The Super 8 Travelodge was one of the worst places we’ve ever stayed, but we were both tired from the drive the day before we slept in until 9:30, skipping the free breakfast that I’m sure wasn’t that good. The plan for the day was Breaking Bad sites in ABQ, explore Santa Fe, and then drive up to Denver.

In ABQ we hit 3 key Breaking Bad spots – Los Pollos Hermanos, the car wash, and Walter White’s house. Los Pollos Hermanos was filmed in Twisters, a local burrito chain restaurant in the southwest. Alex and I looked like the typical tourists taking pictures outside and inside the restaurant. We each ordered a breakfast burrito and sat in the booth where Walter met Gus. So cool. Next we went to the car wash that the White’s purchased to front their money. We got our car washed (it’s called Mister Hot Shine) for $6 and they did a phenomenal job. Our final stop was the White’s house. The owners were there and there were tons of signs on their lawns to prevent tourists from walking on their property (fair enough), so we parked down the street and took pics from afar. All surreal to see where one of our favorite shows was filmed.

At noon we made our way to Route 14, which is the Turquoise Trail famed for small arts shops selling local turquoise jewelry. We stopped off once to check out some incredible local potters’ and jewelers’ work before arriving in Santa Fe at 1 pm. We drove through the main street past all of the chain stores to the cultural area. Our first stop was Kakawa, a famed hot chocolate store. We sampled most of their hot chocolates. I got the Modern Mexican (72% chocolate, canela, almond milk) and Alex got a standard hot chocolate with the same chocolate percentage. It was the richest hot chocolates we’ve ever had. We also had some chocolate truffles to accompany our chocolate drink.

For lunch we went to The Shed, a highly recommended and well-reviewed Southwestern restaurant with a solid lunch menu. I got the chicken enchilada plate Christmas style (red + green chile) and Alex got an enchilada and beef taco, also Christmas style. Very good but nothing out of the ordinary (maybe that’s why it’s so good?). We then walked around the place adjacent to the restaurant where there were local jewelry vendors and some old statues.

Before leaving Santa Fe we went to the oldest house and oldest church in the United States, both conveniently across the street from each other. The San Miguel Mission dates back to 1610, and the house is claimed to have been built in 1646. Both were built out of adobe blocks, and it was really cool to touch and experience history like that.

The drive from Santa Fe to Denver was full of desert in New Mexico and mountains in Colorado. Very beautiful and spacious. The only highlight of the drive was when we stopped in a McDonald’s an hour outside of Denver to use the bathroom and three guys were juggling burgers and milk while the guys behind the counter filmed them. Random but entertaining.

We arrived at Andy Tropin’s apartment in Denver around 9;45 pm. He was out with his girlfriend, Julie, and Nicole Swartz watching the Broncos game, so we waited a little bit until they came back to their place from the bar. We caught up and hung out at Tropin’s place for a bit. We hadn’t seen Nicole since 2010 and Andy since 2011, but as it goes with camp friends it felt like we saw them yesterday. The last time I had seen Nicole was when Cory Nelson, Danny Gill and I visited Denver for our first annual destination vacation in the winter of 2010.

That night we went to 2 bars. The first was Pancho’s, a Grateful Dead bar a few blocks away from Tropin’s. We didn’t stay long before moving next door to The 1 Up, a video game bar with a wide selection of arcade games and pinball machines. I got the high score on Ms. Pac Man!! And I whooped Tropin in Tekken 5 before being annihilated in level 5 against the computer. We left around midnight and passed by Voodoo Doughnuts, which was recommended to us by Dan Ecoff in Denver. Julie had a bad experience with them, so she warned us we might be disappointed. To say the least, she was dead wrong. The selection and creativity was phenomenal! Their options were both listed on a menu above the counter and on display in rotating cases next to the register. We wanted to eat all of them. I got the cocoa puffs donut and raspberry jelly donut. Alex got a peanut butter oreo donut and something else that was delicious (Alex doesn’t care about documenting this trip as much as I do. He also took ballet lessons for 5 years and stopped because his teacher was too mean to him).

After eating our donut dinner we continued to walk down Colfax back to Tropin’s. Trope-a-lope told us that Colfax was the longest main street in America. Let’s go Denver! Tropin and Julie had work the next day, and Alex and I were tired from the drive, so we were all asleep around 1:30 am. Already looking forward to the rest of the weekend here.

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