Route 66 in Albuquerque

Route 66, like Airstreams, is another obsession interest of ours.  We were very lucky on this trip to be able to visit portions of it in Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico.  Albuquerque has a really great strip of it, which happens to be one of the best maintained parts of the Mother Road.  It's now called Central Avenue, but you'll know you're driving along it because there are Route 66 signs everywhere.

There are several old motel signs along the road.

The signs include a few that are still standing although the lot is completely empty of the building it went with, such as the Zia Motor Lodge.

There are a lot of unique shops along the road, too, including the Birdland Hippy Store.

I was excited to get a picture of my first muffler man!  I'm not sure what Paul Bunyan has to do with Vietnamese food, but do I care?  Nope.  I hope to see many more muffler men in the future (and Mike doesn't even get jealous of me wanting to see these other men!).

There is an Octopus Car Wash along the road, which brings back fond memories of my childhood. There's still one in Madison, but I've never been able to get a picture of the octopus there.  I really loved seeing these when I was a kid!

The Route 66 Diner is a popular place to eat, but as you can imagine it's not vegan friendly.  Besides, we weren't going to give our money to non-vegan restaurants when there were so many great vegan ones around!  However, we did stop by the diner's parking lot to get a picture of the sign collage.

Many of the building murals I posted about a few days ago were along Route 66.  There were many more that I didn't get pictures of.  They were all very impressive! 

This was one of my favorites.

We have another vacation coming up in July and we're hoping to take a full day to visit at least part of Route 66 in Illinois.  Until then, we hope you enjoyed this tour of Albuquerque's Route 66!

Albuquerque Eats, Part 2

After eating at the first two vegan restaurants that Albuquerque had to offer, we were looking forward to the other two.  Fei's Cafe was the next one that we tried.  They don't have a website I can link to, but I can tell you that it's all Chinese food on their menu.

I got the vegetable roll with cold sesame noodles.  It came with potstickers, steamed veggies, vegan ham and Chinese fried bread.   I gave the vegan ham to Mike and enjoyed the rest, especially that bread.  So good!

Mike had the same sides along with fried tofu and rice noodles.  He loved every bite of his meal (and I was tempted to go back to order much more of that delicious bread- that was seriously great stuff!).

For dessert we shared a piece of Taro Cake.  Don't let the picture fool you because it was really delicious!  It was our first time having taro and hopefully won't be our last.

The last vegan restaurant we ate at before heading to Santa Fe was Mint Tulip.  

We ended up eating there for two meals that day.  We usually eat food we brought along on trips for breakfast, but wanted something different, so we both ordered their breakfast burritos.  They are filled with potatoes, green chile and vegan chipotle sausage (and usually spinach, too, but they were out of it that morning) with vegan ranch on the side.  Such a great breakfast! 

Later that day we went back to get food for lunch there.  We were in the mood for some Route 66 style food, which Mint Tulip is perfect for because not only do they serve that kind of food but they're also located on the old Route 66!  

They offer quite a few flavors of vegan shakes, so we decided to each get one.  Mike went with chocolate and I went with mint cookie (although I was contemplating the strawberry, too).   Mike helped me with about half of mine because our main course really filled me up.  

What better food to go with a shake than a Frito Pie Dog, right?  We both got one- a vegan hot dog on a gluten-free bun covered in organic corn chips, vegan cheese, jalapeños and onions.  We're definitely recreating this meal at home!

They also came with a choice of side and we both chose the potato salad.  We saved the salad for later and it was just as delicious as everything else.  

If you ever find yourself in Albuquerque, you really can't go wrong with any of the vegan restaurants there.  We loved everything we ate!  An added bonus to them is that three of the four we ate at (all but Loving Vegan) were just a few miles from each other on Central Avenue (aka the old Route 66), so we were able to sight see when picking up our food.  

Next up for food is Santa Fe eats!

Albuquerque Street Art

One of the things we found very impressive about Albuquerque was the large amount of street art. These are just a few of the murals we saw while driving around.

While taking a picture of the next mural, I spotted a pigeon right by the name of the mural.  It was along Route 66, aka The Mother Road.

I could spend a long time exploring Albuquerque just trying to get captures of all the street art!

Albuquerque KOA & Sights

When we arrived in Albuquerque, the first thing we did was check into the cabin we had reserved at the KOA campground.  It was a really welcome change of pace from staying at a hotel and our cabin was really nice (as well as quite inexpensive!).  It had a cute little swing in front of it that we made good use of and a great view of the Sandia Mountains.

A lot of KOA campgrounds have dog runs & parks, which is why we chose this particular one.  They had a really nice, larger one as well as two small ones at the other end of the park.  

The park was almost always empty, which was nice because we're wary of having the girls near other dogs at parks (we've had too many bad experiences in the past).  Emma went on some of the agility equipment and we were very proud of Rowan for going on one, too.  She's usually scared of things like that, so we praised her a lot for being such a brave girl!  

Isn't the carved fire hydrant adorable?

The next morning we headed out to Petroglyph National Monument to hike.  The trail we went on was very quiet with no other people in sight and the weather was perfect!

All of the rocks are lava rocks and contain a lot of petroglyphs.  We had fun spotting them along the hike.

We were a bit disappointed in how brown everything was.  Arizona was always so colorful when we visited there, but maybe things just haven't bloomed yet in New Mexico?  These were some of the only flowers we saw.  

The adobe style houses are so cool.  We'd love to live in one someday if we end up retiring in the Southwest.  This one had both peppers and a tumbleweed hanging on the front porch.  Those and the turquoise trim made it one of my favorite houses that we came across.

It was windy most of the time we were there but we did manage to see two hot air balloons on one calm morning.  We're determined to ride in one someday! 

Lots more of our trip to come yet!  I hope that everyone is enjoying it so far!

Albuquerque Eats, Part 1

There are a total of four vegan restaurants in Albuquerque and we were lucky enough to be able to eat at all of them!

The first one we went to is Loving Vegan because their sushi menu was calling very loudly to us.

We got three things to share, including the Heart Attack appetizer.  Jalapeños stuffed with vegan spicy tuna, vegan lobster & vegan cheese, then deep fried.  SO good!

We also got the Amazing Roll & Loving Vegan Rolls off of the sushi menu.  The Amazing Roll is vegan lobster, avocado and cucumber rolled in portobello mushrooms and topped with sweet sauce.  The Loving Vegan roll was our favorite of all three items.  Green chili tempura, avocado, cucumber, vegan lobster & vegan cream cheese deep fried and topped with spicy mayo, Sriracha and sweet sauce.  We had to restrain ourselves from going back and ordering more!

The second restaurant we ate at was Thai Vegan, which has two locations.  The one we went to was located on Central Avenue, the old Route 66.

We shared an appetizer of Grand Tempura- broccoli, zucchini, pumpkin & soy shrimp.  

Mike got the mushroom steak, which I tried a bite of and thought was delicious.   He adored this meal!

I also adored my meal, Praram's Plate, seitan in a peanut sauce on top of a bed of spinach.  I really liked that it came with extra greens on the side as well as brown rice in the shape of a heart.

We were stuffed from all of that food, but that didn't stop us from gorging ourselves further on some chocolate chip banana rolls.  I had to throw in the towel after a few but Mike managed to finish them off.  They were good but extremely sweet.  

I'm trying not to make our trip posts too long, so the other two Albuquerque restaurants will be in a post to come!