Santa Fe: This one's gonna be a multi-part-er!

I never thought I would go to Santa Fe. I never thought I would want to go, actually. But I’m so glad I did. Mary and I decided that being only a few hours away, we would be idiots to NOT go! So on Tuesday (a little later than we probably should have but that was sort of our theme for the week) we loaded into the wonderful Caliber and chugged off. It was during that trip that I removed to the back seat (don’t worry, we pulled over) and began the lunch operations. We had packed rolls, lunchmeat, pickles, and an entire assortment of gourmet sandwich fixin’s to keep us satiated on the three-hour drive. Thanks to Mary for keeping us frugal (I would have blown all our cash on fast/restaurant food if I’d been alone – that’s part of the vacation mentality I have)! Sitting in the back seat and looking at the seat next to me piled with purses and jackets brought back memories of being packed into the back seat on family trips. I didn’t like it too much. And it raises a question: seriously, how can two girls with one whole car to themselves take up the whole stinkin’ thing? Every day we would hop in, toss extraneous items into the back seat, poke “front seat” items into their various appropriate compartments and nooks, and we’d putter out of town in whatever direction the day’s plans dictated. This day, it was south.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was another really lovely drive. I am tired of saying amazing and incredible, even though it was… those words just don’t capture it as they are too overused. It helps to think of colors – tan and brown and reddish brown, black and clay and sand – deep and sage greens and blue and purple and yellow. We stopped once at the edge of a sort of natural bowl; hardy plants with blue and yellow flowers speckled the edge of a drop that led down to a dry creek bed. The Hills we drove through were rugged, streaked with color like they’d been painted. Sometimes they had flat tops; other times the tops looked like sand had been softly poured over. Earthy yellows and reds made stripes through exposed cliff sides. In some hills, parts of the rock had been eaten away around one or two dramatic pillars. Everything had color, but everything looked dry. Sometimes we’d drive through a scattered crop of houses and buildings, and the aspens would be lusciously vivid green and yellow, so different from the surrounding flora (or lack of). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We came upon the CO/NM state line, which is terribly logical, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me that there would be a state line with state signs. Photo op, ahoy! Colorado’s sign was very woodsy (constructed of giant brown logs), While NM’s was a more modern metal sign, like a regular road sign, except I’ve never seen another road sign with chili peppers pictured on it. Colorado’s was HUGE. The top of my head met the bottom of the sign. NM’s was more scaled down. That was great fun. We parked the car between both signs and made a great production of propping the camera up on the car’s roof just so, using our journals to get the angle right, setting the timer and high-tailing it to the sign before the picture snapped. The first time we did that, we underestimated the distance and we have this hilarious picture of Mary’s and my back as we’re hoofing it for the CO sign. I laugh whenever I think of it. I’m not really sure why we didn’t just move the car close enough that we didn’t need to run. I think it had something to do with not being able to get the whole sign at the right angle...At least that’s the story I’m sticking with. Whatever my excuse, it was fun to race the camera. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was a vacation of the delightfully unexpected. The next on this day was when we were tooling along and noticed something smack dab in the road – a cowboy on his horse! We confusedly slowed down and stopped, wondering what in the world? When we noticed several other cowboys and, you guessed it – a cow! The guys were trying to make the cow go across the road, but boy that cow was having none of it. It scampered and dodged and trotted and cut here and there, till it finally gathered up his bulk and neatly cleared the fence back into the range on the side of the road. For all the world like a hefty deer. Mary and I were startled. It’s good to know they can do that.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After that we hit another cool little surprise. A point on the Continental Divide! It sounds so important doesn’t it? For those that don’t know (or never thought much about it, like me), the continental divide is where rainfall divides and flows off to one side into the pacific (eventually) and off to the other into the Atlantic (also, eventually). I was tickled for some reason. We found a real live Continental Divide marker! And it was just sorta there on the side of US-84, right beside someone’s barbed wire fence. Pictures ensued.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ So many fun and interesting things had already happened, and we had yet to reach Santa Fe. Boy, was it going to be a good day…