerque have been preserved and are accessible as a part of a park system. In this episode, we make a visit to a couple of locations for some short hikes and seeing the sights. We also tackle a couple RV projects. First, fixing my broken closet rod and then fixing trim that was falling off our walls!

Petroglyphs

The next 2 things on my checklist for us to do while we were in the area was to visit Petroglyph National Monument and to visit some of the locations where they filmed the show Breaking Bad. We didn’t film the Breaking Bad tour so that is some BONUS information within the blog! But first…. SNOW… in APRIL!!!! Being from Texas, seeing snowy weather is a VERY rare occurence. It was really nice to wake up one morning and see quite a bit of snow falling down! We usually could see the mountains from our site but the snow clouds covered it today!

Rv Projects

It has often been said that RVs aren’t built with the greatest quality products and that alot of corners are cut. With all of the items we have had to fix, we are starting to agree with that statement! Back in February, when we drove the RV for Brent’s Class A License testing, we came back to my closet rod bent in half and my clothes all on the ground. The plastic holder that was keeping the aluminum bar in place had completely cracked underneath, and as a result the bar fell. It wasn’t even under a full weight load! To fix this issue, Brent decided to buy a black, heavy duty closet rod that he cut to fit the width of the RV and changed out the plastic holders for more heavy duty ones! It has been years since the fix, and I am happy to report that it is still intact!

The other repair we address in this video, is the trim coming off of the walls in our main living area. These trim pieces only seem to be held on by staples, which clearly don’t hold against the roughness traveling frequently can bring. Our solution…. screws in all of the black segments in between the long, gray trim pieces! It may not be the prettiest look, but they have held now for years! I don’t have any photos of this project yet but will get some in the near future to upload!

Petroglyph National Monument

One of the only other national park areas that was open during this time period was Petroglyph National Monument.  This monument protects one of the largest sites of petroglyphs in North America.  It’s 17-mile size has four major areas: Boca Negra Canyon, Rinconada Canyon, Piedras Marcadas Canyon and the Volcano Day Use Trails.  We decided to do 2 hikes to see petroglyphs… one 1.5 mile hike in Piedras Marcadas Canyon where you can see 400 petroglyphs, and a mile hike in Boca Negra Canyon where you can see 100 petroglyphs.  Petroglyphs are symbols and designs carved onto volcanic rocks.  These images within this monument often hold cultural significance to the Pueblo and other Native peoples.   Some of these drawings have been dated back as far as 3,000 years ago. It was cool to see how these drawings looked all these years later and how resourceful people were when “pen and paper” hadn’t been invented yet to tell these stories and cultural beliefs.

After all of the walking around, we had built up quite the appetite. We decided we would try some “New Mexican” food from El Pinto. Unfortunately, with Covid-19 restrictions in place, we weren’t allowed to dine in. We had been looking forward to tasting local fare as we traveled around the country, so it was a bummer our only option was take out! Don’t get me wrong, I was very FOR restaurants restricting dining in to decrease the spread of Covid-19, but when we originally planned our journey, pre-Covid, our travel experiences looked very different than our reality. We are super thankful we were at least able to try El Pinto by take out, but there is just something about experiencing the ambiance of a restaurant, and getting to eat their meals at it’s freshest.

For appetizer, we got the queso along with some chips/salsa. For the meal, Brent got the some enchiladas and I got a chicken quesadilla! The food was delicious and we look forward to being able to go back and eat at this cute restaurant in person eventually!

Breaking Bad Tour

One show we loved watching when it was on TV was Breaking Bad, which just so happened to be filmed across the city of Albuquerque.  Normally, pre-covid, they had this Breaking Bad group tour that took you in an old RV to some of the well-known sites where they used to film the show.  However, in 2020, that was shut down by Covid.  So rather than wait, we decided we would make our own tour and drive the route to see those filming sites in our own car! The photos on the left are from our tour, and the photos on the right are what are in the show!

Real Life vs The Show

The Walter White House

Real House

House in the show!

The real house has to have a fence around it now because people would often throw pizzas on their roof (something done in the show)!

Los Pollos Hermanos

The Real Restaurant

Restaurant in the show

In real life, the Los Pollos Hermanos is really a Twisters restaurant! At certain times of the year they will put all the Los Pollos Hermanos signs up as homage to the show!

Walter White’s Carwash Business

In Real Life

In the Show!

Unfortunately, the RV from the show we weren’t able to see. There were several more stops on our own tour but these were the best photos I took that would be the most recognizable!