We had breakfast at our hotel and then hit the road about 9:30am. The drive through the top of Texas let me tell you is NOT exciting. Blah, blah, & blah. Nothing around but a bunch of cows here and there. Seriously I don't know how people live in these places, but each to his own. We got into Santa Fe around lunch time and decided we wanted to find some good Mexican food and then we'd shop around. We parked the car in a parking garage, took the elevator down (we had the stroller) and then headed to this shopping area where everything is in walking distance. We stopped at a visitor center to ask for restaurant recommendations and headed to the place they suggested. Only to find out that all the power in Santa Fe was out. Seriously it wasn't even five minutes from when we left the car. Everything was shut down. No restaurants serving food obviously since there was no power and all the shops started closing up because they had no power. Just our luck. We walked around a little bit, but basically all the store owners were standing at the doorways or had locked up so there was nowhere we could go. So we decided to head back to the car and try this other restaurant that was located a little ways away (More out by the mall, Target, kind of area as opposed to the quaint downtown where we were.) in hoping the power outage wasn't expanded that far. As we went back to the car we realized, we obviously couldn't take the elevator so we folded the stroller up and headed up the stairs. It was then that it dawned on us, we were lucky we didn't get caught in the elevator when the power went out because like I said it was less than five minutes after we were out of the elevator that the power went out. Can you imagine? Two little kids and us in a strange town stuck in and elevator. No thank you. Thank goodness that didn't happen!
We found the restaurant we were looking for and thankfully the power was on. We ate at the Blue Corn Cafe & Brewery which was delicious. Authentic Mexican food.... yum-o! We both love Mexican food (Greg a little more than me), and when I started eating the guacamole it was like I was in guacamole heaven! So so good! I used to not like guacamole until a couple years ago I started eating it. I grew to like it and now I'm hooked. Once I had the guacamole in the southwest I was craving it all the time! Mmmmm! O.k. enough about the food. We had our lunch and were a little disappointed that we didn't get to do much in Santa Fe with the power outage, but what were we to do? It was out of our hands so we figured we might as well go on to Albuquerque. Greg had waited 13 years to get to Santa Fe and it was a huge bummer this power outage happened. He had actually wanted me to drive to Santa Fe with him for a photography convention when we first started dating, but we never went. I'm sure someday he'll want to go back! As I was posting Facebook statuses along the way on our road trip and mentioned we were headed to Santa Fe, an old friend we both worked with from the College Store commented that we should take the Turquoise Trail while in Santa Fe. We had no clue about it, but after checking with my aunt and uncle in Arizona they looked it up for us and told us where to go. It was a scenic drive to Albuquerque on a two lane road instead of taking the interstate. So thanks to Karen for mentioning it because it was a beautiful drive. See how great Facebook can be?
As we got off the two lane road and hopped on the interstate heading into Albuquerque, we hit a bad storm. It was actually a really freaky storm with the way the sky looked. It was kind of a rain, wind, dust storm all rolled into one. Not a typical storm like at home. Of course we were hitting Albuquerque at rush hour again so the traffic was pretty heavy and the interstate exits were going in every direction and we weren't sure which way to go. I wanted to get off the interstate because the storm was freaking me out so I told Greg (thankfully he was driving this time) to just get off at an exit. We'd drive around and check out the downtown and look for a hotel. Soon after we got off the storm lifted a little and after driving around for a bit we found a hotel for the night. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express which I had never stayed at before. It was a wonderful hotel and very very nice. I'd say it was probably our favorite hotel of the whole trip. After getting settled we decided to drive around a little and check out the historic Route 66. We had a late lunch so we weren't really hungry for a big dinner. We found a Route 66 diner and decided we'd just have ice cream for dinner. I think the kids thought we were the best parents ever letting them have ice cream for dinner. I knew though after a late lunch and snacks in the car that they wouldn't eat a whole meal. It worked out perfectly and the kids enjoyed the diner. Since I loaded some of my pics to Facebook today you get the bonus of some pictures on here today.
Here's the Route 66 diner
This is one of the scenic lookout spots along the Turquoise Trail
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