What do you think of when you think of New Mexico?

[Greta]

Felt a little like being sandblasted LOL.

That has to be the best - most accurate and most succinct - description of springtime in Albuquerque that I've ever heard!

 

My husband, who does not like it here as much as I do, calls NM "the surface of Mercury." I'll have to tell him this one too.

[Stacia]

Ok, the first post that mentioned goat heads made me think you were talking about actual goat heads. :lol:  (I've never heard of a goat head plant.)

 

So, after reading other posts, I'm thinking you must be talking about something like cockleburs on steriods.... Sounds like they're even worse that that. (For those who are ignorant of goat heads like me, here is a page w/ descriptions & photos.)

[Greta]

Ok, the first post that mentioned goat heads made me think you were talking about actual goat heads.

LOL! I've never understood that name. Seems rather insulting to goats to compare them to such a nasty, despicable plant.

[MrsJewelsRae]

I'll never forget Christmas Eve in Santa Fe, NM when I was 15! The adobe style houses were so amazing, and we wondered why they had all these brown paper bag things lining the houses and streets, until evening. The whole city lit up in wonderful amazing Christmas lights in a very different way! I want to take my kids there some day at Christmas. I also remember the locals being kind and patient with me while I was trying to practice my Spanish. :)

[Woodhaven]

I think of the Navaho. : )

[Ravin]

Natives/Navajo country, Roswell alien kitsch, Nuke research, the Albequerque balloon festival, Carlsbad Caverns, forests, mountains, and greener country than its neighbors (West Texas where I grew up and Arizona where I live now.) There are some pretty and cozy looking parts I've driven through where I wouldn't mind settling if I was independently wealthy. A poor economy is another thing I think about in New Mexico, and people with deep roots, both native and Spanish/Mexican, plus artsy wealthy hippie wannabes and some actual hippies.

[Greta]

Rae, I really loved my first Christmas here too. Abq's Old Town and Santa Fe's plaza are both so charming that time of year, especially if we get a little snow.

 

Ravin, sounds like you know NM pretty well!

[Plateau Mama]

I am from NM but the first time I took my husband he kept saying "they really live in adobes, really?

[TravelingChris]

I lived there for four years, 1999- 2003.  I remember going to a Boy Scout family camp at a resevoir area and there were fauCets there.  People were washing dishes and the water was running and all the kids were SO HAPPY-  water running.  It really impressed me how my kids were having a different childhood than I did.  We loved living there-  yes, we lived in Albuquerque but our area (Four Hills) did not have a crime problem.  I loved that neighborhood.  We met such interesting people living there and I actually had dinner at the home of a man who showed all of us his Oscar (for a technical award in the thirties).  I loved learning about the different culture that New Mexico is- with luminarias, unique folk tales- like La Lladrona who helped me teach my kids not to go down into the arroyo in back of my house, the Holy Week long walks that you see if you travel in some areas, the  descendants of the Spanish settlers ( and no, they were not Mexicans.

 

So when I think of New Mexioo, it is of the mountains and , the Bosque, and all the cool plants that grew in New Mexico.-  I loved seeing the yellow chamiso and the purple asters in the fall.  Just gorgeous. 

 

In terms of desert, my first thought of a desert state is California, followed by Arizona.  New Mexico does have a large desert area but much of the state is not desert though still arid-  there are very specific definitions of desert, usually areas that receive less than 10 inches of rain a year.  Many areas of NM get more usually and those areas are various types of semi-arid lands.

[Liz CA]

Hot, dry desert.

[TXMomof4]

Was this in Taos? If you remember the restaurant, I'd love to know! Or maybe you meant a homemade meal that your aunt made. My husband goes skiing in Toas from time to time, so I'm sure he'd love to know of a good place to eat. I know a few restaurants in Santa Fe and several in Albuquerque that must be experienced, and some that must be avoided! But I'm not as familiar with Taos.

Michael's Kitchen is my very favorite place to eat in Taos. I dream about their breakfast enchiladas with green chili. Oh my goodness - pretty close to heaven.

[helena]

I think of chills!!! Corns for pozole.

The local magazine with funny NM stories in the back.

Husband's family history.

Good incense.

 

[MamaJeanne]

green chilis

sopaipillas

my grandparents- I spent almost every summer growing up there.

 

I think of a lot of other things, too, but those were the first three that came to mind.

[Luanne]

I love Colorado! It's one of the places we talk about moving to when dh retires.

 

The goat heads were much worse in OK, as I recall. :D

 

 

I love Colorado too.  Of course I was born here and have lived here my entire life.  It is an awesome place to live!

