Utah, Colorado (again), and New Mexico

Sunday, July 20th: About four days ago, my friend Cindy Stocks from Oxford, MS, texted and said she is checking in at a hotel in Santa Fe, NM and was going to be there for five days while her husband went to a conference. She knew I would be interested because she has seen pictures that I have shown her of our times in Santa Fe. I have been telling Anthony all along that it would be great if we could just drive through Santa Fe before we headed back home. So when Cindy said she was there, that was always in the back of my mind, will we make it there before she leaves. So after we left Arches National Park we got out our map and charted a course for Santa Fe. I had texted her and asked her when they are leaving, and she said Monday, so time was of the essence. When we saw that it was possible for us to be there about 7:30p.m., I texted her to see if she had time for us to take a picture that night. We were both pretty excited about seeing each other, but they had a dinner until 8:45, and could see us afterwards.

When we were charting our course, we made note of the highways to get there, and noticed there was a US Highway 666. After spending the night a few nights earlier at Hell's Backbone and fixing breakfast at Devils Garden the next morning, I thought, why not. So when we hit Monticello, UT, we started looking for this highway that will take us toward Cortez, CO, but we couldn't find it anywhere. 

However there was a Highway 491 that looked like it was heading in the same direction as Hwy. 666, so Anthony said google to see if they changed the number of the highway.

And apparently in 2003, seven years after our atlas was published (yes, we are using an atlas from 1996, ha!) this highway was given a new number.  Apparently it had been called The Devils Highway because on the New Mexico side there had been the highest concentration of fatalities per mile of any highway in New Mexico due to its poor condition. Ironically, most of the Hwy. 666 signs were stolen after the number change.

Anyway, after we finally got that figured out, we made our way through a tiny part of Colorado for the second time:

Their signage hasn't improved since we went through the first time.

And onto New Mexico for the first time during this trip.

We lived in New Mexico for 1 1/2 years in Albuquerque while Anthony worked for OPM. When I got pregnant with Hannah, that's when we decided to move back to the south. But we loved living there and have extremely fond memories of New Mexico. We even jumped at the chance, when Hannah was just turning one, for Anthony to go on detail to Los Alamos for three months and we got to live in Santa Fe. We have also returned over the years, once even to go snow skiing as a family at the Santa Fe Ski Basin. Talk about fish out of water. Looking back we were hilarious. We got out of the car and asked a lady about which ski lift takes us to the slopes, and she looked at us and strongly recommended we take lessons. We must have had "the look." Alyssa was the ONLY one of us that knew anything about snow skiing.  Hannah and I took the lady up on the lessons. Anthony being fearless, went up the ski lift with Alyssa and somehow made it down several times without killing himself.  Needless to say, it was an interesting day for the Green family. The most recent visit was last year when Hannah was in Denver. She and her then roommate, Marcheta, decided to drive to Santa Fe for a week, and Anthony rode his bike there and rode back with them to Chattanooga.

Anyway, it was nice just being in the state again. Here's a bit of the beauty that is northern New Mexico:

Anthony:  As we were driving through Espanola, NM, I was reminded of the days I worked there on detail as an OPM investigator.  I have been told that Espanola is the "low rider" Capitol of the U.S.  It seems every time I drive through there I see several fixed up classic cars with a hydraulic system that allows the driver to make them bounce. We passed this car on the highway in Espanola and Lisa took a photo of it. The driver saw Lisa looking at it and blew his horn which made a modified "oooogah" sound. When we rolled down our window to take a picture, we smelled the odor of what we thought was marijuana. Not kidding.

We saw this low rider car for sale on the side of the road (also in Espanola).  I told Lisa I was going to go back and buy this one.

In Santa Fe, we saw these 2 parked around the Plaza the night we pulled in. When they left at about 10:30, one of them put on a show for everybody and made the wheels come off the ground at different intervals and also bounced around. It was interesting to watch, but neither of us understood why. I guess it was just for attention.

Lisa: As we headed south, Anthony said that he was going to stop at Camel Rock for a picture and that he loved Camel Rock, because he loves camels (I didn't know that), so we did.

This ^ is him walking around the grass trying to get the perfect camel camera angle. I guess he found one, and then we had the perfect shot:

When we were about to our destination, we started getting excited about eating some New Mexican food. They can cover about anything in green chili sauce and make it taste good. Anthony was trying to remember the restaurant they ate at last year, and found it.

Before:

After:

I inhaled mine, and Anthony had already gobbled his up and they had taken the plate away, but it looked about the same as mine.

Then it got really exciting!! We knew Cindy and Morris were still at their dinner, so we headed to the Plaza:

Then I got a text saying they were on their way!

Everybody, meet Cindy. We were friends when we lived in Oxford, MS. She's awesome. 

And here we all are:

This is Morris. He's awesome too! We couldn't believe that us southerners we were altogether in the southwest. It was great catching up for a bit and we even got to show off our set up:

Cindy and I decided that Anthony and Morris would sleep in the van that night and Cindy and I would get their hotel room and order room service, ha!!  For some reason, the fellas didn't like that idea.

We said good night and goodbye at about 11:00 p.m., and went our separate ways. 

You know, this opportunity to run into old friends on this adventure was definitely a highlight of this trip.