While we were grateful to escape the haboob from the day before, we had a terrible night’s sleep. The Pilot travel stop had a loudspeaker blaring throughout the night with announcements; we had glaringly bright lights seeping through our doors and windows; and people were slamming doors to get in and out of their cars or noisily peeling away from the gas station. But to the person who blared their hip hop music at 4.45am right next to us–really? You may work odd hours and this may be a 24/7 gas station, but that was the worst disruption of the night!
Breaking Bad Highlights
It was still freezing in the morning, with an icy wind still blowing, but fortunately no signs of the intense dust storms that we had yesterday. Our itinerary today was focused on driving around Albuquerque to see a lot of sights, including checking out lots of places that were used for Breaking Bad, one of our favorite TV series, ever. There are a lot of places to scope out (listed comprehensively on websites like this one) for both Breaking Bad and its spinoff, Better Call Saul, but we focused on a few of the key locations. This included:
Walter White’s House
This looks nothing like the one in the show as a lot of changes have been made to the home–unsurprisingly, there’s now a tall fence around the house, a security car parked outside, dogs ready to bark at you from inside the house if you get too close, and (if that wasn’t enough for you to get the hint), a big sign commanding you to take photos from across the street.
A1A Car Wash
This was the car wash where Walt worked part time while teaching in the beginning of the show. Once his meth business took off and the money started pouring in, he and Skyler decided to purchase it as a means of laundering his money. It looks like what it did in the show.
The Laundry/Super Lab
Who doesn't remember the effort of bringing in a team of German engineers to excavate the super meth lab underneath the commercial laundry building. So many great scenes from inside and out of this location.
The Dog House
This is the drive-in restaurant where Jesse would sell his product before going into business with Walt. It also appeared in Better Call Saul (where Kim chatted to Saul about her resignation). In real life, it’s an old-school spot that’s been run by the same family for decades, serving up burgers, chili cheese dogs, fries and milkshakes.
Los Pollos Hermanos
Located south of Albuquerque, the restaurant looks the same on the outside except for the sign, which is for Twister’s Burrito store. There is an image of Walter White sitting at a booth looking out at you to acknowledge its role in the show.
Bonus: Walter White grave marker
While this wasn’t in the show, there’s an RIP market for Walt, which sits hidden at the back parking lot of a few stores.
Other sites we checked out (which were all fairly brief stops) included:
Microsoft’s first headquarters
While Microsoft made it big in Washington state, did you know that its first offices were in a strip mall in Albuquerque? There’s a plaque commemorating where cofounders Bill Gates and Paul Allen once commuted, although today the neighborhood seems rather sketchy–we wouldn’t wander there at night.
The Spaceship House
This private residence in the Nob Hill neighborhood was completed in 1984 and designed by Bart Prince, an architect. The curved, metallic, spaceship home towers high above the street on a series of stilts or supports, giving the illusion of it hovering like an alien aircraft. The house next door also had some "out there" architecture, though we like the UFO a little better.
Auto Hawk sculpture
A funky, 23-feet sculpture fashioned out of car doors, created in 2013.
We also drove to check out the Tumbleweed Snowman, only to find that it wasn’t there. We speculated that it could have blown away (like many other tumbleweed did) during yesterday’s haboob, but we later learned that the Snowman is seasonal, and only shown during the holidays.
Old Town Albuquerque
We dedicated more time to walking around the streets of Old Town Albuquerque (where there’s just one more connection to Breaking Bad, a store called The Candy Lady, which produced blue candy crystals that were props for the “blue meth” used in the show. You can still buy this in the store today).
The Candy Lady
The historic streets were much quieter than we were expecting given that it’s a tourist hotspot. We enjoyed walking around and taking in the adobe houses, boutique stores, Native American jewelry stalls, and decorations that incorporate the Spanish colonial feel, Mexican heritage, and Native American history that is so emblematic of New Mexico. Close to the central plaza is one of the city’s oldest buildings, San Felipe de Neri Catholic Church, an adobe church founded in 1706 & rebuilt in 1793. Lisette also had a delicious vegetarian pozole at Tiny Grocer ABQ, a micro-grocer that sells organic produce, baked goods, coffee, soups and sandwiches.
