Travel Update...

We left Ohio last Sunday morning.  I'll post photos of our drive from there to here tomorrow, but right now I've seen enough corn fields to last me a while.

Anyway, after Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado, we finally crossed into New Mexico yesterday.  And where did we spend the night?  Las Vegas!  Okay, so it was Las Vegas, New Mexico.  And I'm not joking when I say that the first thing I did was run into a grocery and buy some roasted green chiles!

So today, the last shall be first...  

We left Las Vegas and headed on down I 25 with a goal in mind.  We have a few days before we're due in Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta so we have time to relax a bit in one of our favorite NM places.

The scenery changes dramatically after leaving Kansas and heading towards Denver.  We head south towards Colorado Springs and by-pass Denver, but we can see the mountains in the distance.  And then the foothills of the Sangre De Cristo mountains...  the colors of the rocks are fantastic...  at first we see lots of junipers, and eventually we even see pinons.  In fact, we'd see vehicles parked along the highway that belonged to folks gathering those pine nuts.  Once, we even saw a guy way up in a tree shaking down pinon nuts to folks below.  I love pine nuts but don't have the patience to shell them for the prize within. 

To get to our destination, we drove down to Santa Fe...

Even saw shops selling Ristras and other New Mexico goodies...

On through Santa Fe and off I 25...  heading northwest...

Saw Camel Rock..

Yeah, it really does look like a camel, doesn't it?  Looks like several new casinos have been built since we've been this way but the road was good and not a whole lot of traffic.

Across the Rio Grande!

We'll cross back and forth across this river several times in the next couple of weeks.  While crossing the Mississippi always makes me feel I'm finally getting across the USA, crossing the Rio Grande makes me feel like I'm really in the West.

Our destination?

Abiquiu Lake and COE campground

With our Golden Age Passport, we pay only $32 for four nights.... electric and water with a dump station closeby.  The view from our site is quite nice (actually, I think we got the last site available today) and we can sit outside under a juniper tree enjoying a breeze.

It's time for a little relaxation after 1,729 miles of travelling in the last week.  Our internet works fine...  we have phone service...  I don't have to go to the grocery for several days...  and...  oh yes!  there's a geocache hidden less than a half mile away.

Woooo Hooo!  Time to just hang out for a while.

That's All For Today!