Phase One: Leave This to the Roaches and Mice

I woke up this morning to what looked like a harmless yet annoying couple of inches of snow. Lo and behold, when I went outside to start packing the car, at least twelve inches had accumulated on its roof overnight. Oh, Winter Park.

Thankfully, CDOT informs us of gnarly weather conditions...chains chains everywhere and roads farther west were closed. Original plan of going westish-southish? No more. Getting out of the snowstorm as soon as possible was the new mission.

Out comes the map. What'll we hit if we drive straight south? Why, Santa Fe, of course! Off we go...taking the more inefficient but generally less snowy route (and cross the continental divide only once, rather than three times, in a day).

Somewhere in the black mining hills of South Dakota there lives a young boy named...wait, that's wrong. Somewhere in the almost-in-New Mexico part of Colorado is a tiny little town on Route 285 called Antonito. This town is a ghost town. What seems to once have been a semi-luxurious hotel is now boarded up, as is almost every other store front along the main (read: only) drag in town. Stuck somewhere between mining territory, agricultural land, and better days, had there been less wind across the Southern Colorado prairies you might actually have seen the tumbleweeds rolling through town as neglected doors creaked and banged. As it was, the wind was whipping far to quickly for any such nostalgia.

Continuing on...detouring to Taos, lots of fake adobe-pueblo architecture, but the old stuff was cool. The artsy area seemed interesting, except being a semi-ski town it was "mud" season there too and everything was closed, like it is in Winter Park. It started sideways snowing so we had to leave. Stat.

Victory! Santa Fe! Found a hostel for $35 for the night, plus a $2/person/day internet use charge. And chores. Oh well, it's not like I haven't been cleaning for two days...besides, it's cheap, and it's all so Dan can do work and earn $$$ which will come in handy some day.