Miles: 415
Route: Monument Valley - Four Corners - Albuquerque, NM - Santa Fe, NM
Alex and I woke up early on Sunday morning as the sun poked through our tipi in Monument Valley. As we hit the road we realized the route to Santa Fe took us right past the Four Corners. We suspected there wouldn't be much to see besides the state lines (we were right) but couldn't resist the chance to be in four states - Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico - at once.
Since we were there early we had the place pretty much to ourselves...and could take absurd photos like this one.
After about five minutes of snapping pictures we had enough of the cold wind and headed back to the car to complete the drive to Santa Fe.
At my sister's suggestion we stopped at El Pinto - apparently frequented by the Breaking Bad cast - in Albuquerque for lunch. The restaurant is massive and so are the portions!
Really hard to be healthy with so much southwestern fare around but good to take a breather every once in a while.
Alex ended up saving half of this for lunch the next day.
This was also our first introduction to sopapillas; we are still trying to decide whether we prefer them to the Navajo fry bread - both are so delicious!
After a late lunch it was just a 45-minute drive to Santa Fe. Our hotel had wifi, a gym and laundry facilities so we spent the afternoon getting organized and settled. Since we spent the past week at a different hotel each night we took the opportunity to relax a bit during our two-night stay in Santa Fe. Once we got cleaned up we headed to Blue Corn Cafe for dinner and a disappointing Sunday night NY Giants performance. The restaurant was walking distance to our hotel but we were shocked at how cold it was - the temperature gets into the 30s at night so we are really feeling the fall weather now!
We had a slow morning on Monday and headed into downtown Santa Fe during the afternoon. We had three primary observations during our excursion:
1. Hardly anyone is younger than 50 years old. Alex and I definitely brought the average age down substantially!
2. Santa Fe is small. We didn't realize that the population is only about 70,000!
3. Perusing art galleries and jewelry stores is pretty much the only thing to do here.
We checked out the town square and browsed through some of the jewelry stores before heading toward Canyon Road to look at a few art galleries.
Typical Santa Fe scenery: adobe-style buildings and bright, blue, cloudless skies.
Santa Fe's main plaza.
View of The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, near the main plaza downtown.
Sculpture outside one of the art galleries we went into. The makers of True Detective MUST have gotten inspiration here, right?
Our favorite gallery had these really unique sculptures that spun in the wind.
Unfortunately we weren't really in the market for expensive art or jewelry but it was still fun to look around.
We walked back to the car so we could drive through the Santa Fe National Forest and Hyde Memorial State Park before dinner. We climbed nearly 2,000 feet and had some excellent views of Santa Fe from the top.
Fall has definitely arrived in the Southwest.
Just after sunset.
After our drive through the hills we headed to La Boca for wine and tapas - a welcome change from the southwestern food we have been feasting on for the past week. Tomorrow we will make our way to Alamogordo, NM to check out White Sands National Monument.