[hellen]

I think desolate, unnatractive, and poor. I'm most familiar with the NE corner. I grew up in Colorado so NM always felt like the poor cousin.

[Upward Journey]

Honestly, when I'm heading east I think "omgsh, I-10 is so boooooring!!!!", and when I'm heading west "Halleluia, we're almost back to Tucson".  The only times I ever went through NM were on roadtrips to FL, so you can understand :p

 

I've only been up into northern NM once, through Santa Fe and then into Colorado.  It was absolutely beautiful, like AZ, but better :)

[theYoungerMrsWarde]

The character Will Ferrrel played on The Office for a few episodes. The character was obsessed with the region.

[Annie Laurie]

mountains

dry air- my lips were chapped every time I went there.

old

chile- both red and green

posale

green chile stew

desert landscapes- I see yards with rocks instead of grass a lot

stucco houses (We have a lot of brick houses here.)

 

 

I have never lived there but my dh grew up there and I have visited. Old might seem weird, but I guess Albuquerque didn't seem like the most modern city to me. Not necessarily in a bad way.

 

ETA: The drive from TX to Albuquerque is the most boring and ugly drive ever. My dh grew up with it so he thinks those kinds of stark, desert landscapes are beautiful, but I grew up in MI, w trees and green grass, so I don't like it myself.

 

Oh, I just thought of another one: Now, it makes me think of the show Breaking Bad.

[Lanny]

Dry and mountains and some Indian reservations. A friend lives in Los Alamos (her DH is a Physicist). My wife would think about the Martians who landed there in 1947 (?) She is an amateur astronomer. I drove across Northern N.M. many years ago and went through Albuquerque on that trip.. Flew over N.M. many times, between Texas and California, and the night skies, in West Texas and New Mexico, are quite spectacular, for star watching, if one has a window seat. It is one of the 4 vulnerable "border" states, sharing the international border with Mexico, so that creates something in common with Texas, where I lived for 28 years. N.M. has a short international border that isn't in the news much. I try to keep up with current events in Lubbock, and I know they air evac patients from Eastern N.M., into hospitals in Lubbock, so I guess that's closer and easier than taking them to Albuquerque.  Forest  Fires near Los Alamos. My friend and her family have had to evacuate, more than once. Kirtland A.F.B. in Albuquerque. Before I retired, the calls I received from Recruiters, for assignments in Albuquerque, were usually low paying, so I was never interested in working there, for that reason, but if the hourly rates had been acceptable for me, I would have loved to have worked there, temporarily.  Oh, I drove across the Southern part of N.M., going from Southern California (?) to El Paso and then to the Texas Gulf Coast.

[kewb]

The first thing that comes to mind is the movie Twins. I think of artist communities in the desert.  And Silver Jewelry, I think about native american silver jewelry.

[MollyAnn]

I live in El Paso, so I think Las Cruses for the Farmers Market, Cloudcroft for camping in the cool green mountains and escaping the heat, long stretch of I-10 on our way to Tucson or farther west, Alburquerque for the Balloon Festival, TKD tournaments, Trader Joe's, and Whole Foods.

I look at Roswell with jealousy since the Girl Scout service center there puts on better events than our's does.

[TammyinTN]

The place that I got to take an incredible hot air balloon ride. 

[TXMomof4]

.

 

ETA: The drive from TX to Albuquerque is the most boring and ugly drive ever. My dh grew up with it so he thinks those kinds of stark, desert landscapes are beautiful, but I grew up in MI, w trees and green grass, so I don't like it myself.

 

We just moved to El Paso and *Everyone* uses the phrase 'stark beauty'. Just ftr that means a desolate, empty place. They are just trying to make it sound better.

[ChristyB in TN]

Hiking. I love hiking in nm.

[Farrar]

A lovely trip I had there when I was in high school.  The desert.  Yummy fry bread.  Beautiful sunsets.  It was a very foreign place to me then...  I've since been to other deserts and it seems less alien than it did when I had only seen the damp east.

[BakersDozen]

Before we moved there I thought brown, dry, flat, ugly, hot, empty. Thankfully, we ended up in one of the very few beautiful areas.

 

I think of poverty (except for where we lived).

 

I'd never choose to live there unless it was where we grew up.

[Gentlemommy]

I think of the balloon fiesta. :-D We went to it a couple of years ago, it was absolutely breathtaking. Gorgeous weather, beautiful event, kids loved it. Of course we were staying with very close family friends, and had a lovely time overall...I do also think I couldn't live there all the time. It's very brown. I think I'd get depressed after a while, I need some more green.

