Finals Days in Santa Fe/Arriving at Albuquerque Rally

1st Picture - We're packed in at the Rally

2nd Picture - Our view from the Rally

3rd Picture - Mark at the Rally entrance

4th Picture - Sherry @ the Rally entrance

5th Picture - Balloon Fiesta Museum in the park

Well, we finally made it to the 2009 RV Rally yesterday. It's been more than a week since our last update...sorry about that! We spent the last several days in Santa Fe running just running a few errands, checking a couple of places out and mainly...just waiting for this rally to begin.

We did check out one of the local Santa Fe 'dives' that was recently on the Food Network show, "Diners, Drive-in's and Dives". I tried the green chili/cheese burger, that the guy on the show said was terrific...and it was, though a tad spicey for my liking. Of course, Mark being the more adventurous one, decided he had to try the buffalo burger, so he had a Bison burger...he says the meat tasted great, not really 'gamey', but the burger was a bit spicey. So that was a fun experience. We also went back to Route 66 for a day and checked out several cool places, but we forgot to bring the camera so no pictures of that day!

The most interesting thing we saw our last day on Route 66 in Santa Fe was the 'Loretto Chapel'. I remember hearding about it on the Travel channel a few years ago. It's a Catholic church built in the1870's for some nuns that came to Santa Fe to open the first convent school for girls. They had run out of money before the staircase could be built to the second floor of the church. The sisters prayed about it and the next morning, a stranger showed up with a saw and a couple of other basic tools, offering to do the work for the sisters. They were glad to have someone work on it without requiring payment upfront, so this man spent the next 7 months creating this circular staircase, which has No supports and makes 3 complete 360 turns. The stair case was finished in 1877. The morning after it was completed, the mother superior looked for the stranger, to pay for his work or at least for the wood and he was gone...never seen nor heard from again.

Numerous architectural 'experts' have completed detailed analysis and even a chemical compound breakdown of the staircase wood used, and to date the wood cannot be identified. So the sisters and folk lore is that the work must have been completed by the patron Saint of carpentry whom the sisters had prayed to the night before the man showed up to complete the staircase. In addition, NO nails were used, only glue. All pieces were done by intra-locking each step of the staircase! And until 1977, this remained an active convent with hundreds of girls going up and down these stairs everyday...with no structural support! And the wood is beautiful, it looks brand new! Isn't that a fascinating story? Mark and I spent a couple of hours checking it out, they had a bookstore area where you could read the actual geological and structural analysis. None of the 'experts' have been able to identify the type of wood used, how the staircase structure supports weight with no structural support, nor why after 125+ years, it is still in pristine condition. (I like to think there was some kind of help from someone 'above'!)

Well, that pretty much wrapped up our week in Santa Fe. We got to Albuquerque yesterday evening and there are currently 2,000+ RV's at the Balloon Festival Park with more coming tomorrow. There are lot's of seminars and booths and stuff to check out on everyting from RV stuff to cool places to visit, etc. I've included a few pictures of the rally site., (By the way, Mark wants to point out that in the extended view of the Balloon Fiesta Park RV's, our RV is the one with the white roof..(he he he)! As for entertainment, tonight is a concert with a group popular in the 59's/60's. Tomorrow night is Neil Sedaka, (remember him from the 70's? Loved that guy). Then the next night is Rita Coolidge, country western singer and the next night the Osmond brothers.

That about wraps it up from here, sorry I've been a bad 'blogger'...promise I'll do better on keeping updates of what we're up to. So......until tomorrow, have a wonderful evening~~