Remember when I said in my last post that the journey is just as important as the destination?

Well, to be totally honest with you, the journey matters even more. To me, anyway. I’m not that good at being a tourist.

I know how weird that sounds. A bad tourist? How can you be bad at sightseeing and buying “I Visited [insert City Name]!” T-shirts? Well, that’s just it. I get anxious about talking to the storeowners in the new area, embarrassed to add that kind of shirt in my wardrobe, and self-conscious when taking pictures of the different yet commercialized architecture even though that’s the point of a heavily marketed tourist attraction, right? Despite all that, I’d rather keep to myself and just not go into the store at all.

So, being on a journey in the comfort of our car is fun, but wandering around in the destination…isn’t as much. I think that definitely sets me apart from some tourists. But let me end the cryptic messaging here: I just didn’t spend as long in a highly-advertised part of Santa Fe as I could’ve. I was overcome with Bad Tourist Syndrome. The day was still fantastic though! Let’s get into it:

One more thing: all of the pictures are from my iPhone today. I considered using my camera, but figured it would be kind of awkward (and, like, pretentious?) to carry my Canon around. Which is just not true, but that’s how I am. So, it was my trusty phone lens at work today.

The day started off rough. Again. Last night, after finishing my blog post around 1 p.m., I did something that I only used to do for a short period earlier in my life, and then quickly abandoned because I couldn’t commit to it: I listened to a sleep podcast.

I turned on a “Sleep Cove Meditation” video from YouTube and plugged in earphones so I wouldn’t disturb my parents. (It might be unhealthy to sleep with your ears plugged at night, but I was expecting to pull them out in frustration anyway.) And I did. Even though the video narrator and background music were sweeping me away to a sort of magical floating place, I got too impatient waiting for sleep to come. 16 minutes in to the 30-something minute video, I tossed my earbuds aside and proceeded to lay wide-awake for over an hour. It was at least 3 a.m. before I finally caught some Z’s.

We had a plan to leave from Lubbock early the next morning—along the lines of 7 a.m.—so that we could reach Santa Fe by 11ish Mountain Time. By the way, I just learned that New Mexico’s time zone is called Mountain Time. And I think that’s so funny. Like, this is the time up here, way up here in the mountains. We’re high up, and we’re back one hour. We’re built different here.

Anyway, I immediately hit snooze on my alarms, and missed that deadline by a long shot. I woke up, exhausted, around seven, and struggled to drag myself out of bed. One thing did help me recover from my morning slog, and that was my dad’s half-eaten waffle from the hotel breakfast.

A Texas-shaped waffle, as you can see. And for the cherry on top, he said he left the panhandle for me since that’s, you know, where we were at the moment. Get it?

After that, we loaded up and headed off to Santa Fe. I’d thought we’d seen the best of flatlands yesterday, but little did I know what was waiting for us beyond the Texas-New Mexico border. Actual flatland. A wide expanse of lime yellow on either side that stretched to either end of the world. With happy army-green shrubbery scattered across on top. The yuckiest color combination, but it wasn’t terrible. And there was the occasional scraggly tree, adding a little bit of flair to an otherwise empty landscape.

Our first rest stop had that cute tire formation, so it had stiff competition, but I’m proud to say today’s rest stop also didn’t disappoint. I’ve never been inside a Love’s bathroom before, but apparently, they have…this?

I mean, when you put that way, of course I’ll give you a rating! My mom and I spammed the green smiley but nothing happened, so I don’t know if it was legit. 

I watched from the passenger seat as the scenery changed incrementally from yellow flatland to bushy hills. I have a vision in my head of soaring cliff edges surrounding the road, stripes of warm pastel colors embedded in the rock—I think it’s a memory from a trip to the Grand Canyon I went on when I was younger. So, I was expecting to see something like this on our route, and I wanted to be fully attentive in the passenger seat when it came into view. 

However, the lack of sleep from the previous night caught up to me, and when I blinked awake, we were pulled over so my dad could hand off driving to my mom. Which meant, that’s right, I was demoted to the backseat. 

But I wasn’t missing much. The outside was still mainly hilly, and sleeping felt nice. I dozed off again and woke up at another rest stop, consisting of a wide parking lot and a few benches inside pink boxy structures. It’s hard to explain, and I didn’t take a picture. Anyway, it was my first taste of the boxy but curve-edged, flat-roofed buildings of New Mexico. I had no idea they built houses that way, like stuff out of an alternate reality, but it’s so intuitive and beautiful. 

I was finally no longer sleep deprived, and at a great time too, because within minutes the terrain grew much taller, rocky, and hilly, blanketed in fluffy vegetation. The hills turned from yellow to pale orange, which perfectly complemented the bright sky. We passed a region of those curvy-boxy houses amid these hills—each house had unique coloring and was distinctive, and they were spaced apart. It was equal parts beautiful and surreal. I mean, imagine living there. You can’t. Well, maybe you can, but it’s too out there for me.

When we entered Santa Fe, we headed straight for Canyon Road, a touristy street lined with restaurants, churches, outdoor gathering spaces, and lots and lots of stores. We first wandered into to a large church and roamed around the mini garden behind it, then headed into the area heavily packed with stores. My family is the kind of vacationers that don’t really feel compelled to buy things on trips. My parents are very pragmatic with gift shop purchases. So, nothing much came out of wandering into stores and seeing incredibly beautiful clothes, rugs, and pottery from various parts of the world. 

As lunchtime approached, I ordered crunchy avocado tacos from the Plaza Cafe (not to be confused with the Plaza Restaurant I went to yesterday). The cafe was located in a group of other shops/restaurants encircling a grassy resting area, which was decently filled with people. So, we headed away with our food back to the church garden. It was nearly empty. We settled in the grass and, under the shade of a giant tree, enjoyed a delicious Tex-Mex meal. 

Mind you, all of that lasted two, three hours. By then, my mom and I were about finished. We had exhausted all of what we wanted to see Canyon Road in less time than it took to drive there. We hadn’t even walked the entire road, but that’s what I mean about not being a great tourist. That said, I don’t regret it, because let’s be real: nothing beats eating tacos in a garden. 

We dropped off at the hotel, and had a few more hours to kill before the day ended. I searched Google Maps for parks and found the El Camino Real Interpretive Trail, part of the much longer Santa Fe National Historical Trail. Not knowing what to expect—after all, it could’ve just been a New Mexican Lick Creek Park—we were pleasantly surprised. The easily navigable paved path was completely surrounded by vegetation. Cacti twisted every which way up out of the ground, tiny flowers blooming on random stems.

We walked underneath a bridge in a dry riverbed—the Santa Fe river. Or, at least, it was the Santa Fe river. Alongside the paved path was a dusty dirt road with freshly-made ATV tracks. And as we walked, groups of ATVs continued crossing our path and riding along us, big wheels roaring, and dust clouds forming in their wake. 

Also, my parents are from India, but as we walked past Hispanic people on the trail, we got a lot of greetings in Spanish. I had no idea what they were saying, but it’s definitely interesting to see the response that brown skin gets with certain people. 

Anyways, this pretty trail ended my day. We got back, hung out in the hotel pool for a bit, and now, here I am, typing away. I’ll see you tomorrow!

P.S. This is what a Starbucks Mango Dragonfruit looks like when the store has run out of the berries for the drink (it still tastes the same, it just looks like water): 

—May Sarin, managing editor