We have made the official shove-off from town life. Albuquerque has been left, quite literally, in the dust — lots of it. We have traveled north on I 25 and are now on a bbbbbuummppppyyyy road, headed east to pick up the Turquoise Trail, which will wind us north again through lots of little mining towns until we finally reach Santa Fe. We have opted for the rougher road. It is becoming clearer as we drive further into the pinon trees and the sagebrush, and as the road gets rockier. It’s not working so well for me that I just drank an entire 32 oz. Nalgene of water. There are barbed wire fences along the


We ate lunch at a little spot called the Ghost Town Cafe, a.k.a. The No Pity Cafe. We sat next to a fountain and underneath a lovely tree. We shared an egg salad, cucumber and avocado sandwich on warm flatbread and a warm beet and blue cheese salad with spicy cayenne walnuts. I think the goodness was probably amplified by the cool mountain breeze, the turquoise sky and the twittering birds, but man-oh-man, it was good.

