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Algiz,
I'm glad my post was helpful. I was hesitant to provide as much detail as I did, given how long my post turned out to be. But I decided just providing opinions without the detail to support them would be less useful, particularly for someone that was already familiar with the ABQ area. It's great to get positive feedback.
If you want to wade through another lengthy post of mine from a few years ago, post #6 in this thread - https://www.city-data.com/forum/sant...nta-feans.html - talks more about what my wife and I really like about this area.
San Diego was a great place in the 70s, I thoroughly enjoyed my college years there. It's a shame what growth has done to it, as well as the other major West Coast cities. One of the things my wife and I enjoy about ABQ is all the big city amenities you can enjoy here without having all the crowding that you have to put up with in the big cities.
Glad to hear you made the decision to move here and hope the move goes smoothly. Let us know how things go.
Algiz,
I'm glad my post was helpful. I was hesitant to provide as much detail as I did, given how long my post turned out to be. But I decided just providing opinions without the detail to support them would be less useful, particularly for someone that was already familiar with the ABQ area. It's great to get positive feedback.
If you want to wade through another lengthy post of mine from a few years ago, post #6 in this thread - https://www.city-data.com/forum/sant...nta-feans.html - talks more about what my wife and I really like about this area.
San Diego was a great place in the 70s, I thoroughly enjoyed my college years there. It's a shame what growth has done to it, as well as the other major West Coast cities. One of the things my wife and I enjoy about ABQ is all the big city amenities you can enjoy here without having all the crowding that you have to put up with in the big cities.
Glad to hear you made the decision to move here and hope the move goes smoothly. Let us know how things go.
rwjoyak,
I don't even know where to start...Last night I printed out your post on this thread as well as the one you mentioned above (11 pp total with typical margins!), and this morning with my tea, read the first again, slowly taking in all the info, and the other, I simply savored. It took me almost an hour, annotating parts that are most relevant to my husband and me. I'm eager for him to come home tonight, so he can read them both. I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate your posts, and thank you again for the link to your prior 2013 post.
I will be going through your posts (I do love this c-d feature) to see what else you've talked about regarding New Mexico. We seem to pay attention to similar things regarding QOL, so your posts are very helpful. And what little I do know of the area is confirmed and supported by your posts. What I get from them is that my assumptions based on my experiences there seem valid. And the things I don't know about, or concern me, you often talk about in detail, so I have something solid to work from as I research, consider, decide, and ultimately feel very confident about our choice to move to New Mexico.
I hadn't realized you live in Bernalillo until I read your post. Of the very few places I know in NM, it's Bernalillo I know best, along with Rio Rancho. We stay in VRBOs in Placitas, and the closest town is Bernalillo. We zip across the freeway and shop there (and in Rio Rancho), so what you write in your posts feels that much more real for me, not just information because I can see the side road to that sweet little amazing cemetery and the Rail Runner, the Walgreens, the car wash, the new casino...
I'm going through your older post, which I've marked up A LOT, and will only bring up a few things - again, things that we've focused on that so many others either deem as trivial or haven't noticed. One is the driving...oh, learning to drive in a large city like San Diego one must be assertive. We moved to Seattle area, and the drivers here continue, after 18 years here, to drive us crazy with their camping out in the fast lane and their timidity. One of the things we noticed immediately was how lovely it was to drive I-25! Truly, this is one of the top things on our list about what we love about moving to your area. Really, it is. We think the drivers are great. They move, but don't push you, so you can get where you need to go. The freeways are wide and uncrowded. Remember, coming from SoCal and Seattle, even during rush hour, what we've experienced in ABQ seems a breeze.
Now, we do know to avoid the bridges, and we have figured out a way to get around the mess of 550 on our way to Rio Rancho from Placitas, but hey, if that traffic didn't exist, there's be next to no one living there, you know, and the things you mention about how the area has big city amenities but is smallish enough to not be big city wouldn't be accurate.
