Santa Fe

The air got warmer as I rode southeast, until I was back to wearing a t-shirt and jeans in Santa Fe. I got frustrated driving in circles looking for the Plaza, having been told there "signs everywhere" and I "couldn't miss it." Well, I could. And the gas station had maps of everything but New Mexico. Then my left side mirror came loose and turned to face me, I stopped to fix it, the bike stalled, I moved on, and it came loose again.

At long last I stumbled on the public library, parked next to another motorcycle, and went inside for some blogging. Then I wandered into the Plaza and had a look around.

The Governor's Palace has been turned into a museum, and although I didn't buy a ticket for the interior exhibits, the entrance hall had a little bit of information.

The aforementioned market was in progress.

Santa Fe was lovely, with classic adobe architecture, beautiful weather, and a friendly old man in the park who talked at me for an hour about his life and travels, and highly recommended that I visit Peru.

From Santa Fe, I got on I25 north (which actually leads south near the city) and realized that, with two hours of sunlight still to go, the air was already getting cold. Not wanting to spend another night freezing, I went looking for a motel. The first one said "no nightly rates" (what?) and in the second one, the woman asked me if I really wanted a room so many times that I finally asked her where the Comfort Inn was, and she told me, without ever getting off her couch. I ended up at the Days Inn in Las Vegas, NM.