Travel day and visit with friends

Today was planned to drive to our campsite outside of Santa Fe, NM. We had planned this because we wanted to visit with a couple of friends (former co-workers of Patti's) who live in Santa Fe... but via Facebook, we learned that another couple that we know (also a former co-worker) were visiting in Santa Fe, so we arranged to try to meet up with them as well!

To leave Albuquerque, we took a route that circled outside the downtown area in the hopes that we could avoid the long downhill and then climb out of Albuquerque - which we mostly did. However, our TireMinder started alarming just as we were about to get onto I-25, indicating that the left front tire was showing a very high temperature (177F). We looked for a safe place to pull off and check it...

We saw a Super 8 that appeared to have a parking lot that we could get in and out of reasonably easily... as we got into the lot, we found it had a large gravel portion in the back where there were a number of tractor trailer trucks parked, and we were able to get stopped near a tree so the offending tire was in a little bit of shade - in case we were going to need to have any work done on it...

After using our infrared temperature monitor and finding that it also indicated a high temperature on that tire (as well as on others), we called Jimmy to see if he had any suggestions for us - he wisely pointed out that we have *two* front wheels/tires and the best thing to do was to compare the readings we saw on each to see if the left one was out of line with the right, and to double check by trying other monitoring tools than the Tire Minder. He also recommended that we check the temperatures and air pressures on all of the tires/wheels.

We did that - I recorded what we found... I try to record the pressure and temperature readings for all the tires each morning before we set out. In our checking, we found that there really wasn't much difference between the left and right front tires, and we found that our manual air gauge readings and the tire minder were not agreeing - they never are exactly alike, but they have been "closer" in the past. Within the past couple of weeks, the Tire Minder device that attaches to the dash fell as we were driving and the antenna broke off right where it attaches to the body of the device. We are wondering if it is time to get a new Tire Minder device!

The temperature came down as we were doing this, so we decided to proceed on towards our campground. We would be on the interstate, so we felt that we'd have good shoulder areas if we needed to stop again. As it turned out, once we got out of the stop-and-go traffic and onto the interstate, all the temperatures (according to the Tire Minder) were a lot lower. We think that the problem may have been that I had been doing too much braking without using the exhaust brake (we were in a housing area and I try not to use the exhaust brake then, but I guess it would be wiser to use the exhaust brake than to overheat our service brakes!).

We got to the Tetilla Peak Campground, and Miss Kitty got to go outside and roll in the dirt. Was she ever covered with *stuff*!!!

The campground is a Corps of Engineers park, near Cochiti Lake....

The lake is, unfortunately, very low. It is very dry here. I had not realized how far from Santa Fe this is (I could have done a Google Maps search!) - we had planned to be here for 5 nights and move to another COE campground on the other side of the lake for another 6 nights, but we've decided to splurge and change to a campground in town for the last 6 nights.

We drove in to town to meet friends Vivie and Dave at La Casa Sena this evening. This was outside the restaurant. It is SO pretty in old town Santa Fe - narrow winding streets...

The restaurant was across the street from Cathedral Park, the Cathedral Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. We look forward to visiting more of Santa Fe during our time here!

Dinner with Vivie and Dave was SO great! It was wonderful to catch up with them and all the traveling that they are doing. Thank you both, Vivie and Dave - dinner was delicious and conversation was even better!