The guy at Budget was really friendly, we got in a conversation with him, & he enddd up giving us the friends & family discount so we could get a convertible black Mustang! We’ve had so much fun with it!

We ate at Gecko’s again. Pretty good food & a nice patio. Headed to the hotel and they “over-booked”. 😡

So we ended up at Days Inn.

With the top down on our Mustang, we hit the road nice & early, headed to Santa Fe. Stopped at this cute cafe for breakfast- crepes & a French press.

Made another stop at Whole Foods in Santa Fe for beard oil, coffee, tea, & a few other items. Met a couple guys who had drove their motorcycles there from Austin! Ironically, ran into them again on the trail in the Bandelier National Monument!

Set up our tent, then headed to the trail.

Old Indian homes, 450 years old. Nothing left but the foundations. Some built on the ground, some on the base of the canyon walls. Absolutely incredible!

This is a Kivi, which is a gathering place for the people in the village. Ceremonies, stuff like that. It used to have a roof, & the only way in was a ladder.

All the holes are from logs that were used for flooring or roofs.

While excavating this area, behind a layer of rock, they found this painting. So they covered it in glass to preserve it.

In this video you see a petroglyph of a parrot.

I almost stepped on this rattlesnake while looking for arrowheads! If it hadn’t have shaken it’s tail, I would have.

Back at the campsite, we cooked up some miso soup & backpacking red beans & rice. No campfire tonight due to the burn ban, so it’ll probably be an early bedtime.

We knew it was coming and had a backup plan- go to the Visitor Center and check out the little museum.

We went to Santa Fe. I couldn’t wait to get some real coffee with cream & sugar! It was packed with tourists, difficult to even find street parking. Walked around and visited all the stores. I’ve never seen so many jewelry stores in my life! All Native American/New Mexico style stuff. Cute downtown area though. We met a lot of cool people. Very friendly, some people were pretty pushy, but nice.

Sun was finally out, so we went to this hiking trail called Tsankawi Prehistoric Sites. Really awesome. Lots of old broken pottery on the ground around an old ruin.

Really awesome hike! We were the only ones there for the whole 2-3 hours we were there.

The Indians carved out these “steps” into the walls to make getting around quicker.

Also a trail created by people walking. The stone is called “pumice”, and it’s very soft and wears very easily.

Lots of petroglyphs!

More petroglyphs.

A carved out home in the rock!

Look at all the old homes!

Then we grabbed dinner at this recommended restaurant. Supposed to be a quirky Mexican restaurant. It was definitely busy, but food wasn’t anything to write home about. Big portions and expensive.

It was an early bedtime again since we couldn’t have a fire.

We arrived at Diablo Canyon! Basalt rock, formed by lava, 1 layer at a time.

We plan to come back and rock climb here!

You can see Stephanie at the bottom.

We were going to hike to the river, but after an hour, we realized we didn’t have enough time, so we turned around & went back.

Headed to the airport, top down, no more rain!