Day 3: Northwest New Mexico

Our 9/12/03 dispatch from Santa Fe about Day 3, continued:

We thought the drive from Aztec to Bandelier National Monument would never end - mainly because we stopped about eleventy billion times to take pictures. Truly an amazing place to be if you like to take photos.

I'll also take this time to praise Dawn's insight in recommending that we upgrade our rental to a convertable at the airport. It's been so great. I don't think most people will ever SEE all the beauty here because it's so far up you'd have to look through the roof. Enormous open skies and valleys. Severe, beautiful rock formations. Delicately shaded succulent plants and flowers. It is lovely.

The trip in to Bandelier winds by the Los Alamos area (home to the atom bomb). Bandelier itself is probably quite nice, though we arrived too late to safely explore the trails. What we could see from the drive up was compelling - miles of cliff wall with natural and man-modified caves where native americans used to dwell. Turns out that much of the drive in was through a "caldera" - the collapsed cone of a huge, dormant volcano.

As we left the Bandelier area, we could see the color in the rocks warming up as we approached sunset, and a rainstorm in the distance making two rainbows!

This is our best honeymoon yet!

40 or so miles down the road lay Galisteo: bed for the night.

The Galisteo Inn has no phones in the rooms, so you may get this a little late...

Tomorrow: Santa Fe proper!