Hiking out the front door

Our house is great. I like everything about it. Each day I decide that this feature or that is my favorite. I'm fickle like that. It's part of my charm (I hope). That said, probably the best part of our house is the location. We have the mountains behind us, mountains to the east of us, and sweeping city views to the south and southwest. Every night I look out at the twinkling city lights and am happy.

Even better for Chris, though, than the lights, is the ability to hike right out of our house. We're four houses from the eastern edge of Albuquerque, so we can walk right out of our front door, down the street, and hit the trailhead. The trail at the end of our street connects to hundreds of miles of trails throughout the Sandia Mountains. We took a hike a few weeks ago; it was hot and dry, but off in the distance we saw two gorgeous storms. The first is way off to the west, over the West Mesa area on the far side of Albuquerque.

This storm was closer to home, just north of our house on the other side of the ridge. I have never seen a storm like this, with defined edges to on both sides of the rain. It was pretty amazing, and looked like the clouds just opened up and poured rain out of a trap door.