I read again and again your comparison of lush and green of your Kentucky (and MY Pacific Northwest) to NM's desert and vast vistas. I really appreciate and understand the feeling of being surrounded by lush, gorgeous greenery, but you can't see very far compared to NM's great blue sky that opens up the world to you, and your heart and soul have the opportunity to follow into that expansiveness.
This is one of the areas where we've been most concerned. We left San Diego because of the sun and heat and dry, brown hills. We specifically chose the PNW for its lush green, its enchanting embracing forests.
This is why we've spent long visits in Placitas, exploring the ABQ/SF region, and we can't get over how much we're pulled to the area, despite our love of green and water and the ocean. The Sandias have seduced us, like they have so many others. And something seems so right and familiar, which we've attributed to our inner connection with San Diego, the cultures, the geography to some degree. We can't get over how we feel like we've come home when we get there. We go out shopping, and it's almost mundane, certainly never feels like we're on vacation. It just feels...normal, right.
I can see how you love it or you hate it. You're not the first I've heard say this, so I've paid attention to the comment and wondered why for us given our penchant for green. Your posts really, really went into the whys of why you either love it or hate it. You got to the core of why, all the details, how it's so unlike most other cities. You got me thinking so much today! How I appreciate the gift of observation, introspection, and experience.
We are drawn to the ABQ region for its big-city amenities yet how we can still live in wild nature and have both, not an easy thing to find any more. We love how Placitas is so close to ABQ and SF and then Bernalillo for the daily things like post office and groceries. There seems so much to do, and for us, so much to explore. Still, we thought ABQ was isolated, our being so used to smaller cities all along the freeway as we drive out of the big major cities we're used to living in/near. You show how many day trips are possible. I had no idea!
There is still so much left I want to comment on in your post, but I've gone on long enough already. I do have a couple questions, but that will be for the following post, easier for people to read.
Thanks again, rwyoyak, for sharing your experiences. I'm certainly benefiting from your posts as I'm sure others are as well!
So, living in the Pacific Northwest near Seattle, I've finally gotten weary of the wet. It's wet and green everywhere, and I'm not talking about trees and grass. I'm talking about even in the middle of summer, in one grocery store parking lot in the middle of Seattle, I have to be careful walking or I'll slip in the soft green moss carpeting the asphalt in a corner where the sun rarely hits because of the trees.
I love the wet, the rain, but I have finally met my limit of just how much. And green, as lovely as that color is, you can really get too much of that, I've learned.
I bring this up in the New Mexico/ABQ forum because I'm wondering what people get weary of over time there. What is a constant that never changes, never will go away, is not an anomaly one year to the next as it's always present, like our green moss everywhere due to the wet?
I was thinking it might be the dust. I suspect when I move there, the dust will annoy me, esp since I'll be living in a more rural area. I remember coming back from a festival and marveling at the red dust that had changed my black boots to a dark copper brown.
It might be the dryness. I've been there in 3% humidity where I couldn't touch my dog walking by without both of us jumping because of our getting shocked
I know about the sun being strong and the altitude and the spring winds, but is there something subtle that people don't think to mention that you find difficult, that is unique to the area?
I have heard over and over about the clear blue sky, but in my experience there, as well as in many, many, MANY photos I've seen of the area to include houses for sale on Zillow, GoogleMaps, countless books I've read on the area that include photos of festivals, pueblos, mountains, the cities, urban, rural outdoor photos, etc, there are often clouds in the photos, big gorgeous fluffy clouds, very high, yes, but still significant clouds that don't necessarily obscure the sun, but still add gorgeous texture to the blue sky. Here's an example. In my post above, I couldn't remember which drugstore I'd gone to, whether it was Rite Aid or Walgreens, so I went to GoogleMaps. Here's what I found. If you turn east on 550, you can really see the clouds. Lots of 'em.
Have I just brought some of that Seattle with me when I visit and buy just the right books, and clouds are NOT the norm, OR do the ABQ skies have clouds of some sort relatively often and the sky is not always completely clear?
