In Santa Rosa, NM we stopped at a Comfort Inn and asked if they’d call ahead to the Santa Fe Comfort Inn to see if a room was available. It was Good Friday and we had no idea how busy the hotels might be. We figured that it would be best to know ahead of time, so we wouldn’t waste time driving around looking for a particular hotel brand in a city we had never visited, only to possibly find no vacancies. We had decided that if Santa Fe Comfort Inn was booked up, we’d stay in Santa Rosa where there were vacancies and then just drive in the next morning. The friendly young man at the front desk called ahead with no questions asked and in short order, we had a room booked in Santa Fe.

Now … to find it. This was the first time during our trip home that we called and booked ahead, so it was also the first time we had to actually locate a particular hotel.

When we arrived at our destination city, the highway approach was different from any other city we had ever driven into. The informational signs were a bit confusing and there wasn’t a straight road in sight. The usual row of hotels and service stations that greet you as you enter a city were obviously tucked away somewhere else, so we were off on a mission of discovery. We had the address of the Comfort Inn, but hubs doesn’t like to use GPS unless absolutely necessary. It’s a truck driver thing.

Santa Fe, with all of the soft lines and earthy clay colours of the adobe architecture and the Sangre de Cristo mountains as a backdrop, is a visually stunning city.

We finally pulled over so hubs could look at a little city map in his small Rand Mc Nally Road Atlas (feature photo). It was after 5 pm, so there would no doubt be rush hour whenever we’d find the main thoroughfare, we were tired, we were hungry, and we were definitely lost. I smiled as I noticed that the colour of his Arizona Dirt Shirt perfectly matched the walls of the adobe-styled restaurant, so even though he might be upset at being photographed at a vulnerable time, I just had to have the photo. Besides, I could see that this scene told a good story about our adventure.

It only took hubs a few minutes to sort things out, and from where we had stopped to our hotel took less than 15 minutes.

When we were checking in, this fireplace in our hotel lobby told me that we had indeed arrived in a very special city.

Photo Note: Both of the photos in this post are pretty much “as shot”, with only minor Snapseed tuning tweaks. I likely wouldn’t have had to do anything besides crop and resize, but post processing has almost become automatic. I always learn something through the photo editing, and often make mental (and sometimes physical) notes for things to pay attention to the next time I’m shooting in similar light.

“Go somewhere you know nothing about and see what happens.”

Karl Ove Knausgård