[Jayne J]

The first words that popped into my head were Lincoln County Cattle War. Billy the Kid and all that. I went through a pretty serious "Wild West" phase as a girl.

[Miss Marple]

The Milagro Beanfield War was so much better due to having lived in NM :)

[Saraswati]

I think of Cloudcroft and Ruidoso. We live in El Paso, and we like to take the RV up in the Lincoln National Forest to escape the desert. 

[jewellsmommy]

I think of Bugs Bunny and how he took that wrong turn at Albuquerque.

[Dory]

Dry desert, Tsankawi cliff dwellings, and the Bandelier National Monument. The Gila cliff dwellings were awesome to visit too. Overall it reminded me of AZ.

[Unicorn.]

Mountains!  Big, beautiful blue skies.  Ghost Ranch=my mom (she loved to go there and paint in the summers).  Snow.  Deserts, Native American culture.  I love New Mexico.  I think it has a little bit to offer anyone.  And I have always thought the people were very friendly. 

[Shamzanne]

I think of being asked "red or green?" when ordering mexican food (food that blew my mind, btw) and of art. I loved walking through Santa Fe and being able to talk to so many artists displaying their own creations. And, one of my house mates goes every year to be part of a conversation on art and the church. I loved visiting NM and hope to return someday!

[JennW in SoCal]

I have to chime in!  I grew up in Albuquerque, but moved away in college and never returned. When I think of New Mexico I think of 

 

deep blue skies

yellow aspen leaves in autumn

beautiful mountains

sopapillas

cinnamon rolls at Frontier restaurant across the street from UNM

the Albuquerque Youth symphony program that I grew up in

the smell of piñon fires in the winter 

the blue sparks in my blankets from static electricity in the dry, dry winter air

the cicadas in the poplar trees in the summer

summer thunder storms

swamp coolers!

and yes, the sand blasting my legs got on the playground at Monte Vista elementary school!

 

 

[Amy in NH]

I think of my sister and aunt who live in Albuquerque, and my uncle who lives in Santa Fe, and my grandparents who passed there.

I think of the desert, trees near the river, and the wildfires.

I think of the balloon festival and the pueblos.

I think of the Santa Fe Opera, even though I've never been.

[MistyMountain]

I think of it as sunny and dry. The weather in some parts of the state is really nice and sunny and doesn't have extremes. They have a cool baloon festival in Albuquerque. It has wide open landscapes with mountains and canyons in some parts. Taos NM has really cool earth ships. I never been there.

[Scrub Jay]

Desert, flowers, and turquoise.

[Miss Marple]

I have to chime in!  I grew up in Albuquerque, but moved away in college and never returned. When I think of New Mexico I think of 

 

deep blue skies

yellow aspen leaves in autumn

beautiful mountains

sopapillas

cinnamon rolls at Frontier restaurant across the street from UNM

the Albuquerque Youth symphony program that I grew up in

the smell of piñon fires in the winter 

the blue sparks in my blankets from static electricity in the dry, dry winter air

the cicadas in the poplar trees in the summer

summer thunder storms

swamp coolers!

and yes, the sand blasting my legs got on the playground at Monte Vista elementary school!

 

 

The memories!  And it is so sad that the area is unsafe now.  I used to walk all over there the main campus and the medical school campus.  Of course, I was living in the big city and had big city street smarts.  

 

ETA:  How could I forget Dion's Pizza?!?!  We still head there when we visit Albuquerque.

 

[Dandelion]

I've never been to NM, although we're only about 2.5 hours from the CO/NM border.  Would love to visit sometime. 

 

What I think of is desert, adobe houses, Taos (I'd love to go skiing there sometime), and Santa Fe.  I also think of Ten Thousand Waves.  Some friends of mine went and raved about it for months.  Almost treated myself to a birthday trip there last year, but they were all booked up (I guess they book up months in advance). Would still love to go sometime when life allows me to schedule well in advance.  ;)

 

When I worked for Intel, I worked closely with several people from Intel's Albuquerque campus.  What they shared about Albuquerque was mostly negative (high crime, terrible schools, etc.).  What also stands out in my mind is that in my 10 years working at Intel, we never chose Albuquerque for our face-to-face meetings (when we brought our geographically dispersed team together in a central location for a week).  We always chose one of the other Intel campuses (Santa Clara, Portland, and Phoenix for the most part). 

