Where's Waldo?

Sunday was a beautiful, warm, sunny day, so my sister-in-law, Lynne, and I decided to take advantage of the weather and go on a road trip. I gassed up my Infiniti FX, Lola, picked up Lynne, and we headed out from Albuquerque around 11:00AM. Our destination was Santa Fe, an hour away, and lunch, a yummy, mouthwathering, Mexican meal. However, as is often the case with me, I made a wrong turn...

There is an exit sign along the freeway for Waldo. I had always heard that the town doesn't exist. So, adventurous souls that we are, we decided to go find out. We took the exit and came to this sign. Okay, it's only six miles to find out if there is really a place called Waldo, New Mexico.
The scenery was beautiful, trees and rocky hillsides, with a little gravel road winding into the hills.

Nah, we didn't have to take that road. lol. I think 4 wheelers like to play out here. My car has 4 wheel drive but I have very low clearance. There were huge ruts in the road in places that worried me a little about what this road would turn into. I felt better when I noticed how much traffic was on this little side road. At one point I counted 5 other cars, up or down the road, all in view at one time. Some cars were even parked off to the side, to explore the hillside canyons.

I knew when we saw these huge trees that this was Waldo!

There was a row of HUGE trees along the railroad tracks and nothing else

except for the old foundation of the train depot.

Here's Lola. We decided to travel on to Cerrillos and then swing around back to Santa Fe. We were really enjoying the mountain scenery of this back road.

Please go here for the fascinating story and more photos of Waldo.

From wikipedia:

Waldo is an unincorporated area in Santa Fe County, New Mexico, United States. It was created along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway just west of Cerrillos. Today little remains, although the name appears on a freeway exit on Interstate 25 some distance to the west. Today, Waldo is a siding along the line of the BNSF Railway, which bought out the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway.
Waldo was at the junction of the AT&SF main east-west line and the Madrid spur. There were coke ovens in Waldo, supplied by coal from Madrid. The spur itself no longer exists. The ovens were on the south side of the mail line, and the town on the north. The rail line parallels the Galisteo River.

Road trip to Santa Fe to be continued...