Arizona, New Mexico & the Grand Canyon Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Aaron Anderson [119]
While the city has the standard art and history museums, it’s the little museums that best represent the city’s funky spirit. Even if you have no interest in their subjects, they’re worth a visit. Bob Meyers, director of the American International Rattlesnake Museum, clearly loves his snakes. You’ll find him in his two-room homage to rattlers most days, joking around with customers and fielding questions on the museum’s less hospitable residents. In addition to what is allegedly the world’s largest collection of live rattlesnakes, don’t miss the snake-themed beer-and-wine-bottle collection or the freaky 1976 movie poster for Rattler. For those who prefer high-speed thrills to scaly chills, head to the Unser Racing Museum, honoring Albuquerque’s famous NASCAR family. The museum, designed in the shape of a racing wheel with Al Unser Sr’s 1971 Indy 500–winning car rotating in the center, features more than 30 shiny cars from Indy 500 and Pikes Peak races. The nondescript white-washed wall in the parking lot ended Al Unser Sr’s bid for the 1989 Indy 500 title. Alan lost to Emerson Fittipaldi when he hit the wall, so he bought it and had it moved lock, stock and barrel to the museum.
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ASK A LOCAL
“Albuquerque is a great city to live because everything goes. People gravitate here. They’re transitioning in their lives, and they feel the spirit of the city. This is the place for mind, body and spirit conditioning. It’s eclectic and welcoming.”
Adrian Cramer
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Thanks to the wind patterns called the Albuquerque Box, Albuquerque is a popular destination for hot-air balloon enthusiasts year-round and the International Balloon Fiesta (www.balloonfiesta.com) is held annually over the first week of October. Get a sense of balloon life at the modern Albuquerque International Balloon Museum with life-size balloons filling its high ceilings and several interactive exhibits exploring everything from the sport’s earliest experiments to hot-air balloons in Native American art.
New Mexico, famous as the birthplace of the atomic bomb, embraces its atomic identity. At the National Atomic Museum, press a button to hear an oddly comical Einstein doll explain, with a jolting German accent, his theory of relativity, and examine America’s uneasy embrace of atomic energy at the funny and slightly disturbing exhibit on atomic popular culture. One of the oddest pieces in the display is the bottle of La Bomba wine, from a Los Alamos winery, with a mushroom cloud on its label.
The Hispanic neighborhood of Barelas, established in the late 1600s, is Albuquerque’s oldest district. In the early 1990s, historic preservationists teamed with local activists to clean up and revitalize the downtrodden Barelas, opening a Hispanic cultural center and protecting historic buildings. At its north end sits Ruppe B Drug, a nondescript room featured in the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibit on folk life. While you’ll find a few drugstore basics, like Tylenol and Maalox, the heart of Ruppe’s business lies in its traditional Hispanic and Native American cures. The aged Maclovia Zamora, a yerbera (healer) who learned traditional healing from her grandmother, who herself was a curandera (traditional Hispanic folk healer), listens patiently to customers’ ailments and selects herbs from the plastic baskets and hooks against the wall. “Steep this, mixed with this, and a little bit of this,” she recommends, in a voice that in itself is healing. “But don’t use boiling water. Drink a few cups of the tea, and that headache will go away.” And you listen because she knows. Before leaving, check out the glass case of unusual soaps and lotions, including rattlesnake and turtle cream, and take a moment