I have discovered a cunning evolutionary trait. I have a cold, which for me is not a common thing so maybe this is why I haven't not noticed it before.
To paraphrase my favourite Blackadder
"How do you get so much mucus out of such a small head?"
Gross I tell you. Anyway I noticed after I fell asleep in the car yesterday coming back from Monument Valley and again this morning, that your body stops production and you wake up with a normal feeling nose and have not drowned yourself or spouse in your own goo. Five minutes after that the flood gates reopen and the grossness begins all over again.
Clever huh.

We did a quick 3 day roadtrip. Mum is only here till the 28th Dec, so wanted to show her and us a few more sites.
We left Friday evening after Rob had knocked off for the day and drove East for about 5 hours.
Had dinner in Gallup, New Mexico and spent the night in Albuquerque. I have the hardest time typing Albuquerque, takes me at least three time to get it right and then still looks wrong.

We took the dogs with us, we knew that Darwin travels well but was unsure about Roo. They both were great the whole trip. The first hotel we had a room with two beds so the dogs settled themselves quite happily on the spare and not a peep from them all night.

Petroglyph National Monument

We had planned on meeting Rob's Aunt in Santa Fe in the afternoon so we didn't see much of the town. We did take a great walk through Petroglyph National Monument. It boarded suburbia, so while looking at ridges of jumbled rocks covered in figures, hands, and unknown glyphs hundreds of years old we could hear and see traffic, whistles from sport games and morning joggers.

Petroglyphs

We got to Santa Fe and met up with the rellos. Santa Fe is a beautiful town, all adobe and Spanish Mission style. J's house is a restored adobe built in the 1800's and is stunning. We had a great visit, and lavish dinner and woke up to snow.

Chilled Chillies, Santa Fe

We pushed on north to Aztec and visited the ruins there. They were not built by the Aztecs, but the first explorers figured the locals could not have built such a huge complex. They were wrong, but the name stuck.
I do love a good ruin.

Aztec Ruins

After that we crossed back into Arizona and stayed the night in Kayenta. Its on the Navajo Nation and I go there for work. It seems to be in teh middle of nowhere but there is always many tourists because 20 miles up the road in Monument Valley, and that is worth any trek.
It was stunning.

Monumental

We had the place mostly to ourselves, since it is off season but I would recommend going this time of year. Snow dusted the landscape and made the gorgeous vista of the red mesas even more dramatic.

Monument Valley

We drove back to Flagstaff and tucked in. Its snowing a lot. Which is great but is does mean I need to shovel the drive way before we can go anywhere.