As tired as I was last night, I had a bit of a restless night. Between being in a strange bed and ongoing lower back problems, I woke up still a bit tired. But the day had begun and it was chilly and 49 degrees in Albuquerque with sunny skies and I needed to go get my rental car. The hotel shuttle had a flat so they called a taxi for me, and they paid for it. I made it to the airport right on time.
You gotta love car rental companies. They rent you a car at a certain rate, then try and get you to buy this special insurance coverage, and many other things all the while sounding quite ominous on what will happen if you don't. I have full insurance coverage for anything I drive, so I wasn't worried. Besides, I look at those "offers" like a casino would offer things. If they offer it, it's to their advantage and to make more money. No thanks.
I get back to the hotel and load the car, which by the way is a bright red Toyota Yaris. It's about the size of a broom closet, has manual windows, and no cruise control. All for the low, low price of $64 a day! It's usually about $18 a day, but the Hot Air Balloon Festival took care of that.
Oh, by the way...have you ever heard the joke about what La Quinta stands for? The usual line is "next to Denny's". Not here. In Albuquerque it means "next to Fuddruckers".
I headed north towards Santa Fe where I planned on stopping for lunch. The mountains were lit up with morning sunshine and it was beautiful. I made it to Santa Fe about 11:30am and asked Siri for a list of the best restaurants in Santa Fe, and she provided me with a suggestion of a brew pub named the Second Street Brewery, so that's where I went. I had the chicken schnitzel with mushroom gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans. It was all delicious and satisfying.
After lunch I headed north towards Chama which was a couple of hours ahead. As I got up into the mountains the scenery was breathtaking. Amazing peaks and lush valleys, twisting highways through it all, and I stopped a bunch of times and shot some amazing pictures with my iPhone. I didn't bring my professional Canon camera this time, but I should have. I sent a bunch of pictures to Lawrence in Houston, so many in fact I probably annoyed him.
I also stopped at a couple of points of interest on the way including Abiquiu Dam, which was an Army Corps of Engineers project in the 1950's to be used for flood control. Turns out it wasn't actually needed. The water never gets high enough to actually touch the dam! The only thing it's used for now is a small power generating station where they get the water from Lake Abiquiu through underground pipes, not the dam. The lake was already there before they built the dam. Typical government waste.
Further down the road I stopped at a place called Ghost Ranch, which is privately owned and is an artist's colony, which immediately tells you there are some interesting characters running around the place. They have a lodge for overnight guests, a paleontology museum and a anthropology museum. They have also dug up a bunch of dinosaur bones. It was also used for two films...Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull with Harrison Ford, and City Slickers with Billy Crystal. Some of the old sets are still there for touring. Pretty neat.
After all of that, I decided to not make anymore stops and head straight for Chama. I arrived around 4:30pm at about the same time as the other people I was going to meet there, so that worked out well. We all visited and caught up on stuff, and then went inside the residence of the proprietors of our motel and ordered pizza and had a lot of laughs. It was good seeing old friends again, as well as meeting new ones.
I gotta hit the hay early tonight as we are all meeting for breakfast at 8:30am tomorrow, which is way too early for me normally, but I'll adjust. The temperature is dropping fast as it's already 43 degrees with a low tonight near freezing. I'm not used to turning on heaters in my room this time of year, but up here, you have to. Tomorrow is kind of open as to what we are all going to do, but we'll figure it out as we go.
No comments:
Post a Comment