Rendezvous in Albuquerque

After a journey of over 800 miles I called Ray Tetreault on his now functioning cell phone and he answered on the second ring. He was sitting at poolside in the motel taking in the sun. I was envious driving across the seemingly endless plains and prairies of Arizona and New Mexico. When I finally arrived about 3:30pm the sun was fading and it got too cool to sit outside. No problem, that gave us time to decide on a dinner location.

My brother Marty had told me about the longest aerial Tram ride in the world that is located in Albuquerque. His literature indicated that it was a must see. In our dinner location discussion, Ray had pre-selected 3 sites based on his previous field trips to Albuquerque from Sangre di Christo Center where he was on Sabbatical. One of the three locations was “High Finance,” a restaurant atop the Sandia Peak in the Cibola Mountains which overlook Albuquerque. You reach it by tram he explained. The rest went very fast. We called for reservations and were told to be at the base station by 6:00pm so we could make it to the top for a 6:30pm reservation.


The clouds were coming in fast and the skies darkening as we climbed aboard the tram for the 15 minute, 2 ½ mile trip up to the 10,873 ft. elevation where the restaurant awaited us. I took lots of pictures in the fading light and regret only that the lightening storm that entertained us off in the distance was too difficult to catch with my camera. But I tried.
We had a wonderful meal and enjoyed our evening very much. It was raining heavily at the top by the time the 9:00pm tram returned us to the base lodge. As we descended the mountain the raging rain storm changed into just a sprinkling at the bottom. We scampered to the car and drove back to the motel. It was a good night!