Yes, it’s only 60 miles from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, but it took us nearly all day to get there.  We left at SF 8 AM and arrived ABQ at 3:30-ish!

But there was a side trip a couple a few miles out of SF called the La Bajada.  Of course, it had a cache.  Only thing is we had to walk up hill to get it.  It was located on a really old section of the historic route 66 that is today only passable via high clearance 4-wheel drive vehicles.  Lots of curves, big rocks and wash outs.  However, we did see two such vehicles making the trek during hour hike up to get the cache which took us about an hour to get to the top.  It was 1.67 miles.  Only 37 minutes to return to the car.  Gravity works better going down!

As we neared ABQ Joyce wanted to see the Petraglyph National Monument.  So, we stopped and spent about an hour walking on the Boca Negra trail which, you guessed it, was mostly up.  We saw quite a few of the petraglypys on the rocks for hundreds to thousands of years old made by the ancient Pueblo people who inhabited the Rio Grande river valley.

Arriving at our hotel, another Best Western, we decided the weather might be better tonight  for taking the Sandia Peak Tram up to the top in hopes of getting great pictures and a nice dinner.   We hurried out of the hotel and up the road to get there in time to take the 5 PM tram to the top for our dinner reservations at the High Finance Restaurant.  Yep, high finance alright!  As usual we shared an entrée and both were too full for dessert.

We stayed on top until just after sunset taking the tram back down.

Although there was a geocache located in the parking lot, we didn’t find it.  Then followed the Garmin nuvi back to the hotel by some different route than we got there.

Tomorrow, depending on the weather is ABQ day.