Full-Frontal New Mexico

For Thanksgiving, Kurt and I decided to go down to Tucson to see if Steve's house is still standing and, if so, clean up a bit. On Wednesday morning we bid farewell to Shelley and then, after a little packing and such, headed down ol' South America way. We decided it would be fun to stop off in Santa Fe for the night and then go the rest of the way in the morning.
New Mexico is apparently the Land of Enchantment. Sounds charming, huh? Well, it certainly cast a spell on us ... a hex, to be specific.
There were several awesome things about New Mexico (hereafter affectionately referred to as NM). First, there was the complete barrenness. Does anyone live there? Second, was the Super Blitz! Every few miles or so we'd see electric traffic signs that would say:
"DUI Super Blitz
Cops everywhere!"
I'm not sure what NM's definition of everywhere is, but I think it's different from mine because I saw about 4 cops in NM.
Third, was Santa Fe. Okay, I actually really liked Santa Fe. I liked it because it's old. Lots of places in the West claim to be old, like downtown Littleton and the Provo Tabernacle, but unless it was built before 1800 I don't think it's that old. But Santa Fe really is old! It was actually founded before Charleston! "Wowzers," I said to myself when I learned that fact. Our hotel was a cute little, really old but in good condition motel just down the street from Ye Olde Santa Fe (not an official name that I know of). Its hot tub was in a greenhouse. I mean, they had a greenhouse. Sweet.
On Thanksgiving morning we ventured forth to see Santa Fe (since it was dark when we arrived the night before). It was really cold and rainy. But we persevered for about an hour. First stop, a miracle of a staircase.

They call this the Miraculous Staircase because it's really old and it has no supports and yet its strong. (Oh yeah, I definitely forgot my eye liner and mascara in bathroom sink at home, so hence my ugliness the whole trip.)

Next stop, a really old church. This is the oldest church structure in America. Kurt was very impressed.

So was I. I promise. I mean, I come from the city of old churches but none of them are made of mud! Then, we got a sudden jones for green chiles, since NM is green chile capital and even has its own ethnicity, as it were, of food: NMan (not N Man like some lame super hero, but New Mexican). We hopped online (thanks to Kurt's blackberry!) and googled best green chile breakfast burrito in Albuquerque. After some rifling, I found what sounded like a good bet.

Frontier Restaurant just south of UofNM campus. It looks kitschy, and it is, but you wouldn't believe their green chile burritos. To die for.

Ohhhh, look, mummy, a lobo!

We always heard their cinnamon rolls were heavenly so we got one cinnamon roll and one green chile breakfast burrito. After scarfing both down in record time, we went back and got one more of each. Because they were amazing. I mean, wow. I'm craving them just thinking about them!
This is the point that we called our experience Full-Frontal New Mexico. But we had no idea what the full extent would be.
Then, we continued on through to Tucson. We rolled into Tucson at approximately 7:00 pm and we were lucky enough to find a restaurant other than MacDonald's open. They were even serving Thanksgiving dinner! After a yummy, pretty wholesome dinner we headed up to Oracle, where Kurt's dad's house is. We got there and discovered we had not keys for yonder house and ye olde neighbours were already tucked into their beds for the nighte. So, we found a hotel with an available room and slept. The next day was Black Friday and what else should we do but yard work?? It was amazing though, the weather was in the upper 50s and overcast so it was perfect cactus-pruning temperature.

Kurt moved the "lawn."

I pruned mesquite trees and scrub oak and pulled weeds. Now that we were good and dirty we decided it would be a great idea to go into Tucson and do some shopping and eating. Of course. (Note to self: never attempt to buy winter clothes in Arizona. There was a dearth of sweaters.)

Look, an Arizona rainbow! Then we went to El Charro, which is the oldest continuously operating Mexican restaurant in the country and the inventors of the chimichanga. It was most delicious and had red and green chile on it. Mmmmm... I love green chile. Then we slept in Steve's house whence we discovered there was no water to bed had. Forsooth! We were nay allowed to cleanse the sweat from our brows but instead had to continue on thither sojourn on the morrow with nary a shower.

On our way up to Phoenix we stopped in Florence and I finally met Kurt's grandma, Grandma Roberta and her husband Billy. They are amazingly nice people and I was so glad to meet them. Plus, they took us to a Mexican restaurant for lunch. I tell ya what, the Mexican food really is better in Arizona. Then, we stopped in Phoenix for some Bahama Bucks and to see...

Alisse T Sherwood Baldwin Cooper Atkins. We revelled in the parking lot and in our ugliness for about an hour and took many stupid pictures. Fun was had by all.


I love making guys who don't know each other well take pictures together. The awkwardness is so thick you could cut it with a knife.




We said goodbye to our friends and promised that next time we came down we'd give them more than a few hours' notice and that we'd shower first. Which way to get home? we pondered. Of course, back through Albuquerque!

Because we needed some more Frontier restaurant.

It was approximately 11:30 pm and we were pretty tired. But we still enjoyed our food.
We drove on (the theme of this trip). A few hours later, at approximately 3 am in the middle of nowhere/NM our engine decided to stop working. We pulled over to the side of the road, befuddled. Finally, we remembered the last time the PT Cruiser broke down on us on a road trip and how we had signed up for towing service from Sam's Club. We called, found a tow truck, found a hotel, and an hour later were on our way back to Las Vegas, NM. Ever heard of it? Neither have we. (Side note: remember how I said that NM's definition of everywhere is different from mine? We definitely didn't see a single cop that whole hour we sat in the cold car.) We got to sleep around 4 and woke up at 9:30 to check out and find a truck rental place. The only thing to rent in the entire city was a 17 foot Uhaul truck with a car trailer. The truck rental dude (hereafter referred to as dude) was in church and left church and brought his whole family to pick up Kurt to go get the truck. The truck was on the outskirts of town, thence about 30 minutes away, and when they got there they discovered that Uhaul had cancelled our reservation and that the trailer electric wiring was all screwy. So the dude had to fix it, and 2 hours later Kurt rolled into the hotel parking lot. Then, we realized we had to get the non-working PT Cruiser onto the 2 foot trailer all by ourselves. We pushed and pushed and pushed. About an hour later, our hearts beating wildly, we got the car up the loading ramp far enough that we could hook up ratchet straps and ratchet it the rest of the way up (Kurt's idea. He is genius.). Then we hopped into the surprisingly small cab of the truck, laughed about the fact that we were driving an empty moving truck and got on our way.

Kurt driving the moving truck. Yay. Then, in the mountains between NM and CO disaster struck: a blizzard and lots of traffic.

We picked our way carefully through snow lashed streets, shaking our heads in pity at the many cars on the side of the road. We got safely into Pueblo and all was well from there until Colorado Springs. Traffic of the worst kind. For my family: think of the traffic we hit when we evacuated for Hurricane Floyd, but moving much less and more slowly. After moving approximately 5 miles in one hour, we jumped off the freeway and onto a side highway, which had snow but no traffic. Moving at a land churning pace of 40 mph, we finally rolled into out parking lot at about 11:30 pm. At this point we were grateful for two things: to have (finally) arrived home safely and for our very, very soft bed.