High Desert

Andy here with another update from the road. I've successfully won my battle with a cold, and I'm going to attribute it to the dry climate of the great Southwest. Tonight we are in Santa Fe, and even though it is dry, it is cold (low tonight of 15)! This morning we awoke to find that Sedona is a whole lot cooler looking in the daylight than it is at night. It's an amazingly beautiful little town, with huge red rocks supplying the backdrop to a surprisingly small mountain / desert community. It is a little weird, though, with it's vortexes and associations with "magic." With a hot tip from our friend Day who spent a few key months in Sedona about a year and a half ago, we had breakfast at the Coffeepot Restaurant: 101 Omletes. The food was good and the atmosphere was the right level of quirky to be enjoyable. It was my first taste of good local food in the Southwest, and I liked it. We then took a a winding road north toward Flagstaff that really showed off some of the beauty of the land. Toward the top of the road there was viewpoint. Ramona was very popular here, as two people insisted on taking a picture of the three of us. Here is the better of the two, from the woman who aptly described Ramona as "huge."

After cruising past the America's largest meteor crater and the petrified forest without even stopping, we made good time and were pulling into Albuquerque around 3:00. I thought the mountains surrounding Albuquerque were some of the coolest mountain views I've ever seen. Elizabeth, however, being from a Smokey Mountains state, said that she wants her mountains covered with trees and with the possibility of a country-music theme park over the next hill.

Elizabeth's former Kisselmate Jay used to live in Santa Fe, so she called in a tip from him. He not only hooked us up with a cool, relatively cheap inn downtown, he also told of a restaurant that has food that is, "fucking awesome." After exploring (and thoroughly enjoying) downtown Santa Fe, we headed to Pasquals for dinner. We both got the same thing, a combo plate with chicken enchiladas with mole, chile rellano, and a chicken tomale. All three items were exceptional, with the mole being the highlight. Elizabeth says she didn't really like mole until she had it in San Diego, and I can understand why. This mole was good enough to make a believer out me. Also, they had the Santa Fe Brewing Company's Pale Ale, which was also very good. If I had to describe the meal with two words, they would be fucking and awesome.

Tomorrow it is on to and through Texas, and with a little luck, through Oklahoma, too.

Total mileage so far: 2,782.9