For my birthday, Renay bought me a book called “Albuquerque, a guide to the weird, wonderful and obscure”. What better tool for a geocacher!!!
This book is full of strange and super cool interesting places and history about Albuquerque. Many places already have caches nearby but I’ve learned a ton of things about our city and have set up a dozen caches to teach and entertain.
I can’t thank the author enough, Ashley Biggers, for all the great research and information about this treasure we call Albuquerque!
Have fun!!!!
This one might be more for the catchers that are my age. When I began reading it to Renay she knew what it was about right away!
In 1955 there was an episode on the I Love Lucy Show called “Ethel’s Home Town” where Lucy, Ricky, Fred and Ethel took a trip to Ethel’s fictitious home town of Albuquerque…..well…not so fictitious as it turns out.
You are at what is known as the Broadway Market Building, however it was not always called that. Back in 1929, the unknown Vance family moved into this building from Oklahoma. They opened the Vance Market downstairs. The daughter of the family was none other than Vivian Vance…Ethel Mertz from the I Love Lucy Show!
Vance had her first performance on stage at the Albuquerque Little Theater in 1930. In 1932, the theater community raised enough money to send her to New York to work on Broadway. In 1940 she moved to LA and was discovered by Dezi Arnez who cast her as Ethel Mertz, wife of Fred in the I Love Lucy Show.
Vance never lost her roots in Albuquerque after she left as she helped plan productions at the Albuquerque Little Theater. After her death in 1979, her family donated her 1954 Emmy award for supporting actress in a television series to the ALT.