We began our day in Marfa!

We didn’t stay long today, though. But we’d like to come back since Marfa is chock-full of really interesting looking art galleries and the like. We also had a deeeeelicious breakfast this morning at Cochineal. I mean, what was that about? I was really not expecting that level of awesome in the culinary department in rural west Texas. Good job, Cochineal!

Anyway, we continued on our merry way down the road.

Wait a minute. What is that?

OMG A UFO!!!!!!!!!

Oh. Just kidding. It’s a weather blimp. But we are in UFO country over here, so you have to keep your eyes peeled!

So, after Marfa, we drove through a little town called Valentine, and then we happened upon a Prada store. Alas, it was closed.

More desert landscape followed:

Then we drove through El Paso. And I have to ask, El Paso, what is your deal? Why are you SO HUGE and sprawled and spread out and full of soooo many strip clubs and strip malls?

And then…

Wait, what? Yes! We decided to go to New Mexico! We have our reasons! You’ll see. We weren’t even deterred by this!

First of all, we went to Hatch, New Mexico. Hatch is the home of the famous hatch chiles that show up in late summer and immediately being making everything more delicious. The tiny little town hosts a big chile festival in September.

We were a bit late for the festival, obviously, but there were still lots of chile stands lining the road into town.

We also got to see the famous chiles growing in the field!!

As if all that awesomeness weren’t enough, Hatch is also home to Sparky’s, which not only has delicious food but is also a roadside-attraction aficionado’s dream, with statues of Uncle Sam, some weird cartoon family holding burgers and root beer, a metal robot and pig, etc:

After Hatch, we shot straight up to Albuquerque’s charming Sandia Peak Inn (by the way, I think this is the only hotel we’ve patronized on Route 66 in all our travels). We enjoyed seeing the lovely harvest moon on our way!

Why the heck are we in Albuquerque, you ask? You’ll just have to come back tomorrow to find out!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 2nd, 2009 at 11:09 am and is filed under 2009 "Housing Optional" Tour.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.