Santa Fe, NM (again) was the destination this trip -our 4th visit but we also saw plenty along the way to get there. The road trip started by flying into Austin, TX (from Seattle) for three nights. A big city with plenty of traffic and young folk. The median age for the town is 34 years old! No wonder Austin remains weird ; ). That factoid of the population is no doubt fuled by the University of Texas - one damn big campus. Food Trucks are seemingly everywhere too....and revered for good reason. Research led us to plenty of tasty chow from their windows. Just outside of city centre, the Contemporary Austin – Laguna Gloria Sculpture Garden and the prestine Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential library were highlights of our first Austin visit.
Driving from Austin, TX to the New Mexico border was some 650+ miles which we parsed out over 3 days and two nights. The majority of it was along U.S. Route 84 (the old Route 66). Lubbock, TX seemed the obvious first stop from our earliest trip planning. Practically smack dab in between Austin and Santa Fe, it's another college town (Texas Tech). Lubbock seems frozen in time (circa 1962) with its ubiquitous brick builidings and ultra-wide streets. I'll add the city looked clean as a whistle including the large and nicely appointed tourist-central hotel we stayed in for the night. I was expecting the entire 'Texas'stretch' of road to offer up unlimited photo opps of, yesteryear, funky grunge. It didn't dissapoint. Another night (in Tucumcari, NM) and day of driving, we arrived in Santa Fe. The location we crave is centered in a twelve square block known as 'old town Santa Fe', that also houses the state government and capital building.
After a full 3 nights and four days in Santa Fe, we spent our last night an hour and a half down the road in Albuqueque to be near the airport for the early flight home. All and all...another prefect run to my personal 'happy place' and IMHO, a bonafied national mecca for contemporary art. The shopping, galleries and restaurants all wrapped in similar, prestine adobe architecture is easy on the eye and remains highly photogenic. On a singular note, it was exciting to see the new Georgia O'keefe' museum and campus finally taking shape in town. And the magnificent (always edgy) SITE Santa Fe certainly didn't dissapoint either.
