The Grand Circle 2024

Another long drive today, around 300 miles, all in glorious sunshine as we left Albuquerque, New Mexico, and headed west over the state line to Chinle, Arizona. Our day didn't start as planned - we were going to revisit the bagel and coffee shop next door for breakfast but found it was closed on Tuesday. Starbucks to the rescue! Our next planned stop at the El Morro National Monument was similarly scuppered as it too closes on Tuesday. We stopped by at Denny's in Gallup for lunch and a brief visit to the local cowboy outfitters. We finally arrived in Chinle late afternoon at our accommodation for the next two nights, Thunderbird Lodge. We drove the North Rim of the Canyon de Chelly before dinner and enjoyed some incredible scenery gazing into the canyon 1000ft below us as the sun went down. If you look close enough you can see some of the ancient native American buildings. 

We started the day with coffee and bagels just around the corner from our motel, Kaufman's Coffee and Bagel store: https://addmi.com/b/kaufmans-coffee-bagels.-NEvTXgDIanbBW9PDnG4/store We then went our separate ways as Suse spent the day with her aunt Barbara and cousin Glyn whilst I headed to the Sandia Peak tramway with Steve and Barbara. Fortunately the weather was completely in our favour and we could see literally 100 miles to the west and 80 miles, to Santa Fe, to the east from the Peak at over 12,000ft elevation. To the west: To the east: It was glorious up there but still chilly in parts. We were sustained by a delicious sharing plate of charcuterie. In the late afternoon we reconvened with Suse and aunt Barbara at Barbara's home before driving to North West Albuquerque for dinner with cousin Glyn and his wife Jeanne. Perfect end to a perfect day.

The morning was spent walking around the picturesque city centre of Santa Fe whilst a fair amount of window shopping was undertaken. We visited the very doorway where Oppenheimer's scientists used to assemble to be spirited into the New Mexico desert to undertake their top secret work on his "deadly toy". An adjacent coffee shop has a suitably topical name: Respite from retail therapy came in the form of a most welcome coffee and cake break in the La Fonda French patisserie and coffee shop 😋 We then started our journey south from Santa Fe to Albuquerque down Highway 14, otherwise known as the Turquoise Trail - a scenic highway - via the little town of Madrid, famous for its role in the concluding scenes of the film Wild Hogs (worth watching if you need cheering up). https://www.turquoisetrail.org/ Unfortunately the owner of our motel for the next two nights, the recently restored Route 66 motel the El Vado, was blissfully unaware of our reservation! Thankfully a couple o...