Our trip to Albuquerque was kind of a last-minute, random thing. About the only thing I knew was it was close to Santa Fe, they like chili peppers, and the flight was open. Throwing caution to the wind, we headed out with only a GPS and a slight idea of things to see.

Upon arriving, we stopped at a little diner on an historic stretch of old Route 66. They do know how to fire up some heartburn out there. I had an open faced chili cheeseburger with fresh green chilis and fries. We walked around the area a bit, mostly to give my heart a jumpstart. From there, we decided to head North toward Santa Fe.

Now I knew that Santa Fe was famous for its pueblos, I just didn't realize the kool-aid was so strong... If there's anything I learned on this trip it is I am not a fan of "Southwestern" motif. It is one thing to have a theme, but almost every blessed building in the city was a pueblo. Besides that, Santa Fe was a perfectly pleasant town. We went to the Georgia O'Keefe museum and walked around the town square. We got some coffee and skipped the turquoise jewelry and headed back down to Albuquerque for a good mexican meal. One question you hear at almost every Albuquerque restaurant is "red or green?" meaning what color of chili peppers do you want. (FYI - "Christmas" means both) While my stomach didn't think me later, it was a pretty good dinner.

The next morning, we drove out to the Petroglyphs National Monument before we started for the airport. It is an archeological site containing nearly 25,000 prehistoric and historic carvings and ruins just west of downtown. It had rained overnight so some of the etchings were hard to make out but some were very clear. It seems stars were popular back in the day.

All in all, just a pretty average trip. Personal preferences would probably keep this off the top 10 list anyway but maybe someday we'll stop back in on the way to somewhere else. I could definitely take another one of those chili cheeseburgers.