OK, for fun, I'm going to Zillow and look for the first house I see to buy in Placitas, NM, where it's likely to show a lot of sky in the outdoor photos. Come with me, let's see if there are clouds. I promise not to cheat either way. OK, here's one.
Hmmm, I'm not sure that one is fair as it's clear the owners are working to show how cool the sky is year around, so I'll add another link. Still, there are clouds in the average, this is the house outside, photos.
This next link I just grabbed. It's in Algodones, and it's the perfect link, just showing the house for sale, but do you see how there are clouds in the blue sky? Regardless if they're big fluffy white clouds or wispy like in these photos, they still add texture to the sky, so the sky is not just clear blue sunny all the time.
In my time there, the skies have had clouds more often than no clouds, and I'd like to know if that was unusual.
OK, I hope the links work and you have fun with all this. What I really hope is that you tell me your personal experience and observations on the topics of what annoys you and clouds in the sky because I'm really curious.
Hmmm, it appears only the third link works for some reason. Hopefully your browser will like the links better than mine.
Somehow you got an extra https// at the beginning of the first two links. The first one opens as "https//www.google.com/maps/@35.3202071,-106.550013,3a..." and the second as "https//www.zillow.com/homedetails/200-Camino-De-Las-Huertas-Placitas-NM-87043/113459990_zpid/".
If I delete "http//" from the start of each link (i.e., start with "www.google.com/..." for the first one and "www.zillow.com/..." for the second one, they open fine.
See the attached cloudy day chart from C-D's city profile page for ABQ. It shows the percentage of cloudless, partly cloudy and other days throughout the year. Based on our 11 years here, I'd say that there are a lot more sunny days with a bit of clouds at least sometime during the day, than there are truly clear sky days. Clouds here typically move through relatively quickly; very seldom to we get a day where the cloud cover (or lack thereof) stays uniform throughout the entire day.
Monsoon season in late July-August often has a lot of thunderstorm activity, which we love. This is also when you can get what I've heard some call 2 inch rain (rain drops falling 2" apart) or rain that you can see falling from the clouds but which never reaches the ground (it evaporates in the air). On the other hand, some storms can drop a lot of rain in a short amount of time. Such storms typically don't last very long, but the rain can come down in waves (due to the accompanying strong winds) for 20-30 minutes. This is often very localized, for example, Placitas may get a drenching while not a drop falls on the western edge of Bernalillo (west of the Rio Grande) where we live.
You mentioned similarities between the Sandias and the Cascades in an earlier post. I've been struck at times how much the Sandias can look like the mountains in Southeast Alaska when they're cloud covered and almost fogged in under certain weather conditions from our vantage point across the river. The Sandias are a true treat year round. Everything from a misty vision in the early morning sunlight, watermelon colored at sunset, swaddled or topped in an assortment of cloud wrappings as various weather fronts move through the area, and sharply defined (looking much more 3-dimensional than normal) when covered with sprinklings of wintertime snow.
Although any cloud form can occur, most cloud forms in my experience are either high, wispy cirrus, especially in late winter and spring, or huge, widely spaced cumulus and culmulonimbus, mainly in late summer afternoons.
The least common form of clouds in New Mexico are the stratus clouds that cause overcast skies. We do get overcast days, maybe a couple dozen a year at most. And given our high elevation, even the rare overcast day seems bright.
With all that said, I would say that there are few places in North America where the skies are so relentlessly cloudless as New Mexico. The sun shines here. A lot.
Somehow you got an extra https// at the beginning of the first two links. The first one opens as "https//www.google.com/maps/@35.3202071,-106.550013,3a..." and the second as "https//www.zillow.com/homedetails/200-Camino-De-Las-Huertas-Placitas-NM-87043/113459990_zpid/".
If I delete "http//" from the start of each link (i.e., start with "www.google.com/..." for the first one and "www.zillow.com/..." for the second one, they open fine.
