The Family Goes South

Our train pulled into New Mexico passing by many adobe houses until finally it arrived outside Santa Fe and my mom, Dave, and I boarded a shuttle along with several other passengers. The only thing is my mom and Dave forgot to call meaning I didn’t have a seat so I had to sit on the floor. Fortunately, when one passenger got out, I got to sit in the front seat. We passed adobe houses, restaurants, and shops until we got into Santa Fe. We made it to our apartment then we decided to explore the town a little bit before going to eat. My mom and I stopped by at a store called Dinosaurs and More which had many dazzling crystal and dinosaur fossils as well as many inexpensive but still genuine oyster, shark’s tooth, seashell, petrified wood, and other types of fossils. I bought an oyster fossil, deciding not to buy too much else for now in case I saw other things I wanted to buy and then my mom and I met up with Dave at a restaurant where we sat out on the balcony and I enjoyed a burger with bacon and fried egg along with a generous glass of Chipotle beer. Afterwards we bought postcards for my mom to send to her family members and for me to send to Tyler. 

The next day, my mom, Dave, and I explored another fossil shop and a beautiful adobe Catholic cathedral before eating lunch where I made two tacos, one beef and one green Italian sausage. Afterwards we went into a bookstore where I, always with my creative side, perused books on Islamic calligraphy and Indian and Tibetan Buddhist religious art, while Mom purchased an old DVD called Five Easy Pieces with Jack Nicholson. I stayed at the apartment while my mom and Dave got massages then we ate at a high end restaurant where I found a new bottle cap for my collection in one of the buckets of bottles and enjoyed a delicious butter roasted chicken. After dinner we stopped by a Whole Foods where we got Imported Harp’s Beer and Strawberry Izzy Esques. We tried to watch Five Easy Pieces that night but couldn’t get our DVD player to work. 

The next day we went to Los Alamos and stopped first in Bandelier National Park where we saw ruins of a Native American village and Anasazi mud huts, cliff dwellings, petroglyphs, and ceremonial pits in the mountains. I learned about how the Anasazi might have moved up into the mountains to escape floods as the river nearby often rises in water level as it’s stream gets narrower, something I learned in Geology, and realized that many cultures probably remained more “primitive” because they had to adapt to new environments that they moved to due to wildebeest migrations, hunting, volcanoes, and warfare. While there, I also thought that the UCM Autism Spectrum Support Groups website also needs to have a place where members can share their experiences before and after, inside the group and out. We made it to a café in Los Alamos afterwards where I enjoyed a hot dog wrapped in a bagel. Then we went to the Bradbury Science Museum where much of what I learned in my History class about the atomic bomb was mentioned here.

We ordered some Indian take-out that night, allowing me to feast on chicken satay, tandoori chicken, naan, and rice. That night Mom and I also watched Five Easy Pieces, Jack Nicholson playing a jerk in relationship with an empty-headed blonde using my mom’s laptop and I wrote Tyler’s postcard. Then the next day when we were scheduled to leave my mom and I mailed our postcards and I bought a piece of petrified wood at a local store, before seeing the Georgia O’Keffe Exhibit. Afterwards, I went back to Dinosaurs and More and bought a shark’s tooth, shell, and a few other fossils. Right before leaving Santa Fe, my mom bought me a t-shirt at a Santa Fe store where I bought a prehistoric shark’s tooth and two other fossils, then we took a taxi that brought us to the train. We slept in a sleeping coach that night eating dinner on the train, my enjoying a steak due to the fact that it was paid for through the train fare. The train was scheduled to arrive in Kansas City at 7:15 in the morning and though I had to sleep on the top bunk of the coach, I never-the-less had a fruitful trip to Santa Fe.