Today, we awoke in Santa Fe, and went to the old town section to wander among the galleries and enjoy the early morning sun. As we discovered, not much is open there until 9.30 or 10.00 AM! We wandered around, looked at some native wares, and headed toward the Turquoise Trail.

The Turquoise Trail winds between Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and is dotted with small towns full of southwestern and international flavor. Our first stop was Cerillos.

In Cerillos, we spoke with a woman whose home was used as part of the film Young Guns. In fact, I think the town was used as the set for this film. I guess I’ll have to rent it and see what it looked like for the film. The town has tons of old town charm, with dirt streets and old buildings, stuffed with knick knacks and art. Very nice place to visit – wouldn’t want to live there!

Farther south on Highway 14, we came to Madrid. This little town is an artisans dream, filled with galleries and shops. We wandered along the crooked streets, drifting in and out of the shops, peeking at rugs, ornaments, and other hand-crafted goodies. Endeavoring to help the economy, we walked away with a few.

We stopped lastly in ???, looking at a strip mall of shops. Beck found a couple of nice items, and I bought a stone pendulum device (insert picture and website here). This is a very cool device, a huge one of which exists inside a giant cavern at Meramec Caverns. Very cool device.

After hitting I-40 again, we headed west through Albuquerque and points westward. The drive was nice, but man was it windy! We were getting blown all over the place. We stopped at the Arizona Welcome Center, and discovered that the town we’d originally planned to stop in — ??? — only has one hotel, and they wanted a fortune for a room, so we drove on to Holbrook, and spent the night.

It was nice to see that the same weird signs, warning of poisonous insects and animals, were still in the rest areas.