When we got home from our trip, Brandon was hooked on the idea of moving to Oregon or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. But since neither of us had ever been we decided it would be a good idea to go explore the area. So after packing up our Dallas home and putting it on the market, we headed out on a road trip to the PNW with a few stops along the way. The first one: Santa Fe, NM

Since we began dating, Brandon has been raving about this one hike outside of Santa Fe to Lake Katherine. I was so excited to explore Santa Fe and find out what all the fuss was about with this hike! So we set off from Dallas to New Mexico. We made great time and were going to be too early to check in to our AirBnB, so we stopped at the Santa Rose Blue Hole for a bit. It was too chilly for me to hop in, but there were tons of kids there having a great time.

When we made it to our AirBnB, our host was nowhere to be found and she wasn’t answering her phone. So we followed the email instructions to let ourselves in to the room in the back which we soon realized had not been cleaned since the last guests were there. The bed was slept in and unmade, and there were dirty towels hanging in the bathroom. We stepped back out since she was clearly not ready for us, and that’s when she drove up and told us she would clean the room. Less than 5 minutes later, she said it was ready to go! The sheets had not been changed, but there were apparently fresh towels there for us. Needless to say, I was not a happy camper. She eventually offered to wash and replace the sheets (she must have heard me talking through the walls) and all was well again in our world.

The next day, we headed off to explore Bandelier National Monument which preserves cave dwellings and a historic way of life from more than 11,000 years ago. It was a very easy hike and very interesting to explore. I loved climbing in to the caves, and made it to the top of their highest ladder to enjoy these views!

From there we wanted to check out the interactive exhibit at Meow Wolf, but that was the one day a week they were closed! (Boo!) So we ran some errands to prep for our big hike and headed home.

That’s when we learned that our AirBnB host was NOT happy. She wrote us a note and threatened us with legal action for “trespassing” when we let ourselves into the room – even though her directions said to do so and complained about our dog Jenna crying all day. (If anyone knows our pup, you know that’s not her typical style.) These were among a host of other complaints she was lodging against us. Luckily we were leaving the next day, so we took the high road, addressed her concerns as best we could, and took Jenna with us when we went to dinner. *sigh*

The next day we left at the crack of dawn for our hike. This was going to be my first overnight hike, and I was very nervous. We packed our tent, sleeping bags, food, iodine tabs for water, lots of warm layers and (don’t judge – we now know the error of our ways) our air mattress in our backpacks. After encountering what we thought was a wolf, and turned out to be just a giant dog, we were off!

This hike was 7 difficult, uphill, challenging, gorgeous miles! And I made it about 3 miles before I started shooting daggers from my eyes in to the back of Brandon’s head. Those started coming from my mouth when we got lost less than a mile from the lake we were searching for. Once we found our way back to the path, we encountered another hiker who was heading the correct direction and we joined him. I was exhausted, hungry, sweaty and cold after 7 or so hours of hiking, but this view was worth it!

We made camp, had some food, started a fire and enjoyed a nice (early) night. We were both out pretty quickly after that long day, but were both proud of ourselves for making it!

The next day, we packed up and trekked the 7 miles back out to our car, and drove to Minturn, Colorado where we spent a couple of days relaxing and recovering before heading off to our next stop: Wyoming.