Day 2.28: Santa Fe, NM to Albuquerque, NM

We got up and worked out beating eating breakfast, which was considerably more disappointing since they didn’t have bananas again but this time also ran out of potatoes without any to replace them. It’s a great breakfast and it was too bad that a busy Sunday resulted in items not being available. Arielle left to go run her first program, Talking to Children About Death. Only 4 people came, but it was still great. Abe caught up on some TV and started packing so that we had a quick 15-minute turnaround when she got back to load up the car. We stopped at Whole Foods, where got a few pieces of sweet chili tofu (great), veggie sides (not great), mac and cheese with asparagus (great), and banana chai smoothie (Abe liked it, Arielle didn’t). We drove five more minutes to the synagogue, and Arielle went in to set up while Abe finished eating in the car. Her program, Physician-Assisted Death from a Jewish Perspective, had twelve very engaged participants, a few of whom were pretty knowledgeable about New Mexico law, which is still actively changing as it pertains to the subject matter. The session ran about an hour and a half, and people stuck around to ask questions.

We said goodbye and thank you to Joy and left for Albuquerque, which was less than an hour away – definitely our shortest drive yet! We did see a very cool cloud along the way.

We checked in at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott University Area, which was a pretty big hotel with a little outdoor building in the middle that houses the fitness center, pool, hot tub, and sauna. After unloading our bags, we drove about fifteen minutes to El Pinto, a restaurant with an enormous parking lot, where we met some of Abe’s family members for the first time. Morris is Abe’s grandmother Barbara’s first cousin, and he brought with him photos from his Bar Mitzvah and his wedding which included Barbara, who passed away ten years ago, her mother Becky, who Abe knew as his great-grandmother Nana until she died at age 99, and her parents Mollie and Max, better known as GG and GP, who his dad grew up knowing. Abe sat and talked to Morris and his wife Evelyn for a while, and Arielle talked to their daughter Geri Lynn and her husband Michael. We switched when our food came. Abe got a house salad he didn’t touch but Arielle ate the chile croutons. Arielle got a taco salad in a tostada bowl that was great except the last bite ended on onion, and Abe got a ribeye that was pretty good with thin fries. Geri Lynn gave us dishes that she had from GG and GP, which was very sweet. We had a wonderful time, and they invited us to come over for dinner the next night!

We felt like having dessert so we stopped on the way back to the hotel at Cold Stone, ordering Abe’s typical Chocolate Devotion with a scoop of banana ice cream mixed in. We watched TV in the hotel and went to sleep, though we were amazed by the loud sound of what we thought was wind but was amplified by a gap in the door.

Approximate number of miles covered: 63