As we left the Old Town, we continued to marvel at the adobe architecture, with many houses adorned with various cacti and desert plants in their front yard. We both like this type of architecture and landscaping! One thing that was a bit quirky is that we saw some big bronze-colored sculptures of horses and dinosaurs for sale, and it seems that if you’re going to have a feature in your front yard, it’s not uncommon to buy one of these to face the street!
That night we parked at a casino again, where Michael ended up winning an incredible $1! Don’t spend that all at once!
Pueblos and Wood Carvings
Pueblo Montano Picnic Area & Trailhead is an easy walking/cycling trail, with a small parking lot and a few picnic tables. When we arrived, it was already busy for the day. However, we weren’t planning to cycle or hike–rather, we checked out the Mark Chavez Chainsaw Sculptures, a unique addition to the park. Mark Chavez was a retired firefighter who skillfully turned the Cottonwood trees in the area into incredible and detailed sculptures, including a firefighter stomping on a dragon’s head, a painted and sculpted eagle, several howling coyotes, turtles, and many more. They’re very impressive and beautiful works of art.
Petroglyph National Monument
Our hike was reserved for Petroglyph National Monument, which has one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America, with designs and symbols carved onto volcanic rocks by Native American ancestral people. There are 3 different hikes available, but interestingly, they’re not all within reach of the Visitor Center, so once we decided to walk around Piedras Marcadas Canyon, we had to drive about 6 miles to the start of the trail. The hike itself is about 2.89 kilometers (1.8 miles), and is a relatively flat and easy hike, and it has multiple viewing sites for the petroglyphs, which include images of lizards, people, and even hands, which we’d never seen before. We had a lot of fun trying to spot them from the trail, and it was also incredible to see how close the trail is to people’s homes–imagine living so close by that you can walk around this site at any time!
Indian Pueblo Kitchen
A popular place for visitors to eat is Indian Pueblo Kitchen, which is inside the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center, a museum focused on Indian Pueblo culture, art, and history. The Kitchen is owned and operated by New Mexico’s 19 Pueblos, and incorporates traditional ingredients including red and chile, blue corn, and other local produce and spices into the various stews, breads, muffins, and desserts. We ordered an Indian taco (ground beef, Pueblo beans, red/green chile, melted cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion), as well as a and a small cup of elk chili (Pueblo beans, red chile and onions) with a homemade blue corn muffin on the side. We were glad we read the reviews and didn’t order any appetizers as well, because the portions were huge! The fry bread, which is a fluffy and doughy Indian fried bread (which we liked and tried in Phoenix), was the size of a pizza (rather than a Mexican taco), so Lisette had to help Michael to dig into it. While we were stuffed, we really wanted to try the Pueblo style bread pudding (Pueblo oven bread with piñon, cranberries, currants and cheddar cheese, topped with berries–we skipped the whipped cream). Piñon is a native nut that’s like a pinenut, and we enjoyed the dessert, which was very rich and creamy in texture thanks to the added cheese.
While we didn’t go into the Cultural Center, there’s a gift shop inside that sells a lot of Native American jewelry, food, and other souvenirs. After days of battling dry hands, Lisette bought a greasewood ointment to try and salvage her scaly knuckles! Greasewood is a type of native shrub, and is used for a variety of purposes, including treating skin conditions, stomach problems, and respiratory issues.
Sandia Peak Tramway
Just outside of Albuquerque is the Sandia Peak Tramway, and was the longest aerial tram in the world until 2010, when Armeria claimed the title. It still is the longest aerial tram in the Americas, and has the world’s third longest single span. In the evening tickets are slightly cheaper but this also makes it more popular, so we were glad to have purchased our tickets in advance as it was still a decent wait to get onboard. There are only 2 trams that share the line, so once a tram leaves, it’s about 15 minutes wait for the next one. At the top there’s a restaurant, and multiple hiking trails, as well as a paragliding launch site that starts around April! It’s much colder at the top and there was still snow and ice on the ground so we didn’t stay long, but we really enjoyed the view of Albuquerque below and the ride down the tram for a spectacular sunset. Surprise, surprise–we found a casino not far north, so Black Mesa Casino was our parking spot for the night, paying the minimum $10 for a parking spot without any hookups.
Route Map
