Whoops and still a Great burger!

We've been busy as we always are in the Santa Fe area.  We really enjoy this place.  We decided at the last moment to go up to Bandelier National Monument, to primarily get my "Old Folks Pass", and to visit again although we have already been there.  Not too many good reasons to get old, but one of the best is the ability to get the National Parks Senior Pass, as they call it now.  It is quite a bargain, $10 for the rest of your life!  To put it in perspective, an annual pass is $80!  As we get nearer to the monument we start to notice signs for the "shuttle" into Bandelier, shuttle?  When we arrive in White Rock, still more than 10 miles away from the entrance we see a visitor center and the shuttle bus.  Inside we are told that since the huge fires in 2011 and the following terrible flooding that they no longer allow personal vehicles into the park.  And no I can't buy my pass there unless I go down into the park.  Now I know this is one of the perhaps many ways I get a little nuts, but I don't like shuttle buses, particularly when you have to ride that bus more than 14 miles into the park, a 20+ minute ride each way with your closest 50 friends, so we don't go.  That's okay we will just continue on the Jemez Mountain National Scenic Byway, a beautiful quiet 2 lane road that goes around the Jemez mountains.  We first passed by the Valles Caldera, a huge ancient volcano's caldera that is now a national preserve, beautiful, expansive with lots of elk.

The caldera

And more caldera

One of many groups of elk

We continue around to Jemez Pueblo, and found a pretty little trail along the way.

Turned out to be a popular climbing rock

Looking up the trail

We stopped in and took a short walk down to the 70' high Jemez Falls , and ended up having a nice picnic lunch there.

Jemez Falls

Then we planned to make another small loop before heading back by going south to see the Gilman tunnels and Rio Guadalupe Box Canyon.  Beautiful drive with gorgeous scenery.

Along the way

We turned north on 485 and after a few miles the road got very narrow as it entered the canyon.

Tunnel up ahead

Looking back

We continued on the road as it became dirt to work our way back around to Los Alamos and towards Santa Fe.  Then we did something stupid.  We knew we had to turn right as we joined Rte 4 to go back, right?  We were using a GPS, and following on a map, and I hate to admit it, but after 20 miles or so we are thinking, where the heck is Los Alamos?  A little while later when we passed the sign for 485, the same road we went up to see the tunnels we realized we had turned the wrong way!  We really don't do this too often, we usually are careful, accurate navigators, but not this time.  Oh well, only an extra 50 miles or so:-)  A good side of the story, though, we went by a National Forest Office which got me thinking whether I could buy my pass there, and sure enough, we turned around and I was able to get my coveted pass.

Yesterday, we all were going to meet in Santa Fe for lunch, Karen and Walker down from Taos, CT, but unfortunately not Nancy from Albuquerque, and us for the greatest green chili cheeseburger in the world!  You've heard me talk about Bobcat Bite, an institution here in Santa Fe.  A tiny out of the way restaurant that seated maybe 20 that had the greatest green chili cheeseburger.  Well, evidently they had a falling out with the landlord of the building.  They moved into downtown Santa Fe in an upscale location, increased size, modernized, and changed their name to Santa Fe Bite, all indications to us that they would probably not be able to produce the same awesome burger.  CT and Nancy told us that they had tried the new place and it was just as good.  Even with that we were skeptical.  Well we can now report that the Green Chili Cheeseburger at Santa Fe Bite still holds the world record as the BEST!

The burger

CT and I munching and making it plain to leave us alone
to savor our burgers

Karen will hate me for including this picture, but
"Lip smacking good!"

All gone!

Site of the Best!

Then since this post is already very long I'll add one more thing.  I told you we were having problems with our indicator light for our braking system in the truck.  I had rewired a ground, changed connectors, but it kept blowing the fuse in the truck.  We did a test when we got here by running a new wire along the side of the motorhome to see if that would work and it did.  But that required running a new wire from the rear of the motorhome, up into the console beside the driver's seat to completely bypass the original wire that obviously had a short, a job that we really weren't looking forward to.  Well, we got it done, I should say Jan, the diesel mechanic did all the hard work under the coach.

Hard at work

Still smiling!

I only had to do the little stuff, so when we leave today to go to Pagosa Springs, CO, we will find out absolutely if we fixed it.  Since we have replaced virtually the entire wiring harness I expect it will.

No, we still haven't paid for the tires.