Two Q's

I've been in Albuquerque for the past week for Particle Accelerator Conference 2007. It was a pretty good conference, despite the fact that Albuquerque is a typical sprawling American city with not much to do, especially if you don't have a car. I regretted slightly not having a plan for my free day (the Sunday), since it would have been nice to get out to the pueblos or maybe the VLA. We went on a couple of good trips though:

On Wednesday, we drove out to Santa Fe. The town was pretty nice, some very attractive buildings. Everything was fronted with adobe (I think), which gave it a nice sandstone-ish feel. We did some tat shopping at a Five & Dime, but failed to find a real six-string, disappointingly. And we saw an immense thunderstorm - lightning everywhere, constantly for a few hours. I'd never seen anything like it. We tried to get some photos but it was just pot-luck really. I think Duncan has a good one.

On the Friday, we got the cable car to the top of Sandia Peak, above Albuquerque. It was well worth the trip. The mountain stands at 10,000 feet (the city's at 5000-6000ish), so the views were absolutely amazing. We had a bit of a wander around the ridge, tried to climb some trees, ate in the restaurant at the top, and watched the sunset over the city. Didn't see any bears though.

Most of the photos of last week are on my Flickr page. I'll put the cable car ones up shortly.