A two hour drive to Chama today. This takes us into New Mexico - our final state of the trip. Before leaving Durango we thought we'd give it another chance. It has a population of 1.5 million so it can't just be what we saw when we were looking for a supermarket. Turns out downtown is very nice. Below is 'Iris Bridge' named after Durango Madam, Nellie "Iris" Spencer.
“I enjoyed being a sporting person. Some of the guys were nice, some were sons of guns.”
Every hundred steps or so was a small picture of a rabbit with the slogan; "Books this way" and an arrow. We followed them until we eventually got to some coloured chalk on the road with an arrow leading to a book store. It was closed.
We hung a right to try and find some food. Turns out Colorado is closed on a Sunday. There were some prettily coloured houses, but food? No.
Seeing a sign for another named rock (this time Chimney Rock) we headed over. It was closed. How do you close a rock? No idea, but they had.
Further down the highway, we saw the Turkey Springs Trading Post. I saw some cheeseburgers wrapped in foil vaguely heating. Looked like the kind of thing that would come back and bite you. Still - I was hungry. The sign below was outside. I decided against stealing anything.
Leaving the red rocks of Utah behind the landscape somehow knew to change and was replaced by lot of hills in what I assume were pines or spruces.
And then... goodbye to Colorado and hello to New Mexico.
We couldn't seem to type the address into the GPS so we just headed for the centre of Chama. We drove up and down the main street but no joy. Back at the far end of town we stopped outside a bar and decided to go in, have a drink and ask. The lemonade tasted like death. We did, however, get instructions. "Two miles down the road. Over the river. On the right." Then there it was. Booked into room 105 we unpacked then went for a small walk to stretch our legs before getting back in the car to look for old buildings to photograph.
On the way back we dropped into the local shop to pick up some food. I saw some "Fireball" Cinnamon Whiskey. It was either going to be surprisingly nice, or we'd use it to unblock a drain. (Spoiler: It was actually quite nice - in moderation.)
I was ID'd. Me. They asked for ID. I had to show my driving licence.