A Thank You to Tripadvisor and Happy New Year

Hi Everyone,

Happy Belated New Year!  My husband and I somewhat spontaneously decided to spend some time traveling at Christmas and did a road trip through New Mexico.  It was a wonderful journey and the compilation photo above only shows a small portion of the trip.

We were fortunate to have a lot of help from the excellent New Mexico Destination Experts at Tripadvisor including CasaAzul, bleicherblog, KthSch, NM_Photojournalist, Tet14, and others.  Some of these people were also so very helpful a couple of years ago when we were planning our amazing Arizona trip and it felt like I was reconnecting with old friends.  The recommendation to spend Christmas Eve in Santa Fe was spot on as well as many of the other pointers that we received.

I cannot say "Thank You" enough to the Destination Experts.  Their help makes the memories as wonderful and magical as they are and continue to be long after the trips have been completed.  The journey would not have been the same without them.

If you'd like to visit the New Mexico forums, click on the link here.  In those forums if you go back a couple of weeks you'll see some trip reports from sw123, those are my lengthy tomes of our journey.

We had more snow and colder temperatures in New Mexico than where we normally live in Canada, (almost 3000 km away) but it certainly added to the beauty.

There were many sights that we didn't get to see due to time limitations while we were down there and we do hope to return.  The southwest has a particular draw for us and it didn't disappoint this time.

In the mean time, if you're curious, here are the links to some of the places we went.  There were many more, but these were places that were the big draws for us.

• Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument
• White Sands National Monument
• Bosque del Apache
• El Malpais

Feel free to read the trip logs for more information.  And if you're ever planning a trip, do consult with the Tripadvisor forums.

I've already been claying in the New Year, but haven't been taking pictures yet.  I must do something about that.

And last night I discovered that I might have to journey to Croatia and Slovenia.  All because of a photo that I saw of Plitvice Lakes.  Turns out we've got our very own Croatian experts at work who are already planning my must do itinerary even though it might be a couple of years before we get there.

Cheers!

Sandy