Route 66 used to go to Santa Fe, and then in 1937 it did not. The original alignment of the Mother Road ran over Glorieta Pass into the old Spanish capital of New Mexico, before dropping south to Albuquerque, and then engineers cut a straight line across the desert from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque, shaving about a hundred miles off the journey and leaving Santa Fe on a bypassed loop. The ride from Amarillo to Santa Fe follows that early route, and this is the end of it, in a city at about seven thousand feet in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Santa Fe is the oldest state capital in the United States, founded by the Spanish in about 1610, and the Palace of the Governors on the plaza has been in continuous use for most of that time. The city has an adobe look, with earth-coloured buildings, flat roofs and wooden beams, because the town's planners decided long ago to keep a consistent style, and it is full of galleries and museums, including one devoted to Georgia O'Keeffe, who painted the desert landscape nearby. The Santa Fe Trail from Missouri ended on the plaza, and traders arrived here with wagonloads of goods. Under the portal of the Palace, Native American artisans sell silver, turquoise and pottery, a tradition of long standing.
The riding is the most pleasant at the end of the journey. The high desert is a landscape of mesas, pinon and juniper, wide sky and sharp light, and the roads that run into Santa Fe from the east climb through pine woods. If you have time, take the High Road to Taos, which winds through old Hispanic villages with adobe chapels, or the Turquoise Trail south toward Albuquerque, through old mining towns. Weather at this altitude can change quickly, with summer thunderstorms in the afternoon and cold nights even in July, and snow can fall from October to April.
Santa Fe has a population of more than eighty thousand, so fuel, hotels and restaurants are not hard to find, though accommodation is expensive. The local food is New Mexican, with red or green chile on almost everything, so when asked red or green, the answer is Christmas, which means both. Parking for bikes is easy in public lots near the plaza. Take a jacket for the evening, and allow time to sit on the plaza with a cold drink and watch the light fade on the mountains.