[Greta]

Thank you all so much for sharing your images/thoughts of NM!  This has been really fun for me to read.  We don't plan to stay here long-term, though we will for the next three years at least (at which time my husband can retire with a small pension).  Once I've moved away and I'm missing it, I'll probably come back and reread these and cry like a baby.  NM has its problems, which is why we'll move, but at the same time it has really come to be home, and there are many things about it that I love.

 

And I actually do like the "stark beauty" of the desert.  I think southern UT is just gorgeous!

 

Christina, you mentioned that much of NM actually doesn't fit the definition of desert, so I got curious looked up the definition, which according to wikipedia is:  "areas where more water is lost by evapotranspiration than falls as precipitation."  Albuquerque's wiki page says that "annual precipitation is less than half of evaporation" and that we're in the northern tip of the Chihuahuan Desert.  But higher elevations in northern NM probably do get enough precipitation that they would not fit this definition (I'm thinking of the mountains with ponderosa forests and aspen stands and such - lower elevations, even in the northern part of the state, would still be desert I would certainly think).  Thank you for educating me! 

 

By the way, I know it's barely visible, but my avatar picture is San Felipe de Neri church in Old Town, Albuquerque.  I don't attend services there, but I've visited it.  I chose it as my avatar because it just seems like such a classic New Mexico image. 

 

 

[Greta]

What they shared about Albuquerque was mostly negative (high crime, terrible schools, etc.).

 

I've noticed that people who grew up here don't see it this way at all, and say things like "oh, crime is bad everywhere!"  But people who have lived in other places realize that, no, it is NOT this bad everywhere!  In fact, it is not this bad most places. 

 

It's kind of the same thing with the schools.  People who grew up here don't seem to realize that there are places where the schools aren't like this.  People who relocated here tend to homeschool or pay tremendous amounts of money for private schools.

[luvnlattes]

I've never been to NM. It makes me think of desert with mesas and plateaus.

[Greta]

Wendy, I've heard of people not knowing that Rhode Island is a state (and NOT an island :lol: ).   But I didn't realize CT had the same problem.

 

So, when did schools stop teaching US geography???  When I was in the 5th grade, our teacher would pass out blank maps of the US, and we had to fill them in with state names and capitals.  We did this over, and over, and over again for most of the school year (or at least it seemed so at the time) until we had it down cold.  Simple but effective.

[Swimtaxi234]

I like watching hot air balloons from my front porch.

 

I have learned to LOVE the brown shades and take delight in little pops of color.  I love our mountains, the amazing weather (62 degrees this morning), and the wonderful people who live here.

 

[Miss Marple]

I like watching hot air balloons from my front porch.

 

I have learned to LOVE the brown shades and take delight in little pops of color.  I love our mountains, the amazing weather (62 degrees this morning), and the wonderful people who live here.

 

My folks lived in the valley and we would climb up on the roof and watch the balloons.  They were very low because they would have just taken off.  My oldest son was about 7 when he saw them for the first time.  His eyes were big and he said, "It's just like a big balloon buffet!"

[SailorMom]

We just moved to Clovis, NM about 3 weeks ago (Air Force). We lived in Albuquerque for 9 months about 8 years ago.

Here are my impressions from being a sorta-kinda-resident:

 

Albuquerque - gorgeous mountains, beautiful river valley, hot air balloons every morning, close to skiing, hiking, horrible crime, bad schools, nice dry heat in the summer, beautiful Christmas in old town, Acoma Pueblo, great pottery and art, sandblasted when it's windy.

 

All in all, we really enjoyed Albuquerque while we were there.

 

Clovis: nice climate (dry heat, cools off at night), three hour drive to everything (which is good and bad), no traffic, friendly neighbors, no mosquitos, wayyyy too many flies, horrible roads, worse crime than Albuquerque, some of the worst schools anywhere, poverty, weeds growing everywhere, sand storms, agriculture, ridiculously expensive housing costs, horrible water.

It almost seems like it is in a different state altogether than the New Mexico that we got to know in Albuquerque (it reminds me more of Enid, Oklahoma, actually).

[mommymilkies]

Desert.  We drove through there about 8 years ago.  That's all I really remember-we saw the crater and Petrified Forest.  All desert.  NM, I take that back.  Santa Fe was pretty cool, but we weren't there long.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I'm enjoying learning about New Mexico.  

[Elfknitter.#]

My FIL's family all live in Las Cruces. I went with dh to his grandmother's funeral. I never truly appreciated AZ deserts until we drove through southern NM. To this day, I told him he can drive out and then pick me up from the airport in El Paso.

 

Otherwise I think of green chile, fry bread, chile, emu farms, chile, pozole, and chile. Did I mention the chile?