Day 3
Day 3 began with a 5 am wake-up call on the California Zephyr en route to Denver, Colorado. As excited
as I was to visit a new city on our cross country trip, the idea of being woken
up at 5 am and realizing it was a mere 32° outside, I almost
preferred to stay on the train and take it all the way to sunny California, -
but Denver was our route, so that’s where we got off.
Now, I've been told by
many people how stunningly beautiful Denver was, the “mile high” city between
the Rocky Mountains and above the clouds. I’ll take their words to be telling
the truth, however, when we got to Denver…it wasn't exactly stunning or
beautiful…it was a little dumpy to say it nicely. The actual train station was
being renovated, so we were dropped off in another location near the Colorado
Rockies Baseball Field and not really at an actual station…just dropped off a
random location.
Having no idea where we
were and it being 7 am and freezing, we figured just grab a cab for our less
than 2 mile drive to grab our rental car. As we were driving in the cab, Pete
and I kept looking outside to find this ‘stunningly beautiful’ Denver, which we
really couldn't seem to find. We got to Budget Rental a few minutes later and
were given some ‘good news’ and ‘bad news’. Bad news was that we arrived early
than expected for our car, good news; he had a larger SUV which we decided to
go with. Apparently it was a sign for us to have this larger Ford Edge SUV,
because it had Massachusetts license plates on it-perfect to let people know
ahead of time of our driving habits.
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| Freshly Squeezed OJ, great breakfast.! Nice choice for Wild Eggs! |
After packing up the
rental and grabbing a few tourist brochures, we heading off in any direction to
find breakfast. Thanks to Yelp, we were able to find a cute little place called Wild Eggs to grab breakfast and
figure out exactly what our plan was for the day. After thoroughly searching
the brochures to see what there was to see and do for the day in Denver, we
came to two conclusions: 1. half the attractions seemed to surround the
convention center (and since we both work at a convention center that was the
last thing either one of us wanted to think about), 2. the other half of the
attractions seemed to be outside of actual Denver. After much discussion, we
decided to hit the road and head straight to Santa Fe, New Mexico and save
Denver for another trip.
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| Freshly Squeezed OJ, great breakfast.! Nice choice for Wild Eggs! |
If it wasn't for the
couple we had met the night before on our train dinner, Pete and I probably would've hit Interstate 25 all the way down to Santa Fe, instead, we decided to
take scenic Byway 24 to Santa Fe. We said ‘good bye’ to Denver and set off for
our next destination. It wasn't until we stared driving that we finally found
the ‘stunningly beautiful’ Denver we were told so much about. Living on the
east coast and visiting the White Mountains part of the Appalachian Mountains
in New Hampshire many times, mountains to me were green and had kind of a
‘rounded’ peak. The Rocky Mountains were not green and not one rounded peak was
to be found, they were absolutely gorgeous with snow-capped, pointy tops (just
like on a Coors beer bottle), and they had sort of a blue tint to them from far
away.
We got off I-25 at
Colorado Springs and made our route to Byway 24 and the beginning of Pikes
Peak. Pikes Peak itself is over 14,000 feet above sea level, twice the height
of Mt. Washington (6,000ft) which Pete and I drove up once…and only once- it
was a rather scary drive up and down at 6,000 feet, I can only imaging what a
14,000 foot drive would be like! As we began our drive on Byway 24, aka, Pikes
Peak Highway, we came across a quaint area called Woodland Park (The City Above
the Clouds), filled with shops, recreation outlets and family dining and
hotels. We stopped quickly to grab a few snacks before we made our way back on
the road, (although actually lunch would've been a better idea, but we learned
the hard way about the “scenic drive”).
As we drove away from
Woodland Parks the real action started happening in the form of some of the
most beautiful and breathtaking scenes I've ever laid eyes upon. I believe Pete
and I stopped every mile for about 20 miles or so just to take in the
mountains, the land and the air.
NOTE: my pictures do not
do justice of what we saw, but then again, I don’t think even the most
professional pictures would do justice of these magnificent mountains.
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Pictures don't do justice of how stunning the views of the
Rocky Mountains were!!
