Mexico...The New One

Today, I have spent most of the day in New Mexico. I started the day by driving south from Amarillo, through the Palo Duro Canyon. I had concerns that it wouldn't be worth it as I was driving there, as the landscape leading up to it was the typical flat Texas land that I drove through all yesterday. Suddenly, however, the road went down a hill into the canyon, showing landscapes and rock

Even in the cold and rainy conditions, this was impressive

formations that I have never seen in person before. If I can be impressed by a supposedly small canyon, I can't wait to see the Grand Canyon in a few days. There was also a second canyon about 15

First cacti sighting of the trip

minutes later that has been partially filled to create a reservoir. I thought the rock formations at this second canyon were more unique (some were column shaped, but I don't have pictures due to not have a place to park for these) 

There is another canyon below all that water

After leaving the canyon, I entered New Mexico and made my way down to Roswell. The landscape changed from the lush green grass ranches of Texas, to a dry landscape with small shrubs littering the flat ground as far as the eye can see. Well, not necessarily dry today, as the rain had followed me into this desolate area. Before I got to the outskirts of Roswell, I had probably gone about 50 miles since I had seen a structure other than the power lines along side the road. And this was on a "major road" (US Highway 70)

In Roswell, they really like to play up the whole "alien" thing, with over a dozen store fronts devoted

Alien drinking a smoothie

solely to aliens. After I had a cobb salad at a small diner in the middle of town, of course, I went to

Here's that required salad I talked about yesterday

the International UFO Museum, which naturally is housed in an old movie theater. It started decently enough, talking about 1947 Roswell UFO incident and giving "non-alien" explanations to what it could have been, ie the government had a lot of different scientific and aircraft testing in the area at that time. But then it quickly devolved into "aliens are real, here is a bunch of illogical proof." At one

Yup, aliens are real. They are made of plastic and animatronic

display, they even tried to pass off a picture from a 1930s-ish comic book as a real life alien encounter. It was good for good laugh and not much more.

After getting tired of the alien stuff, I went to two art museums, also in Roswell, that were highly recommended by the visitors center. One was traditional and also went into some detail about the history of Roswell (other than aliens), and the other was more modern. I enjoyed both, in particular the modern one.

This piece of art is made completely of unfinished puzzles

After leaving Roswell, I made my three hour journey north towards Santa Fe. I stopped for gas about halfway there and realized that one of my headlights had gone out, so I would have to replace them when I got up to Santa Fe. Along the way, the landscape kept the same small shrubs, but gradually got hillier. When I crossed I-40, about 45 minutes outside of Santa Fe, a dense fog set in. Being able to see for miles was reduced to maybe 100 feet. When the fog lifted about 10 minutes later, the landscape changed once again, with the hills now legit mountains leading into Santa Fe.

In Santa Fe, I stopped at AutoZone to purchase new headlights. After some struggling, and having to go back in the store to purchase a small pair of pillars, I had successfully installed the new headlights and also booked my hotel for the night, the Lodge at Santa Fe. On the app that I was using, it was the first thing that came up and seemed reasonably priced at $90 for a more upscale, southwest themed hotel. What I didn't realize, is that there was an additional nightly "amenity" $15 fee, I was more

Take away the southwest-y stuff and you have a generic hotel room

concerned about fix my car when I was booking it. Oh well, I'm only staying the one night anyway. The room is nice looking, but probably needs some updating and is not much different than a standard hotel room. You are really just paying extra for the southwest theme. Dinner at the hotel restaurant was nice, where I had Shrimp Ranchero and Fried Ice Cream for dessert.

Shrimp Ranchero. It sort of looks like a salad

Fried Ice Cream, ie, not salad

Tomorrow, I'll spend the morning in downtown Santa Fe and then make my way to Flagstaff, hopefully earlier enough to do laundry. Flagstaff will also set me up for the Grand Canyon this weekend.