Vail to Santa Fe

Yesterday after our brunch at the top of the mountain we all took naps to rest up for the evening's entertainment.  At 6PM we headed to the Four Seasons to their aptly named bar: Remedy.  I love the  name and wondered if they opened at 4AM in the morning!  We grabbed a front table and people watched until the act of the evening arrived for an 8PM performance.  For 23 years there has been Vail Jazz and for 21 of those years "Tony G" has been a mainstay.  Two keyboards, drums, and at times a Melodium and a Metallium (?) - having trouble remembering the name since it is not a common instrument.  They played for over two hours with one short break - absolutely a wonderful evening!  We cannot say more about how good they were.

Sorry to leave beautiful Vail but more adventure was waiting!  I decided to take one last photo in Vail - the view from our friends' living room.  It was hard to leave...

We travelled on the Top of the Rockies Scenic Byway. The scenery again overwhelmed us.  It was fascinating to see the engineering of several dams plus the manmade lakes along the way.  We stopped at a scenic overlook that had a marker for towns that had been flooded when the dans were built - one has a Masonic Temple that was at the highest altitude of all temples: 10500 feet and I was standing well above where that town had been.

The city of Leadville was a surprise.  It is the highest city in the Rockies and is beautiful!  

The landscape changed over the next 50 miles or so from the gorgeous mountains to scrubby mountains to pretty flat terrain.  We passed three mountains named Yale, Harvard, and Princeton - that was anitger surprise.

And then we came to 100 miles of sleep inducing monotonous sagebrush covered land.  Seems every state has its roads passing through boring terrain.  A stop for coffee revved up tge somnolent driver abd we got to Santa Fe in record time - just in time for anafternoon  shower.

You can see the rain getting ready.  Tomorrw we are off to Taos.