49F in Anthem today. Another beautiful forecast of sunshine and temps in the upper 60's. We leave Anthem today, headed back northward and to home. The weather looks clear with no storms for the entire route through the weekend - lucky for us as it means we don't have to drive the southern route to Texas.
We shared our last breakfast with Karen and Dell and thanked them for their amazing hospitality. They claimed to be sad to see us go! We will see them soon in April for our planned cruise so they will get over our absence soon enough.
We struck out around 9:45, headed north towards Flagstaff and our eventual day's destination of Santa Fe. Before long we reached Walnut Creek Canyon and stopped at this National Park for a tour. We stood looking across the canyon at pueblo dwellings in the cliff that were occupied until 1150 to 1250. We did not hike down into the canyon and back, although, for a future trip it is one we are looking forward to completing. Though not that long a trail, the 700 some steps down, along and back up are time consuming and strenuous.
Back in the blue chariot, we headed north again, stopping at Meteor Crater and paying the entrance fee to climb up and view this spectacular site; created some 50,000 years ago. The crater is 4,000 feet across and some 750 feet deep. We learned that Apollo astronauts trained at the crater in order to learn about how to find meteor fragments on the moon.
Onward into New Mexico, stopping at the world's most crowded gas station in Gallup for a fuel fill up and then heading on through Albuquerque at rush hour and arriving in Santa Fe around 6:30. We are staying at a small hotel in the old section called Luxx Boutique. Our room decor is reminiscent of a Klimt painting and is unique. We ventured out and found a restaurant a few blocks away called Estavan. Estavan is the owner and chef and he escorted us to our table and proceeded to deliver some wonderful food - potato leek soup, grilled lamb rib chops, and an amazing Osso Bucco. He directed us to a small hole in the wall bar for a post dinner cocktail.
To our delight we found the bar, called Tonic, and they had the most wonderful Jazz trio, clarinet, bass and drums. We listened blissfully until almost midnight. Almost all of the patrons were millennials and at first we felt like we were in the wrong place but we quickly settled in. We walked back in 20F weather to our hotel, well fed, over liquidated, and charmed by our wonderful evening.
