On The Road

The five young people, all except the lone girl speaking in a foreign tongue, had the same message on their tee-shirts. "Road Trip Mode: On," it read.

They happily crowded around a table that had no business holding four let along five, but Cafe Pasqual's, judging by the line stretching outside its front door, is the place to be for breakfast in Santa Fe. It was also fitting for us to be sitting next to them since we too were on a road trip of sorts.

Months ago we had arranged to spend a few days in Santa Fe with Jerry and Cindy going to a couple of operas, eating at restaurants funky and great, and checking out the gallery/museum scene in northern New Mexico. Katherine, always on the look out for an interesting getaway, had managed to add a night and a day at Mesa Verde onto the front end of the trip, so what had been initially planned as a quick 500 mile round trip to Santa Fe turned into a 1200 mile loop through southwestern Colorado and the art scene of New Mexico.

The beauty of the drive up 285 through South Park, Buena Vista, Ouray, and up and over the Million Dollar Highway intro Durango was more surprising than I thought it would be. It had been almost twenty years since we last made that trip and we had forgotten the miniature Switzerland that abounds in southwestern Colorado. I have to admit that our trips to the Tetons and recent drives over Beartooth Pass between Yellowstone and Red Lodge, Montana have made us pretty smug about experiencing scenery, but the vistas all along our Colorado excursion are more varied and at least as spectacular.

The room at the lodge in Mesa Verde was barely adequate, but the dining room was rich and beautiful and the menu has rightly earned rave reviews. We got up the morning after our arrival to a breakfast of cold burritos at a nearby visitor center and boarded a bus for our ranger led tour of the park. Ranger Dave, he of the acting up allergies and scratchy voice, did a yeoman's job of filling us in on park trivia. He told us the story of the tourist who wanted to know why the ruins were built so far from the road and then waited for us to laugh appreciatively, just like all the other busloads of visitors surely have been laughing at the same line for years. There was the other good one about the tourist who wanted to know at what altitude a deer becomes an elk. In between these bursts of ranger humor was lots of great information about the dwellings and a memorable walk through Cliff Palace.

After we were all deposited back at our pick up point, Kathie and I jumped in our trusty little Infiniti--it is more fun to drive without the kayak on top--and drove the five hours to Santa Fe where would hook up with the Garlands the next day.

This was our third time to Santa Fe, but the first where we would spend more than one or two nights. It wasn't until this trip that I understood why so many of my friends love spending time there. There were all those wonderful breakfasts at La Fonda, and Tia Sophia's, and The Teahouse, and Cafe Pasqual's. The dinners at La Fonda and Cafe Pasqual's and some other places that were good, but not in the same league. Lunch at The Compound broke up a wonderful stroll down Canyon Drive lined with one great gallery after another.

On Monday and Wednesday evenings we went to the opera: Faust and then La Boheme. Mephistopheles was so likable that I smiled every time he opened up his big bass voice. Gounod's adaptation admittedly thinned out the complexities of Goethe's masterwork, but the music was a lot better. And then came La Boheme on our last night. I suspect a true opera aficionado is supposed to look down his nose a bit at the way Puccini's accessible melodies have wormed their way into popular culture. They have become the default music for anything denoting doomed love. But I was overwhelmed and the tears started flowing half way through Rodolfo's first aria in Act I. Both evenings flew by and we are currently figuring out how we can manage to go back next August for the next opera season.

The whole trip was characterized by juxtaposition. The ancient dwellings of the Anasazi (now called Ancestral Pueblans because Anasazi is no longer politically correct) next to the jutting lines and angles of The Crosby Theater. The inadequate room in Mesa Verde next to the sumptuousness of our Diamond Resort in Santa Fe. The heavy metal band playing in the Plaza just across from the cathedral, the one that I can't walk into without weeping. And of course the classy restaurants around the plaza and on Canyon Road next to the Number Three Extra Value Meal I had in Trinidad on the way back to Denver.