New Mexico Roadside Attraction: Albuquerque's Rattlesnake

Imagine with me, if you will, that you are visiting a foreign city. As you visit all the “it” places that are “must-see’s”, you think to yourself, “Man, I sure would like to see something random and off the beaten path!” Friends, if this is you, and if you are in Albuquerque, NM, than I have just the thing!

Now let’s not get all excited before I give you a little info. Our rattlesnake friend (we’ll call him Timmy) lives on a median of a deserted road in the middle of a random area of town – an area that my friend who was a local assured me was the “ghetto”.

Now, I don’t really get that excited over proclamations about ghettos. I mean, I grew up near downtown Ft. Worth…and not the uppity part, if you catch my drift. Despite this, I do want to give fair warning that this is probably not the place for you to load the kids up and head on over to!

However, I really don’t see the problem with doing a drive by.

(pun totally intended.)

You can find our friend Timmy the rattlesnake chilling on the far south end of Albuquerque. As you can see, he is not well situated to night viewing, but I will say that his position affords you a fantastic view of the lights of Albuquerque at night.

According to my friend, they put little Timmy out here to try and bring more attraction to the area, but apparently they meant the kind of attraction that no one can park around and no one can see at night. (Or maybe that’s because it’s in the ghetto??) If you decide to make the visit for a couple of photos, just plan to do a little creative thinking!

I personally made my visit very reminiscent of a 90’s-kid-doing-a-chinese-fire-drill sort of vibe, which translates to: my friend dropped me off, drove down a few blocks to turn around while I took pictures like mad, and then picked me back up in 2 minutes flat.

Roadside Rattlesnake, ABQ NM — Had to catch the rattle!

Before I give you the directions, let me just go ahead and say that any other directions that are out there on the internet suck hardcore. We literally drove around for an hour and half looking for this snake while both of my friends desperately googled directions so that we could at least say it wasn’t a complete waste of time. So here are some actual directions to find our friend Timmy.

Directions:

Coming from the North/Headed down I-25S: stay on I-25S. Take the Rio Bravo Blvd exit. Upon exiting, take your first left (east) under the bridge. You will stay on this road for a short time, and then it will dead end into the southernmost part of University Blvd. Turn right on University, and there’s Timmy!

Such simple directions. Don’t know why it’s so hard to get good ones in this world.