Day Six: Colorado & New Mexico

Day 6 miles driven: 478 miles
Day 6 time on road: 9 hours and 45 minutes

** We're posting this a day late, as our lodging last night didn't have internet. Apologies to those who've been waiting with baited breath. **

We've really gotten into this road tripping thing. Case in point: Today, we decided our 7 hour / 1 highway drive just wasn't scenic enough – add in a few local routes, tons of scenic vistas, one black cat themed winery, and here we are in Albequerque.

Unfortunately, the day that we took off from driving didn't coincide with the Longmont Fire Department Parade. Fortunately, it did coincide with a pre-parade party on Tyler & Dulcie's porch that involved donuts. We grabbed a couple for the road, and headed south through Denver.


Before the border to New Mexico, we ran into an adorable Coloradan town, Trinidad, where we ate lunch at a pizzeria on its Main Street, which was paved with bricks. Fruit salad was the special of the day – every ingredient (apples, pears, mandarin oranges, goat cheese, walnuts) was from the town's Farmer's Market that had been earlier that day. Colorado is awesome.



One of the best road trip decisions we've made this week was to detour off Highway 25 today – this would have taken us straight from Trinidad in Colorado to Albequerque in probably 2 fewer hours than what we did, but the route we took, along a windy mountain road, then a few miscellaneous ones South, took us through landscape that is the definition of the American Southwest – wide open plains, backed up along the Rocky Mountains.


On the windy mountain road, the official destination according to the highway signs was Taos, a New Mexico community renowned as an artist and hippie destination. We were actually disappointed in Taos – an elderly vacationer's destination if we've ever seen one – but beyond delighted with Eagle's Nest, a lakefront town about 15 miles north.


After Taos, we stumbled upon a winery, which made for the perfect mid-afternoon break. Then it was a straight shot down to Albequerque, which is just about 40 minutes away from the skyline-free Santa Fe, where we are staying at the empty house of one of Trevor's parents' friends. Despite the fact that all we had seen and read about New Mexico was about its Mexican food, when we went to find some place for dinner, we couldn't find a single Mexican restaurant. We did find a microbrewery (of course), and then a tapas place where we decidedly did not eat tapas (Trevor: Crawfish sandwich. Ashley: Grilled cheese.).

We're calling it an early night to get on the road tomorrow morning for our final day - hard to believe that at this time tomorrow, we'll be at our final destination, at Ashley's parents in Indio, California.