Where's Waldo, part three

After taking a slight detour to Waldo and Cerrillos, my sister-in-law and I again headed north towards Santa Fe. This time we took my usual route, instead of the freeway from Albuquerque, we took the 'Turquoise Trail' highway along the backside of the mountains.

We drove past the old state penitentiary. There was a terrible riot in 1980 and some of the penitentiary buildings were burned. They never tore down the old building. Here is a link to a journal/photo/blog tour of the old buildings. Creepy!! You can still see the old buildings in the background. This is not a good picture. I was driving and had pretty much passed it.

I also took some pictures of the horse pens. They used to have a horse breaking program for the inmates. I don't know when or why they stopped it. They have a huge circle of fence divvied up into pie-wedge turnouts. Look towards the left and you can see the horse pens.

Here is some of the gorgeous views we had along the way. This is the Sangre de Christo mountain range outside of Santa Fe.
When we got to Santa Fe, we found a letterbox that was right along the way. Then we stopped at a few stores Lynne wanted to visit. We decided to go to Tomasita's for some good Mexican food. We drove down to the old railroad station and parked. Here's a painted wall we saw. It was fun exploring the train depot and the trains.

Unfortunately, because it was a Sunday, Tomasita's was closed. Our next choice was just down the road at the Cowgirl BBQ. Isn't this children's menu neat? When I was little, I loved paper dolls. I remember cutting them out from the magazine my mom got, McCall's??

All around the restaurant are photos of cowgirls. I especially liked this big picture and thought of the 'Pony Cousins' bloggers.

The yellow on the wall is not mustard! lol. The paint had sparkles and yellow spatterings.

This frame is made with spoons. Cool, huh?

Here's a better shot of the 'Pony Cousins'. I couldn't photograph head on because of the glare. (Thunks head, my camera has a museum setting, duh! Oh well, too late.)

I would love to have this barnboard advertisement.
The grub was good. Lynne had a barbeque sampler and I had a 'filly' cheese steak. If we had had room for dessert we would have gotten the ice cream baked potato. Since I didn't have it I can't tell you what it actually is but it looked liked a baked potato. The waiter said it was all ice cream. It was interesting... Hmmm, I googled and I guess there is a Cowgirl BBQ in New York too. Here's the menu. I wonder how they're related. They have the baked potato ice cream too but the menu is somewhat different. I remember there being buffalo burgers on the menu and the prices seemed lower. I would recommend eating there. It's really good!

Isn't this a great sculpture? I wonder what it all means?

Look at this next building and then the following photograph to compare the new with the old.
It's always nice when they post history signs about old buildings.

Santa Fe is known as the 'city different'. Well, no wonder, when they keep wagons on their roofs!

There's always a church nearby.
I thought this building was especially interesting. There aren't very many three or four story buildings in the southwest.
I love the glass blocks on this store front. It looks like an old movie theater. LOL. There's Lynne in the door reflection.

After eating lunch/dinner? and going for a walk down a few streets, we decided we'd best get on our way. Here's Santa Fe as we were leaving. We drove down to Albuquerque along the interstate.

> Again, we detoured. This time we stopped at the Coronado State Monument in Bernalillo (Ber-na-lee-yo).

However, they were closing, so after a needed pit stop, we returned to the freeway and enjoyed watching the sun set as we entered Albuquerque. Here's a view of the Sandia Mountains from the park. Check out what's in the photo!

Here's a close up. The park has a camping ground too. I imagine they were traveling through to some whitewater elsewhere.

Not much else happened but we did have a full day! I hope you enjoyed the trip.