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Pictures don't do justice of how stunning the views of the
Rocky Mountains were!!
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Since time was of the
essence, we finally decided to actually stay in the car until we found
someplace for lunch…although we could’ve spent a few days just getting lost in
the views. We drove past Dude Ranches (‘Hey Dude!’) which were miles apart from
one another…or miles between anything for that matter. We also noticed that
there was only a one lane highway for each side and that we barely passed any
cars or like the ranches, they were also very far and in-between.
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| Absolutely Stunning! |
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| Absolutely Stunning! |
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| Absolutely Stunning! |
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| Nothing but mountains and long roads! |
Something that was also
very far and very in-between – any sort of lunch areas. I
happened to notice a
lot of the ‘rest areas’ or ‘lunch areas’ were closed or appeared to be
closed…I’m guessing we were in an off season between summer and winter and not
too many people were around? After eating our entire snacks 2 ½ hours prior, we
were getting hungry and fast. We finally found a place called Villa Grove Trade located in Villa
Grove, Colorado. This place had a mixture of an old general store, (which it
was) and a hippie-type ‘eat local & organic’ vibe (nothing wrong with
that!). Pete and I both had our first Buffalo Burger, sweet potato fries &
True Blond Ale and both we delicious. After our stomachs were full and we felt
more energized, we realized we were only about an hour outside New Mexico, so
it was time to get back on the road and head on out before it started to get
dark.
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| Our First Buffalo Burger and True Blond Ale |
We got back on Route 285
to continue our journey when we drove through another picturesque town called
Monte Vista. The center of town looked like it came out of an old Western film,
by way of the look of the store fronts and farms, and what could have been a
great place to spend the night. That idea went thought our minds, to spend the
night and go to Santa Fe the next morning, but being at this point about two
hours out, we decided to trek on.
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| More stunning views of the Byway through the Rockies! |
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| More stunning views of the Byway through the Rockies! |
Luckily, living the in 21st
century, technology has giving us the most convenient way to follow directions
via GPS and the iPhone’s “Little Blue Dot” to show us our exact location on
where we should be going- even when we hit dead zones in the Rockies, we still
knew we were going in the right direction, (of course, when there is only one
road for miles, you really can’t be that lost). We did however, question our
“Little Blue Dot” when it told us to veer off the main road with the lights and
residential areas, to another main road with no lights, no houses…no nothing.
The good part of this desolate
road is that we saw a sign welcoming us to New Mexico, so we did go the right
way. The bad part of the desolate road is that there was NOTHING on this road
for a good 10-15 miles. I mean NOTHING- this is the type of road that if your
car breaks down, you’ll end up being an Urban Legend. I’m almost certain they
filmed “The Hills Have Eyes” on this road, (was that based on a true story?)
That was another thing we were not expecting and had to learn quickly- for most
of these roads we would be traveling on, towns are few and far between and
there are NO street lights, so when that sun goes down, you better hope there
is at least one bar of cell services and your car lights work.
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Welcome to New Mexico!
Miles and miles of road...and nothing else!
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Welcome to New Mexico!
Miles and miles of road...and nothing else!
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Welcome to New Mexico!
Miles and miles of road...and nothing else!
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About two hours later, we
finally were out of the ‘Urban Legend’ road and were able to see some
civilization in the form of houses, a few small businesses and even a couple of
traffic lights. By this point, we were now hungry, tired and just wanted to get
to a hotel room for an actual bed & shower. Pete was starting to get
agitated and just wanted to go to the first motel/hotel we found, but I
insisted we keep going until we go to our destination. After driving by a few
casinos (we hit Native American Land!), which seemed very tempting to spend the
night, Santa Fe was just around the corner, and we finally made to our
destination! We ended up in Downtown Santa Fe, which, although it was dark out, didn't seem like your typical downtown capital city.
We settled on a spot just
about 2 blocks from the main downtown area called Old Santa Fe Inn, an old-world Inn that
was just perfect. After a much needed shower and organizing of all our clothes
and goodies we picked up along the way, it was time for a much needed rest- we
were going to need it for our next day’s adventure.
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