Santa Fe

Adios Casa de Sally

Having guided our host through the gates of car buying hell, we packed the Mini and headed north on the long awaited return to home.

Monday we test drove the front runner, the 2023 Subaru Forester, followed by a 2023 Honda CRV (Honda shared the lot with Subaru) and although Sally swore she wanted new, a 2020 Honda Passport was taken for a short drive. She liked the heft and acceleration of the Pathfinder, but she didn’t like the low gas mileage. The CRV was an underwhelming drive and to get the stuff she wanted it was going to be over her spending cap. The Forester remained the favorite. Tuesday we started at the Hyundai dealer to try out the 2023 Tucson. After a 10 mile test drive, this vehicle jumped to the head of the class, so much so the Nissan Rogue that was possibly next, was skipped.

She really wanted a black car, her current car a 2002 Toyota RAV4 is that color and she likes it. Also a black car diminishes the prominence of the ugly black plastic cladding that is ubiquitous these days. None of the new cars tested were black and there were no black cars on the lot. The Subaru salesman on Monday said he would email her if any might be in their pipeline, but he never did. That and his ineptness in name remembrance and constant sniffing while along for the test drive killed the Subaru sale. Sally even said if the more personable and professionalism Honda salesman could sell her a Subaru, the Forester would have been her choice.

The Hyundai dealer had a still unprepped brand new Tucson in Portifino Gray (see yesterday’s post) on the lot and she though maybe if she could get it ready later in the afternoon and she could test drive it, that might make the sale. They called at 4:30 and we went back to take that test drive that included a trip right back to Casa de Sally for a test fitting in her garage. Ding, Ding, ding we have a winner. They worked up an offer sheet and she said all she needed to do was contact her insurance to see what the coverage would be like. That happened this morning and when we left she was text bargaining with the salesman over the usual dealer added options and their extra markup crap. If all goes well Sally will be driving a new Hyundai Tucson before we get back home on Sunday.

Santa Fe Fuego

We arrived at Casa de Sally in Santa Fe around lunch time after a shortish drive from Clovis, NM near the Texas border. We then spent the afternoon chatting until it came time to take ourselves out to the ballgame. We were off to Fort Marcy Park to see the Santa Fe Fuego play the Trinidad (CO) Triggers.

Because Sally has extra bedrooms (even with Donna and I there) she is hosting a couple ball players for the local independent minor league baseball team of the Pecos League. For housing these two players, she is compensated with 4 sets of season tickets for all 30 of their home games. The season just started and tonight was just the second home game and Sally has seen both of them. It is a fun night out, but I don’t think Sally will be there for all the other 28.

So Long La Casa de Sally

Last Night’s Santa Fe Sunset from Fort Marcy

After 7 days of hanging curtains, repairing several stools damaged in shipping, changing a few light bulbs & hunting for just the right bookcase for a certain wall, Donna and I are on our way home. Hunting bookcases took us into nearly every consignment and or thrift store in Santa Fe before we finally hit paydirt at a little, one-man operation in corner lot just about a mile from La Casa de Sally.

While in Santa Fe we also ate at two different Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives Restaurants, breakfast at the Tune-Up Cafe1 an lunch at Back Road Pizza.

Tonight we are in Flagstaff and the drive was mostly I-25 to I-40 with a couple of forays onto Old Route 66 for some geocaching and sight seeing. On the last bit, from outside Winslow to the hotel, we took a lovely back road for the last 61 miles. According Google maps this route was about 13 miles and 20 minutes longer, but the time might have actually been less than taking I-40 in. This is because unlike our last day driving into Santa Fe a week ago we were not caught by surprise with a construction slow down. Arizona had a sign a hundred miles from Flagstaff letting us know the road dropped to 1 lane from 2 at mile post 205, so we got off a long way from there and looped into our hotel. And right now looking out the Holiday Inn Express’s window we can see I-40 and traffic is creeping.

25,000 Cholla Plants

A small story from Thursday’s drive:

When we were getting ready to leave the small corner of Colorado we pass through, Donna was driving, so I asked, “Hey, if there is a big ol’ Welcome to New Mexico sign, pull over so I could take a picture?” I was looking at the GPS watching the the border approach and I could see on the left side of the road the back of the Welcome to Colorado sign, but I couldn’t see anything on the right. As we passed the spot there was a stone marker, about the size of a fairly decent headstone, that read “Boundary / Navajo Reservation / US Dept Interior.” I might have taken a picture, but by then it was too late…maybe next time.

Somewhere not too far into the Navajo Reservation the rental CX-5 passed the 25,000 mile mark.

New Mexico’s Capital City

La Casa de Sally

Door to door, from the Scenic View Inn in Moab to La Casa de Sally in Santa Fe, according to the Google Guy it is 378 miles and take six and a half hours. The mileage was probably about right, but the time was probably wrong. Not just because of our frequent stops and lunch break, but we ran into construction on US-84/285 just north of Santa Fe, where they were resurfacing the road and brought 3 lanes down into just one.

I took just three photos today, two out the passenger window (one of which is very blurry) and the above photo of the rental car at our home for the next week. They are a couple things to do around the house and we have a scenic train ride one day, but that is it for set plans. I’m sure we will probably do the touristy stuff and visit Old Town Santa Fe at least. Don’t worry, I’ll keep you updated here.