Heading on down to Albuquerque

Today is our last day parked in Santa Fe, we move down to Albuquerque, actually Bernalillo tomorrow.  It looks like our sequence here in CO and NM is going to be fairly consistent in the future.  We love our time in Durango, then over to Taos where Karen and Tom will be, Santa Fe just because we like it, and then down to Albuquerque to see Jan's mom, Viv, and Nancy and CT, and maybe Megan and Chip, then over to Lubbock for Kelly, Todd, and our grandkids.  This area has become family central:)

So we continued our Longmire quest this past week.  We learned that Walt's office, at least the door to Walt's office and the town square that you see he and his deputies park in is actually in Las Vegas, NM, about 70 miles away.  We also learned that the Red Pony, the bar where Henry works and owns is actually the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid, NM, the same town where a lot of Wild Hogs was shot, not far down the road from us either.  We are actually getting big kick out of this.  We've also learned that NM is very friendly to the film producers and for years many, many movies have been made here.  

So back to Las Vegas, we found the square and the famous Plaza Hotel built in 1881 which you see in a lot of the scenes in the Longmire show, as well as where scenes from Easy Rider, and No Country for Old Men were also shot.

The square

The Plaza Hotel

Back when it was built, Las Vegas was larger than either Albuquerque or Santa Fe!  Then as we looked around we found a locked door in the adjacent building, the door to the Absaroka County Sheriff's Department in Durant, WY, Walt Longmire's office door.

You can make out the door in the center of the picture

It's locked and evidently doesn't go anywhere

You can see the stairs up to Walt's "office"
It just ends at the top

After walking around a bit we had a nice lunch at the Landmark Grill at the Plaza Hotel.

Add caption

We then went to Madrid to see the "Red Pony".  It is actually the Mine Shaft Tavern, there was some kind of shindig going on there so we didn't go in.  Check out the link.  So folks, that concludes our obsession with Longmire, I know I can hear a breath of relief:)

In addition to walking around downtown and a few more meals in Santa Fe, we did accomplish another project on Jan's list.  We have a large dark brown leather sofa bed in our coach, that helped along with our cat Bert's help, has developed a lot of stains on the seat cushions.  We had tried several times to get a leather guy to fix it, but it never worked out, so Jan has been wanting to have the seat cushions recovered and thought cloth would look nice.  She and sister Nancy went and picked out material, and while they were at it also decided to have our dining chairs redone as well.  It just happens that a friend of Nancy's and CT's has an upholstery business and we are very pleased with the result.

Our new seat cushions

And our new chair material

Also we have been slowly converting our lighting in the coach to LEDs.  Most of our 60+ halogens are now LED, saving energy, important when running on batteries, and heat, the LED's are much cooler.  We have 6 fluorescent fixtures in the coach, and we use one in particular a lot, it is over our main bathroom sink.  When it blew out recently we decided to try out LED tubes.  They require you to remove the ballast and alter the wiring just a bit, very easy to do, then the replacement tubes pop right in like a fluorescent tube, and voila, it is bright, brighter than it was, is the correct color temp for us, and best of all if you believe the hype, should outlast us in the coach.  They are a bit pricey, at about 3X the price, but with the better, brighter light and its expected life it should work out well.  We'll do some more as they burn out.  Go to M4 Products and see the company we do our business with after trying many other vendors.