Trip odometer: 843 miles. Today: 223 miles.
This trip is a long meander, allowing us to enjoy the slow days.
Today wasn’t planned to be slow, but that’s OK, and part of the beauty. Alpacas aren’t noisy animals and the farm roosters did not wake us. For breakfast, we enjoyed comparing a guinea fowl egg with a chicken egg from the farm. The guinea’s egg was smaller, its shell was harder, yet it tasted like chicken… egg 😁.
The drive started with an hour of plains and trains before the undulations increased as we climbed. After a brief stop at Love’s, our new favorite store, and a stretch of I-40 that was dead straight to beyond the horizon, we arrived in Santa Fe at 7,000 ft.
After helping with Newsies, we were optimistic about the sights after Jack opened the show dreaming about it. Our lack of attraction to the desert was amplified during our one stop at a gas station which seemed to double up as the local drug hangout.
We eagerly drove another 20 minutes to Hyde Memorial State Park, albeit a continuous climb to 8,600 ft on the road that goes to Santa Fe’s ski resort.
Our peaceful, level campsite, and an afternoon rain shower, led to the day’s highlights: my nap and Janet finishing two books (one audio), though the lack of signal prevented a Goodreads update.
The highly rated and short Waterfall Trail was a perfect length for a post-shower, pre-dinner trail. However, it was peculiarly unattractive to us! Perhaps it was the plethora of fallen trees or the very rocky path. Or maybe we were just getting used to the elevation. My two photos of wildflowers were the only two that we saw! For much of our hike, we remembered things we hadn’t brought on this trip and needed to add to our checklist.
Saydee’s excitement was enough for all us. Her thoughts:
So many things to smell! I leap from rock to rock, though some are a bit of a climb. The “waterfall” was just a trickle, but then I found a prize by a rotting log. I got within my body length of a rabbit! I know that’s still quite a long way away, but we each stood and stared at each other. My lowriding belly picked up some grit so my humans insisted they bathe me with Arvan’s outside shower. It was nicer than my usual bath, and my humans got as wet as I did!
Project Hail Mary was a fitting movie to watch, as it is about a long journey. The only disappointment was that we couldn’t share our analysis with the family’s movie critic, Samuel. With overnight temperatures in the low 50s, we know this isn’t Houston, and Kansas is coming later!
The Adventures of the Cajunlimeys 