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Mileage: 224 miles
Farmington to Santa Fe, New Mexico
Pam woke up and told us about one of her dreams. She dreamed that there was an actual Escalante Stair Case with 1000 steps and that Susan and Claire dared her to go up. She climbed all the stairs and when she finally made it, she told us that there was nothing spectacular about the view.
Breakfast was interesting. Claire went to get the scrambled eggs and they were the worst looking eggs she’d ever seen; that was until Pam brought over her hard boiled eggs that were frozen solid. They were as hard as ice cubes. Pam tried to thaw them out via hot water but it wasn’t happening. Finally the “food” person came out and we all asked for new eggs.
After breakfast we packed and then tried to get our ice for our coolers. You see we always bring 2 collapsible coolers and we buy larger Glad containers that we fill with Ice every day to keep the coolers cool. So, we went to fill up the Glad containers. Nope. Most hotels have an ice machine on each floor, not this one, there was only
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a shade of brown one. We got to it and guess what, it was broken. We then went to the front desk and asked them and they took our containers and filled them up in the kitchen.
Right near the hotel we got on US Hwy 64. We guess we could have just driven on back to Lenoir this way.
We ended up on US 550 South for a bit and each time we drove into a town, the speed limit went from 65mph to 55mph, then 2 blocks later to 45mph and 2 blocks later down to 35mph. Couldn’t they just have said 35mph speed limit ahead instead of this stupid quick step down. Dorothy announced “Welcome to New Mexico”.
We think we must have taken a wrong turn. Next thing we knew we were in Cuba. We didn’t remember going under water. A little later, we saw a cow walking down the side of the road. Susan stated that the cow wanted to go back to the cliff and become hamburger meat.
About now, all the building started to become brown. Claire states this but Pam says no, “that house is tan, that one is sand, that one
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and another is brown, that one is crème,…..”. Ok, 50 shades of brown. Really, everything is brown. Is it a state law that every building must be some shade of tan to rust brown? Claire said if she lived here that she would paint her house yellow…
We passed over the Rio Grande. It was not at all Grande, it was pequena. We kept seeing brown houses but now the houses started to all have flat roofs and look very Middle Eastern. Next we saw a sign on our route for Las Vegas. Huh, we were going in the opposite direction of Las Vegas. It turned out that there is a Las Vegas New Mexico. We bet that Las Vegas NM really messes with people.
We made it to Santa Fe and went to try to find the capital building. Dorothy takes us to it but we didn’t see it. It did not look like any capital building we’ve ever seen. It was behind a bunch of trees and did not have a dome. It was also round. The capital building was across the street from the visitor’s center and we headed there. Lunch was in the van in the
visitor’s center parking lot and then we caught the free shuttle to Canyon Road (the art district). There were some great paintings and artwork there but it was out of our price range. We then headed to the historic plaza. This area had some unique shops and outdoor vendors. Claire bought a necklace and we all bought mom a special present. We then headed back to the visitor’s center. We walked to the oldest church in America (1600s) which was next to the visitor’s center and then went to see the oldest house (1646) which was across the street. We went back to Cassidy and headed to the glass store. Santa Fe has really weird roads and we missed our turn several times. We saw many glass items at the store but nothing that any of us were interested in. We then drove back into downtown for dinner and then back past the glass store to head to our hotel. We make a quick trip to the grocery store before the hotel. The hotel is another Holiday Inn Express and again we used points for a free room. Now this hotel was weird too. It was almost impossible to maneuver
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brown house with a brown wall the luggage cart thru the doors and then get it into the hotel elevator that was at a 90 degree angle to the door. The same setup was on our floor so we repeated the slow maneuvering. The hotel room was crowded and we kept running into each other but it was nice to get to the room before 9-10pm.
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Barbara
non-member comment
Brown
Brown must be the NM state color. They are big on adobe, which I suspect explains their affection for browns. AZ, TX and our favorite, Utah, are not so much into adobe. Remind me to explain how Bright Angel trail and Bright Angel Lodge got their names.