20th November, 2016. Santa Fe, New Mexico

We continue to experience great weather with clear blue skies and crisp mornings.  Today we are going back into the city centre, looking at some art work, but Jeanette has reservations as to carrying a beautiful pottery piece back home.  Following this we travel some 70 mile up the I25 to Toas to see the Rio Grande river as well as taking in the desert scenery and the various Indian townships and Reservations, with their casinos.  Then we are scheduled to have lunch with Suzanne, who we met on our Indian Tauck tour in March / April 2016. 

So after breakfast and reading the newspapers, then talking to Sandy and Karen we make our way back into the Plaza area, walk around, have another good look at the pottery, but Jeanette whilst loving it decides it is just too hard and risky to either post it or carry it.  We then travel to Dickson, because Toas, seems to be just a bit far given our time to arrive back in SantavFe for lunch with Suzanne at 12.00pm.  The trip is enjoyable, we are surprised as to the number of Indian towns, but also have difficulty getting close to take photos of the mighty Rio Grande river.

From here we then travel about 1 mile to the renovated old Masonic Temple, now a government building and museum, then turn left and Park down the street from Suzanne's home, we are a little early, before following her instructions as to entry.  She has purchased one of the Fairmont townhouses for this as her winter home, with summers still in Illinois.   

Suzanne is delighted to see us  and we chat for 15 minutes before walking some 300-400 metres to lunch at Santa Cafe. This is a great venue serving wonderful food and whilst it is booked out we can still hear all of our conversations. We enjoy almost 2 hours together before we walk back to her townhouse, where her little dog, Mac greets us enthusiastically at the front door. Suzanne says she had fallen in love with Santa Fe for the 5-6 months from September through to March. She is active in a range of groups, still intends to travel regularly. 

We enjoyed our visit to catch up with Suzanne, who is a lovely lady with a friendly disposition and is great company.  Suzanne also pays for lunch as her shout.  We have a great time.

From here we decide to visit the nearby ski resort areas, there is snow on the mountains, but we will also see a significant contrast in vegetation with Pines and Aspens replacing the desert bushes, cactus etc.  Santa Fe is at an altitude of 7,000 plus feet and we climb to nearly 10,000 feet as we go up the mountain. There are higher mountains nearby at 11,000-12,000 feet.  But we enjoy the climb and te scenery, but the higher altitude is certainly noticeable as your breathing is impacted quite significantly.

Whilst there is snow higher up the road only leads to the village and the ski lifts. But there are hundreds of people hiking the many walks.  But we enjoy the stunning views and the many varied clay colours of the houses of Santa Fe at the bottom.

We take our time driving back as our hosts are busy preparing a superb meal for this evening.  Ken purchases Cloudy Bay Sav Blanc and a Sterling Napa Valley Cab Sav.  Our small contributions as well as our Australian book.  We meet Cynthia and Kurt and Pat and Doug as the other friends for dinner and enjoy a scrumptious dinner and excellent company. 

This has been a great stay in a beautiful little city. The car has worked well and GPS has done the job. 

Tomorrow we drive back to Albuquerque, having said our farewell and fly from Albuquerque back to Sky Harbour, Phoenix, then pick up a SUV and drive , over 4 hours to Palm Desert, staying at Embarc (Club Intrawest) for 5 nights.  The drive will be long but on excellent freeway / I10.