Day 1 Albuquerque Family Reunion

Monday was the first full day of the Williams Family Reunion - Albuquerque edition, 2026.

The pool was quite popular!

Addi enjoyed jumping into the pool -- to her daddy, Steve...

... and to her cousin, Thatcher!

She also took a turn on the float.

Pamela still has school this week, so she and Dylan came a little late for breakfast, but still had plenty of biscuits and gravy!

Later in the day, son Steve was grillmaster cooking up burgers, brats, and dogs!

Serving up dishes in the kitchen - delicious watermelon!

Cutie Addi

Later in the evening, we gathered in the family room to watch Project Hail Mary -- all the cousins on the couch with Auntie (Pamela) and Dylan.

Kim was still "kitchening" - putting together the egg casserole for Tuesday morning.

Adults on various chairs around the room

"Intermission" was "make-your-own-ice-cream-creation".

Although we had seen the movie a couple of months ago, there were many parts that we had forgotten. We have gotten the audio book and plan to listen to it on our drive back to Show Low in a few days.

Heading to Albuquerque

After church on Sunday, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed out on our way to Albuquerque...

We had the CR-V all packed up -- Miss Kitty was going with us, and, for a little creature, she sure adds a lot of "stuff" to have to transport.

North of Show Low -- it appears that there is a whole lot of nothin' out there!

Once we got onto I-40 heading east, we were amazed at all the different geology that we observed (we didn't get many pictures but we saw it!).

We weren't quite half way when we crossed into New Mexico.

We had a good drive, got to the hotel to unload, and then joined up with the family at the AirBnB to share in dinner.

Several of the cousins (Carl's grandkids) were enjoying a card game in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

We're looking forward to a good week of visiting and catching up.

Venture In Chapel

We are enjoying participating in worship and fellowship and community with the Venture In Chapel that meets at our resort on Sundays.

Last Sunday, the chapel was decorated for the patriotic celebration that was scheduled for later in the afternoon.

We really love the pastor, Pastor Jim. His messages are down-to-earth and meaningful, and he also bears a striking resemblance to Colonel Harlan Sanders (of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame!).

Unfortunately we could not participate in the afternoon and evening festivities as we were heading to Albuquerque for family reunion!

Ham Radio Summer Field Day

Many Ham Radio clubs participate in a summer field day on the fourth full weekend in June. 

I copied in an AI overview (compiled from https://www.arrl.org/field-day):

Summer Field Day (or ARRL Field Day) is amateur radio's premier annual open house and emergency communications exercise. Every June, over 30,000 operators across North America set up temporary, off-grid transmitting stations in parks and public spaces to practice emergency prep and connect with other hams. 

Event Basics

• What it is: A combination of an emergency communication drill, a 24-hour on-the-air contest, and an outdoor club campout.
• Primary Goals: Testing off-grid power (batteries/generators), throwing up temporary antennas, and introducing the public to the hobby.
• Dates: Always the fourth full weekend of June. 

The local radio club in Show Low planned to have two locations activated, so we drove to the one closest to us outside the Safeway and C-A-L Ranch stores.

Set up with an EZ-Up to provide shade -- though the wind made it a little challenging (the EZ-Up was tied down to the white pickup truck!).

One of the operators who was making contacts

Another setup for making contacts

In addition to checking in with these folks, after we got back to the campground, Carl was able to make contacts from his radio in the RV with folks from other locations who were participating in the field day -- one was from as far away as Vermont!

Preparing for family reunion

Carl's kids and spouses and grandkids are all coming together in Albuquerque for a family reunion. Carl committed that we would provide one of the breakfasts with biscuits and sausage gravy. I baked the biscuits ...

... and Carl made the gravy -- here he was browning the sausage. We purchased sausage just for this event when we were in Quartzsite in January. The Coyote market there has a very nice butcher counter and they make their own country/breakfast sausage.

Unfortunately, no pictures of the biscuits or the finished gravy!

One funny thing -- we received quite a bit of food from friends who were leaving from Venture Out and wanted to empty their refrigerators. One friend gave us two tubes of canned biscuits. We normally just make dropped biscuits with a Bis-quik-like (store brand) product, and I made some of those, but we decided to use up the canned biscuits. Show Low is at about 6300', so it is higher elevation than where we are accustomed to living. This causes things to cook differently - for example, water boils at a lower temperature, so if you need to boil something for "10" minutes, it will take longer than that to get done; also, baking can require your to decrease leavening agents, increase liquids or flour, reduce sugar, and increase oven temperature.

We have also noticed that packaging is sometimes expanded -- I bought some potato chips and the bag was fully "inflated"; a plastic bottle had the bottom "pooch" out so it wouldn't sit flat on the counter. With the biscuits, when I opened the tubes, they all but exploded! It just took pulling the label a little ways before the tube opened explosively, and one of them even splattered a small amount of raw biscuit out! I had never had *that* happen before!

Dinner out with ham friends

Our time is Show Low is getting short, so we are prioritizing getting together with friends here...

We met up with Tom and Chere, Jeanne and Nick at Sal & Teresa's Mexican Restaurant. Sal unfortunately passed away a year ago, but the restaurant still is going well.

We enjoyed the food and the company, although we forgot to take a picture of our group!

Mountain vendors

As we were driving to the Farmer's Market in Show Low, we saw signs for another market at the Show Low Gym... unfortunately, the signs were getting blown around a lot, so we ended up taking quite a detour to get to the Gym, but we eventually got there...

This market was inside and had a variety of items, including a few booths selling clothing. The interesting aspect of this market was that you picked up the items you wanted as you walked through the market, but then you paid at a central location. I guess this is easier on the folks who are manning the booths to not have to handle money or support credit card sales.

I thought the Chocolate thoughts were appropriate: "A Day Without Chocolate Is Like... JUST KIDDING - I HAVE NO IDEA!" and "Chocolate comes from Cocoa... Which is a Tree... a Tree is a Plant... Chocolate is a Salad!"

We didn't find anything that we couldn't do without, but it was nice to be inside and out of the wind!