Santa Rosa is home to the Route 66 Car Museum. It had a few interesting vehicles including some fun cars characters out the front.
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We leave Santa Fe and head south east to pick up Route 66 where we started it last year. the first town is Santa Rosa, a small town about as big as Bannocburn. With the freeway side tracking the town it was in decay but they were having a bit of a go rejuvenating it, but its going to be a hard slog.
The towns bigges call to fame was the blu hole a big hole in the ground filled with water.
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Its a great sunny day in the low 20’s in Santa Fe New Mexico. This is a pretty unique town, pretty much all the buildings are built in the adobe way. The traditional way is hay bales that are rendered, here the newer buildings probably don’t use the bales but they are all rendered and use wooden poles for verandahs and other features. Even stores like McDonalds use this style. They are all coloured a few shades of beige or sandstone. The central area is tailored for the tourist,there are plenty of touristy shops, galleries and indian art stores. There are lots of dried chilli everywhere too, Santa Fe love the chili. There are chili roasting stations outside several supermarkets. The heaps of chilli are roasted over open flames in large barrels. They smell amazing and they taste so good. They are not too hot, similar to a capsicum but with a slight bite of heat. 
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This morning we got up early and drove about an hour from Colardao Springs to a little township called Canon City for a ride on a train through the Royal Gorge. It was pretty spectacular with incredible rock faces and a river. We were on the lookout for bears but only saw a few goaty deer creatures that were meant to be some sort of native sheep. 
After the ride we jumped back into our little Toyota and headed to Santa Fe in New Mexico, a drive that took about 4 1/2 hours.
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We spent the morning driving from Golden to Colorado Springs., there wasn’t a lot to see it was basically freeway driving other than some huge snow capped mountains in the distance. We did a few laps of Colorado Springs to work out where things are and see what was about, it seems about Ballarat size perhaps a little bigger. Just out of Colorado Springs, the Garden of the Gods is the most spectacular pieces of landscape we have seen on this trip so far. There was a circuit where you could drive past all the major formations and stop off at some of the more spectacular. In the centre of the park was a monstrous gift shop a place to have a buffalo chilli and a laughing lab (as in Labrador) beer, both very tasty. 
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We are staying the night in Golden Colorado, it’s about half an hour out of Denver. It’s a bit of a western town with some great historic buildings but the township is shadowed by the monstrous Coors Brewery. 
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We visited the massive Coors Brewery at Golden just out of Denver. This is the biggest brewery in the USA and is huge. It dwarfs the whole town. The tour take visitors on a sugar sweet journey of the company’s history, glorifying its founder Adolf Coors who must be up there with Jesus and Mother Teresa. He cared so much for his workers, all the fluffy animals and brewed beer. The low part of the tour was a taste of Coors Banquet.. mmm not the tastiest beer we have ever had. Soapy water was better, but there were two glasses of beer towards the end of the tour and we didn’t do too bad choosing a pre prohibition drop and another pale ale style beer.. very tasty for free beer. 
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We left Boulder and took a drive through the spectacular Rocky Mountains. Very scenic, Our first stop today is a small township called Black Hawk and its sister township Central City. These were both two casino towns, nothing much there other than casinos. Black Hawk was a new town probably built during 80’s 90’s (same age as everyone in it – we were by far the youngest people in town) The casinos were very old fashioned and many still had the rolling fruit and handles. We stopped for a $12 buffet, that was pretty good. Central City was pretty cool it was a real old town most of the buildings looked as if they were 150 years old. Most were small casinos and the odd antique shop. 
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We took a scenic drive to Boulder Colorado. It’s a nice town and had a really cool mall that was full of native trees, art, rocks and a real natural setting, a few streets back we found Mork and Mindy’s house… Nanoo Nanoo. 
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There are so many breweries and brew pubs around the city, so we spent the afternoon sampling a few of them. Some delicious beer and strangely one of the best was a pumpkin pie beer, sounds horrible but it was delicious. The plan was to go to Casa Bonita Mexican restaurant as featured in Southpark, but the beer is too good and there is no room for a giant buffet of enchiladas, burritos and tacos. 
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We spend the morning doing the tourist sites of the city. The big blue bear at the congress centre was the highlight, he was massive.
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We visited the state capital building, very impressive with lavish and ornate brass and woodwork. The huge dome was amazing all beautifully painted with decorative designs 
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