Do You Know The Way To Santa Fe?

Up at 5,  we walk into the station [less faff than getting a taxi] which would have been fine, save for the disintegrating wheel on the wheelie bag. Just deserts for having such a thing really.
The train is fine. At Donny a woman gets on and sits at our table. She dozes. I am reading a Richard Brautigan book [for book group] which I really love - So The Wind Won't Blow It All Away. I ask Danielle "What's the difference between a Racoon and a Coyote?" Seems a reasonable question to me, but Danielle looks at me as though I am very very stupid. The woman opens her eyes, sees Danielle's expression and bursts out into loud laughter. She finds my question daft as well. Ha ha. Anyway we get talking and she is of an age [i.e older than me] and is on her way to Southend having sold her house in Hull to start a new life with her boyfriend in Southend. We wish her luck.

It is a good start to the day. We get the tube across to Heathrow from Kings Cross and the check in goes fine. I purchased extra leg room for the flight to Dallas, and Danielle is able to sit next to me for free, so all is well. The vege food is great and the noise-cancelling headphones make it a pleasant trip. Dallas airport is something to behold, monorail, four terminals, very modern and it seems to work.

Our flight to Santa Fe New Mexico is something else. A tiny plane, crammed, one flight attendant who is bigger than me and somehow manages to negotiate the cabin carrying drinks etc. Everyone seems pretty happy and we touch down at the smallest airport I have been at. I ask where the car rentals are; a very daft question as there is only one room that serves as baggage retrieval [a static roller table, no carousel, waiting room [departures and arrivals] and car rental. The whole place is adobe style and very old fashioned. I love it. Eventually the car rental guy [he does all the admin, and goes and gets the cars] gets us set up and off we drive into the desert. We get to the hotel in Santa Fe and our heads hit the pillow at 10pm Mountain Time. A 23hour journey.

One of things I did on the plane, was work through my camera manual [a task best left for times and places of no escape]. Here is a shot of Danielle.