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Mom and I loaded up the car (well...
I loaded up the car) and we headed south to Santa Fe.
The scenery was lovely. Lots of rolling hills and blue skies. We hit a more desert-like area and some some really cool buttes. What mental age does it make me if I find the word butte kind of humerous?
Anyway, the best part of the desert-esque drive was the New Mexico signage. Man, can they do it right! There was one of those traffic signs that you see warning you about a pile-up or an upcoming detour. In New Mexico, though, it was informing us of today's wildfire danger level. Here's what is said.
view 1:
EXTREME
WILDFIRE
DANGER
view 2:
Every
Where
Well, alright. On the same line, up in the Midwest, Smokey the Bear warns us that "only you can prevent forest fires." It seems that down here in the Southwest Smokey alters his phrase to "only you can prevent
wildfires." Seems perfectly logical, but it was still a bit of a disconnect for me.
The best New Mexico sign had to be the one warning of gusty winds. Now, back home we have
signs that say "Warning, High Winds", or something to that effect. Apparently in New Mexico they like to take a more existential approach. "Gusty Winds May Exist"
Anyway, as we got closer to Santa Fe, everything got greener and the hills came back. Made for some very pretty views while driving. That is, until the hail storm hit! Somewhere between Las Vegas (NM) and Santa Fe is started to sprinkle. Then it started to rain. Then the rain started to sound a bit...solid. Pretty soon there were gobs of ice smacking into my windshield and visibility went to crap. Thankfully, it didn't last too long and we arrived safe and sound in Santa Fe.
Ah, Santa Fe, which loosely translates to "Holy crap, that's a lot of adobe!"...that, or holy faith. Whatever. Seriously, though, everything was adobe. Even the Walgreens and MacDonalds were adobe! It got really annoying by the time we got to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum which was housed inside a, you guessed it, adobe building! (Oy)
The museum was pretty small, but it had some neat stuff. We hit the tail-end of an exhibit of a bunch of new pieces that had never been
displayed before. It was interesting to see the breadth of O'Keefe's work. There were quite a few abstracts (like, so abstract you can't tell what it's supposed to be) and a bunch of amazing pencil drawings. It's not just anatomically suggestive flowers
But don't fear, that side of her creativity was represented as well.
After whizzing through the museum and hitting up the gift shop, Mom and I drove waaaaaaay across town to our hotel. We consulted our handy-dandy AAA guidebook for a place to get dinner and happened upon the Guadelejara Grill. Damn. That was the best Mexican I ever had. Mom too, and she grew up in SoCal! If you're ever in town, find this place!!!
With leaden stomach we wandered back to the hotel for some much needed digestion time. Then we wandered around the conveniently located outlet mall (right across the parking lot) to burn off a few of the calories. Good times.
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