Day Four: El Paso, TX to Albuquerque, NM

Today has been the best one so far.... I cannot even put into words the things that I have seen and done today... It was just amazing!!!

We left the Wade's house at around 7ish and quickly made it to the New Mexico border... Of course I had to have a picture... I have never been here before, and it is really fun being silly and hopping out of the car along the highway to snap a pic.... Don't worry.... I was careful... There wasn't another car on this road for miles!!!

Our first stop of the day was White Sands National Monument.... The entrance fee at this particular park was only 3 dollars, but we went to ahead and bought the National Park "parkhopper" pass since we are going to so many different parks over the next few weeks...

White Sands is a national park that covers 275 square miles and is nothing but snow white sand dunes as far as your eyes can see... I looks like it has snowed for days and days... The cool part about the sand is that is not like beach sand and does not attract heat... It was very cool... This was very nice because the air temp at 10 this morning when we got there was already over 90!!!

Speaking of snow.... One of the highlights of this park is renting a sled to go down the dunes.... Here is a snap shot of me sledding... I have tried for hours to load a video of me sledding... Matt has one on his site but it is not like the one I have.. Hopefully it will be loaded in the morning! Tune in to see it!

There were tons of people in the park but its so big most people were very spread out... We finally ran into a really nice family who was sledding that took our pic...

After we left the dunes we headed north to Albuquerque up Interstate 25... We had lunch in a town called Truth or Consequences... Broadway was one of the main streets through town... Pretty good lunch but nothing to write home about....

The Rio Grande river runs right through town and they had a nice little park along the river that made for a good photo op... If you remember yesterday this same river is what separates us from Mexico. Its a lot wider in this shot than it actually is at the border...

After we arrived in Albuquerque, we checked into the hotel and rested up for our evening adventure up to the top of the Sandia Mountains via the Sandia Tramway... I saw this tram on the travel channel back when we first started planning the trip and I made up my mind right then that we were gonna do this.... The tram ride is the longest in the world and covers about 10 miles of cable in 15 minutes. At the base of the mountain when we entered the tram we were at 4,000 feet above sea level and it was about 90 degrees... When arrived at the top it was 64 and 10,378 feet... IT WAS AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At this point below the tram stopped to tell us how high we were above ground.... 950 feet... I ALMOST THREW UP!!!!!!!!!!! There we were... just dangling there... As long as we were moving I was fine...but the stopping really made me nervous!!!!!! Matt of course was fine and laughing at me.... I failed to mention above that there were 50 people in that tiny little tram... Not good if you needed some air!!! And there was this dumb little kid who kept talking about falling and crashing into millions of tiny pieces!!!!

This is me at the top and a pic of the sunset we saw while we were eating dinner at a really nice restaurant up top. The view from up there was too amazing to put into words... Then I got in the pic and just made it even better :0)

AIN'T HE JUST GOOD!!!!! HE DID THIS JUST FOR ME!!!!!!!

Day Four Stats:

Mileage: 450 miles

Drive Time: 5.5 hours (The speed limit was 80 in some spots!!!)

Gas: $40 in El Paso, TX; $65 in Albuquerque, NM