After we checked out of the University Lodge, we drove through the University of New Mexico. As the guidebooks promised, nearly all of the buildings on campus were made in the tan adobe style. Only in New Mexico have I seen anything like it. I didn't get pictures of the campus, but I took other pictures of adobe buildings in Santa Fe and Taos.
From the university we drove to Old Town Albuquerque, which is basically a shopping area with a town square and an adobe church that is over 200 years old. This is where I bought my dream catcher, which was more than 8 bucks but was also handmade.
From Old Town we drove slightly west to the Petroglyph National Monument, a historic area with simple images of men, women, birds and other creatures that people carved into rocks thousands of years ago. We hiked up the Mesa Point Trail to see these petroglyphs, and got a wonderful view of not only these ancient wonders but also the Albuquerque suburbs and the Sandia Mountains in the process. Very impressive; I highly recommend it.
After the Petroglyphs we began our drive to Santa Fe, about an hour away. Unfortunately, we did not know that most restaurants there, even in the peak of summer, are only open a few hours for lunch and then re-open for dinner. It was after 2 p.m. when we got there and we stopped briefly at the tourist information center and at the oldest house in the U.S. (built in 1200 A.D.). By the time we made it to the main plaza our only choice for lunch was to sit at a bench in the Plaza and buy food from a street vendor selling carnitas (at least, I think they were called carnitas). They were strips of marinated beef and onions and chiles rolled into a tortilla. We had that with a Jamaican ice tea made from a flower (jasmine?). It was all very good, especially if you like hot or spicy food. The chile peppers really dominate the food in this region.
After lunch and 4:00 coffee (a Peter tradition), we went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum. It was a very new museum, and a very small museum. Not very impressive. Peter and I left to walk around Santa Fe and browse art galleries, furniture stores and clothing stores. Whenever Peter and I walked into a gallery, people thought we were going to buy something and they spent time trying to explain to us what the art is about and we would have to very politely excuse ourselves and run like hell. The one exception was a Native American art gallery where a Lakota man explained to us the story of the White Buffalo which was depicted in a painting we saw. That story made me wish I could afford to buy the painting.
We continued walking around shops and saw the oldest church in the U.S. At about 6 p.m. we were ready to leave Albuquerque and head to Taos. We decided to stop at a pueblo along the way; it was more like a shantytown and we felt funny being there so we left very quickly. We stopped again in Nambe for a hike to what I thought would be an impressive falls area, but it was more like a trickle of water through a canyon. The sunset there was great, though. Plus you could feel the Western and Native American heritage there. As Peter said, at any moment he expected to see Winterthur, the Native American from the famous series of German children's stories written by Karl May.
We got to Taos around 9:00 p.m. and checked into the Sun God Lodge (recommended by AAA). Nice little motel. But even on a Friday night in the summer, Taos closes up early; we had to really rush to get to El Taoseno, the one restaurant other than Denny's that was open until 10:00 p.m. Peter had excellent corn enchiladas; my beef and chile peppers dish wasn't half bad.