Thanks for the head's up. I know how I got the two https//. It was when I pasted the link in and was careless and included the link's http// along with the one that immediately pops up in the c-d link window.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rwjoyak
See the attached cloudy day chart from C-D's city profile page for ABQ. It shows the percentage of cloudless, partly cloudy and other days throughout the year. Based on our 11 years here, I'd say that there are a lot more sunny days with a bit of clouds at least sometime during the day, than there are truly clear sky days. Clouds here typically move through relatively quickly; very seldom to we get a day where the cloud cover (or lack thereof) stays uniform throughout the entire day.
This is what I was thinking based on the clouds I've seen myself, but more so from all the photos I've seen in books and online - not the artsy photos but just photos showing some outdoor thing in NM. I love clouds, and this is why I keep asking about them. I wanted to know if the sky is always bright blue with nothing else. That hadn't been my experience, although I certainly have been there on those days.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rwjoyak
Monsoon season in late July-August often has a lot of thunderstorm activity, which we love. This is also when you can get what I've heard some call 2 inch rain (rain drops falling 2" apart) or rain that you can see falling from the clouds but which never reaches the ground (it evaporates in the air). On the other hand, some storms can drop a lot of rain in a short amount of time. Such storms typically don't last very long, but the rain can come down in waves (due to the accompanying strong winds) for 20-30 minutes. This is often very localized, for example, Placitas may get a drenching while not a drop falls on the western edge of Bernalillo (west of the Rio Grande) where we live.
When I was there spring 2018, I was delighted to watch a super hail storm, tons of rain, lots of wind, and within 30 minutes or so, it was done. Just like you say!
Quote:
Originally Posted by rwjoyak
You mentioned similarities between the Sandias and the Cascades in an earlier post. I've been struck at times how much the Sandias can look like the mountains in Southeast Alaska when they're cloud covered and almost fogged in under certain weather conditions from our vantage point across the river. The Sandias are a true treat year round. Everything from a misty vision in the early morning sunlight, watermelon colored at sunset, swaddled or topped in an assortment of cloud wrappings as various weather fronts move through the area, and sharply defined (looking much more 3-dimensional than normal) when covered with sprinklings of wintertime snow.
Oh, they sound luscious, like candy! I've never seen them in all their garb, and per your description, I'm really looking forward to getting a chance to get to know them fully.
Although any cloud form can occur, most cloud forms in my experience are either high, wispy cirrus, especially in late winter and spring, or huge, widely spaced cumulus and culmulonimbus, mainly in late summer afternoons.
The least common form of clouds in New Mexico are the stratus clouds that cause overcast skies. We do get overcast days, maybe a couple dozen a year at most. And given our high elevation, even the rare overcast day seems bright.
With all that said, I would say that there are few places in North America where the skies are so relentlessly cloudless as New Mexico. The sun shines here. A lot.
So wonderful that the gray overcast skies are so uncommon in NM. That is utterly depressing, in my experience, having grown up along the ocean, where there is often a marine layer until noon, but that's not so bad, really. It's the June gloom...all June, gray every day, nothing happens. It just feels so...dead. I can't imagine how it would feel in the desert, gray all day.
Gray skies mute any color down below. About the only place gray skies can't overwhelm the geography is in a place like the Pacific Northwest, where there is so much green and countless shades of that green that go from lime to almost black. There's so much depth to the green and gray.
Relentlessly cloudless sounds like relentlessly sunny. When I've been there on days without rain, I often saw the clouds you mention, the high, wispy cirrus...and yes, I've visited most often in spring. I'd planned on visiting last summer and this winter, since I've only visited in fall and spring, but then COVID came, so I'm over here on c-d instead.
This, too, shall pass. Sounds as good as the next thing, I suppose.
How we've decided to solve our dilemma, similar to yours (and with the same available $ to spend on housing), is to buy a more modest home in NM and with the extra $ we don't spend on the house, buy and maintain a Roadtrek, so we can visit family, friends, and our beloved PNW forest as often as we want.
I can't imagine how it would feel in the desert, gray all day.
For what it's worth, at a mile above sea level, even when the skies are overcast, it is a bit brighter in comparison with sea level due to the intensity of the sun at this elevation.
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