New Mexico Roadtrip - Part 2

The next part of our road trip was to get up to Santa Fe, which was going to be our base of the next three days. However there was just enough time to get distracted and look for minerals and pretty rocks! So after breakfast we went off to find our first 'rock-knocking' site of the day. The guide book, form the seventies, said that we could drive to it! We exited off the tarmacked road on to soft sand and dirt and the guide book said with anything but a campervan you should manage to drive through an underpass beneath I-85, but when we saw the 'tunnel' we decided against it. Good job too and the road leading to it was very sandy. I could also just imagine phoning the car company saying I managed to get their car stuck in a drainage tunnel!!

We were looking for Candy Rock a type of rhyolite which has coloured bands that resemble candy. We could easily see where we were to head so parked up the car and set off towards the stripy hill with a mast on it. The walk took us nearly an hour in the end as there were lots of ups and downs. We found our locality and stared looking for the best specimens of Rhyolite we could. Stuart found some nice little pieces that look a bit like colourful Edinburgh rock. After nearly an hour of searching we decided to head back to the car not to mention the sun was quite strong. Because we were in the desert the nights were cold but by mid-morning it was certainly warmer, although for a Houstonian it was still cool enough to wear my micro fleece!

The second 'rock-knocking' site of the day was further up the road we looked at botryoidal hematite and manganese deposits. The deposit was in an old quarry and the road going up to it was certainly bumpy and long – we had to make a stop to take down the chilli rista which was hanging from the hook in the back as it was beginning to shake the chillies loss! While I was off looking by myself I came across a snake and plants that looked like 'wild tomatoes'. Again we found some OK looking samples but still nothing as good as the book!




Once again it was quite a long day of driving and we only just arrived at our hotel in Santa Fe as the sun was going down. We were staying at 'The Inn at Loretto' (http://www.innatloretto.com/) which was our base for the next few days. The hotel is very close to the plaza and reminded me of something out of the Flintstones as it is built in the style of the Taos Pueblo. Santa Fe is at about 7000 feet above sea level and there was even an oxygen canister in our room if we felt light-headed!

For dinner we went to close by Mexican restaurant inside a covered courtyard. We had freshly prepared guacamole made at our table to start with and surprised the girl making it by asking for extra chilies in it! While we were waiting between courses a magician came to do some close up magic tricks at our table. He was amazing not even Stuart could work out how he was doing it! His finale was a card trick – oh how boring I hear you say but no anything but! So I picked a card and initialled it and showed it to Stuart, the card went back in the pack and it gets re-shuffled. In between times he asks me for a ring – well the only ring I wear is my wedding band so I gave him that the next thing I know is he does some magic wand-ie movement and goes into his jacket, pulls out his wallet, opens the zip, and pulls out a sealed envelope. He hands it to me and inspect it all the way around it is definitely sealed – I open it and inside is my ring and my initialled card – how did he find the card, then get both my ring and card in an envelope, sealed and inside his wallet in his jacket!! It boggles my mind. But that was not the only excitement for evening as half way through our main course the kitchen set off the fire alarm. Nobody moved an inch, actually everyone except us continued talking and eating! Eventually we were told everything was okay, but they couldn't switch off the alarm. A short while later the fire service turned up just to be sure! At least we go a free drink for inconvenience.