#7

January 19, 2008 – Land of Enchantment

Couldn't update last night from Santa Fe - I think the travel journal part of the RTA website was down. Glad it's back up tonight; this blog was already become a vital part of the experience.
So, anyway, we barely escaped with our lives from the Bates Motel & woke to find ourselves in the damn desert in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. After taking 'Nali out to go take her first poop in the honest-to-god desert and freezing my ass off, I immediately turned on the laptop to check the forecast for Santa Fe. And learned that the high was predicted to be 29 and the low 4. Yes, that was FOUR. I had to look at it twice.
Got to Santa Fe about 1pm and out of sheer luck (and my extremely urgent need to pee) ended up at The Most Fabulous Motel That Ever Was. Walking distance to downtown & quite reasonable also; considerably cheaper than the Holiday Inns & the La Quinta we're in tonight. My room even had a fireplace with a fire all laid out ready to be lit. Very nice....I mentioned it was FOUR degrees, right? It all just felt so cozy & homey. The people were wonderful (actually, everyone in Santa Fe was nice - people really seemed to go out of their way to be helpful). If you're ever in Santa Fe, check out santafemotel.com.
There was some snow in Santa Fe, so that was a new thing for 'Nali. We let her go poop in the snow - another first! - and then we bundled up & braved the cold and left poor 'Nali to her own devices & went out walking around. Saw some cool art, beautiful jewelry (I was so good, I didn't buy any!), looked at outrageously-priced clothes, had a cappucino, admired some pretty old churches (check out Megan's pics!) & I lit some candles. I always wanted to do that. I guess it's ok even though I'm not Catholic 'cause I paid. We found a little store that had lots of great Day of the Dead stuff & I got another little skeleton & a really cool book about Dios de las Muertes, the history & with lots of cool pictures. Because, you know, I just don't have enough books...
We'd planned to go out & eat some of Santa Fe's famous mexican food & went over to the place that had been recommended by the folks at the motel, but the wait was over an hour and I did mention it was FOUR degrees, right? So we ended up going back & lighting a cozy fire & getting mexican food delivered. It was very tasty, but quite frankly disagreed with me in the most disagreeable way in the middle of the night. All that Denny's crap didn't bother me at all, though. Perhaps I've become incapable of processing real food.
Today we took a fabulous drive north of Santa Fe, almost as far as Taos through the Carson National Forest, lotsa snow up there. Then drove to White Rock to this panoramic overlook and onto Bandolier National Monument to see the cliff-dwellings & there's a few petroglyphs there too. So both Megan & I have tons of pictures from today....today was pretty damn spectacular, even I have to admit, though I'm normally not wild about the desert. We also we through Los Alamos & almost got sent to Guantanamo because we took a wrong turn & pissed off some military-type dude in camouflage and a threatening black sweater. And I swear I saw The Purple Mountain Majesties somewhere between Albuquerque and Gallup, where we are spending the night before heading to the Grand Fucking Canyon tomorrow.