On Sunday, August 5, 2018, we caught a Frontier flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Colorado Springs, arriving at 5:30 p.m. Frontier is somewhat better than Spirit, as far as comfort is concerned, and was better than our Delta flight to Amsterdam in May. We picked up a rental car (a Nissan Versa) at Enterprise and drove down I-25 to Pueblo, where we checked into the Best Western Plus Eagleridge Inn and Suites, just off the expressway, On the way there, we had seen a billboard for Brues Alehouse, on the River Walk, and people in the hotel lobby gave it a thumbs-up, so we drove downtown and found it. Mary Joy had tacos, while I had a chicken fajita, both very good, along with an amber ale for her and a hard cider for me, also good.
On Monday, August 6, we had the buffet breakfast at the hotel (not bad), then drove south, getting off of I-25 at Walsenburg, in order to drive the Highway of Legends Scenic Byway (Colorado 12) around the Spanish Peaks--an isolated pair of mountains with a saddle between them, known to the Ute Indians, according to Lonely Planet, as "the breasts of the earth." Lonely Planet continues:
"On closer inspection, you’ll find hundreds of magnificent rock walls radiating like fins
from the peaks. Called ‘dikes,’ they were formed from fissures, surrounding the volcanic
core, being filled up with magma, later turning into solid rock as it cooled. Subsequent
erosion has exposed the dikes, leaving a peculiar landscape of abrupt perpendicular
rock walls protruding from the earth. This is the largest collection of such dikes in the
world."
The drive, through La Veta and Cuchara and over the Cuchara Pass, was scenically very nice, though afterwards, as we got closer to Trinidad, it became just another drive through rural America.
At Trinidad, we stopped to top off our gas tank, and discovered that my credit card was missing. I assumed, correctly, that I had left it at the Brues Alehouse in Pueblo. We called them, and they promised to hold it for us until our return on Friday. Until then, Mary Joy would have to use her card instead.
We had lunch (not bad) at the Cafe, in downtown Trinidad, then headed on to Santa Fe, arriving in the late afternoon at the Madeleine Bed and Breakfast Inn, a very nice old house, built by a railroad baron, not far from the Plaza. We had the Hyacinth room, a second-floor bedroom with a four-poster bed, high off the floor.
We took a quick walk around the Plaza area, including the portals of the Palace of the Governors and a look at the front of the Cathedral, then went to dinner at Sazón, a very nice restaurant with a Oaxacan chef, who walked around with his white coat, jeans and a cowboy hat. They start by having you taste-test their six mole sauces, which are variously recommended for their main dishes. We had duck with a classic mole poblano, the chocolate mole negro that we had made in the cooking class we had taken in Oaxaca. Very, very nice. This was Mary Joy's favorite meal of the whole trip.
We then drove the seven miles north to the Santa Fe Opera, where we saw Leonard Bernstein's Candide in their open-air theater. Tripadvisor reviews had said that there was no bad seat in the house, so we had settled on seats toward the upper left of the open-air (but roofed) auditorium. Tripadvisor was right. the opera was a pure delight--well-staged, well-sung.
On Monday, August 6, we had the buffet breakfast at the hotel (not bad), then drove south, getting off of I-25 at Walsenburg, in order to drive the Highway of Legends Scenic Byway (Colorado 12) around the Spanish Peaks--an isolated pair of mountains with a saddle between them, known to the Ute Indians, according to Lonely Planet, as "the breasts of the earth." Lonely Planet continues:
"On closer inspection, you’ll find hundreds of magnificent rock walls radiating like fins
from the peaks. Called ‘dikes,’ they were formed from fissures, surrounding the volcanic
core, being filled up with magma, later turning into solid rock as it cooled. Subsequent
erosion has exposed the dikes, leaving a peculiar landscape of abrupt perpendicular
rock walls protruding from the earth. This is the largest collection of such dikes in the
world."
The drive, through La Veta and Cuchara and over the Cuchara Pass, was scenically very nice, though afterwards, as we got closer to Trinidad, it became just another drive through rural America.
At Trinidad, we stopped to top off our gas tank, and discovered that my credit card was missing. I assumed, correctly, that I had left it at the Brues Alehouse in Pueblo. We called them, and they promised to hold it for us until our return on Friday. Until then, Mary Joy would have to use her card instead.
We had lunch (not bad) at the Cafe, in downtown Trinidad, then headed on to Santa Fe, arriving in the late afternoon at the Madeleine Bed and Breakfast Inn, a very nice old house, built by a railroad baron, not far from the Plaza. We had the Hyacinth room, a second-floor bedroom with a four-poster bed, high off the floor.
We took a quick walk around the Plaza area, including the portals of the Palace of the Governors and a look at the front of the Cathedral, then went to dinner at Sazón, a very nice restaurant with a Oaxacan chef, who walked around with his white coat, jeans and a cowboy hat. They start by having you taste-test their six mole sauces, which are variously recommended for their main dishes. We had duck with a classic mole poblano, the chocolate mole negro that we had made in the cooking class we had taken in Oaxaca. Very, very nice. This was Mary Joy's favorite meal of the whole trip.
We then drove the seven miles north to the Santa Fe Opera, where we saw Leonard Bernstein's Candide in their open-air theater. Tripadvisor reviews had said that there was no bad seat in the house, so we had settled on seats toward the upper left of the open-air (but roofed) auditorium. Tripadvisor was right. the opera was a pure delight--well-staged, well-sung.
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