Shopping Albuquerque

Friday, October 25th.

This morning, after enjoying the free pancake breakfast at the campground and getting some laundry done we headed towards downtown Albuquerque. Our first stop was a record store that we happened to pass. Although it was pricier than others we'd been to and had about as much atmosphere as a warehouse we both found a small handfull of music that we either knew we wanted our thought sounded interesting. After that stop we crossed the street and drove past the University of New Mexico football field to see and hear the marching band practice. We stopped at a few other record stores without buying anything and then headed out to find a Salvation Army thrift store, following directions from the guy at the first record store. We found it, and both bought a few things. Of course.

After eating some great Mexican food from a Hacienda Express down the street we headed further out of town to locate a Salvation Army Super Thrift that we'd heard about in the first Salvation Army store. We found it, but even though it was huge we found nothing at all of interest, save a few small trinkets.

After that, we headed back into town to get a few 'necessaries' out of the way. We took the van to a Jiffy Lube for an (overdue) oil change and check-up. While Jens oversaw that Dan went across the street to see about getting his hair cut. He found a nice-looking place but ended up with a junkie hairdresser that seemed restless and nervous the entire time and stabbed at his hair more than actually cutting it. So the result wasn't really worth the price of it, but hey; hats work wonders :)

Since we'd decided to stick around town for another day we decided to find a place to camp out and make a movie-night out of the evening. So we stopped by a gas station to get directions for a Wal-Mart and a Blockbuster Video. The first was easy to find, but we didn't find the latter "just up the street" as expected and ended up on a bit of a wild goose chase looking for it. We finally stopped by a McDonald's for dessert and got directions from the people working there and finally found the Blockbuster we were looking for. We rented "Changing Lanes", starring Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Affleck, which turned out to be a well-made movie with an interesting plot. We watched it on the iBook in the van, like we've done before, and then settled in for another undisturbed (and free!) night in a Wal-Mart parking lot.