We began our trip in Albuquerque, New Mexico today. We met up with our contact at National Park Service who drove with us to Sante Fe. We did a brief tour of the NPS regional headquarters building (Pueblo architecture - originally built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1940s under FDR) and then met up with the NM state epidemiologist to describe our project and get feedback. Several epidemiologists (former EIS officers, like Aly) took us for lunch at a New Mexican restaurant (like Mexican food, but with different sauces – I tried “Christmas” style, with a mix of green and red chile; the sopapillas, sweet bread pockets with honey, were amazing!). We then drove north to Bandelier National Monument, about an hour from Santa Fe. We did our first park assessment there – which overall went well, minus some small hiccups with the protocol for our snack shop tool (e.g. does a side salad with a little bit of cheese count as healthy when you don’t have access to any of the nutrition facts?). We made some slight modifications to our snack shop survey tool – and did some pilot tests of a water access survey (if we want people to drink water instead of sugar-sweetened beverages like Coke, then people need to be able to access free drinking water!).
Bandelier was quite beautiful. The red rock mountains drop suddenly into the gorge in which we followed the nature trail. The path led us to some cave dwellings, brick ruins of structures, and deep kivas (round dug-outs carved long-ago for unknown purposes). It then wound around into a beautiful old forest in which streams wove around the path. The sounds of the trickling water and rustling leaves was incredibly peaceful. Our hour-long walk ended sadly and we headed back to Albuquerque. We enjoyed a delicious dinner on a roof-top deck in “Old Town” – then headed to bed in preparation for a long day of driving to Arizona and our next stop, Canyon de Chelly!
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