After a good night’s sleep we breakfasted in our room with cereal & coffee brought in our overnight kit and hit the road. The drive east was still pretty mountainous with interspersed scrubland with junipers and small bushes. We crossed into the mountain time zone just after the New Mexico border, so we are now only 2 hours behind East Coast time.
We arrived at Albuquerque right around noon, and parked next to the Old Town section. This was about 4 blocks square of adobe buildings filled with shops of all descriptions, cantinas, and salons. The temp was 92 degrees and sunny but felt much cooler than this due to lack of humidity and a nice breeze. We passed the Rattlesnake Museum and Gift Shop. Leather goods, Southwestern style clothing and animal pelts were on offer everywhere.
Paula got herself a wide-brimmed fedora at the Old Town Hat Shop & Accessory Boutique and some new earrings at Smoke Signals Taos Pueblo Artisan’s shop. The proprietor carried Native American art creations. He himself made nationally famous peace pipes, which were beautiful.
We ate a sandwich lunch at a small cantina decorated with Dia de los Muertos dolls and paintings. We walked all over, and sampled Rooibus and Horchata teas at a tea shop, buying a box of tea leaves of each type to enjoy later.
There were solo musicians playing guitar, pan pipes, and true flute in different places in the district. Although most of the crowd and shopkeepers seemed to be either Hispanic or Native American, a woman with a thick Irish brogue served us iced mochas at the sweet shop. We rested in the central green Tiguex park and then got back in the car to go the last 150 miles to Santa Rosa, NM, our stopping place for the night.
Santa Rosa appears financially distressed, and most of the shops in the small historic downtown were boarded up. Apparently still in business were the Pecos Theater Cinema (featuring Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning and The Equalizer 3), and Grandma’s Fitness. There were some nice brick municipal buildings and the homes on side streets appeared older but well-kept.
We ate dinner at Chico’s, a combination restaurant/gift shop. The staff was friendly and the food (Mexican) was good. Tom had fajitas, and Paula had shrimp ceviche. Tomorrow we head to Clinton Oklahoma, about 350 miles east on Route 40.
