The trip in numbers

Total miles driven: 1,271

Amount spent on "gas": $117

Miles driven on Interstate: 5

Cheapest motel: $50

Most expensive motel: $115

Number of diapers used: 52

Number of paracetamol swallowed: 44

Margaritas drunk: 1

Car punctures: 0

Stroller punctures: 1

Highest altitude: Pagosa Springs, Colorado 7,162 feet

Lowest altitude: Las Vegas, Nevada 2,028 feet

Average altitude: 6,066 feet

States visited: 5

Indian nations visited: 1

Nights Louis spent in crib: 0

Nights Louis spent in Mom and Dad's bed: 15

Books read: 0

Blogs written: 22

Burgers eaten: 1

Bowls of Green Chile eaten: 8

Number of photos taken: 786

Pieces of luggage: 7

Nights on the road: 15

Ski resorts we missed out on: 4

Amount won in Vegas: $0

Amount gambled in Vegas: $1

Back on Route 66

Bedding down on Route 66

Albuquerque's Old Town

For our last night on the road, what could be more fitting than a final fling with Route 66? We were flying out of Albuquerque bright and early so needed to bed down somewhere near the airport. That somewhere turned out to be what felt like an authentic Route 66 motel, in Albuquerque's Nob Hill suburb, just 10 minute from the city's "Sunport" airport. Authentic in that our room was seemingly untouched from the Mother Road's heyday in the Thirties. But hey, that just added to the roadtrip experience, right?

Grim motel rooms aside, I was glad to check out Albuquerque as there's apparently a vague chance my cousin Nat might wind up there somewhere down the line (something about her Venezuelan boyfriend doing a post-Doc in NM). I can report back that as US cities go, it's certainly an interesting one. It has more than its share of history: the Old Town's aptly-named plaza dates back to the early 1800s. And we liked Nob Hill. It's within spitting distance of the university so plenty of fun shops and restaurants line the sides of Route 66, which slices straight through its centre. 

All that motoring history makes the city something of a draw for motorheads: we saw plenty of classic cars and "hogs" roar past while we scoffed a final green chile at the Flying Star cafe. It's a shame we weren't there for Saturday night, which is when everyone with wheels (i.e. everyone in the States) cruises the neon-lit strip in the manner of a Fifties' flick. I somehow doubt that our SUV would have passed muster. Maybe Louis could have pulled it off in his Bugaboo if we'd rigged some lights up to his wheels. Next time perhaps. 

Come to think of it, we might have missed a trick with our entire roadtrip. Has anyone ever cruised the Mother Road in a stroller? Now there's a book in the making. Plus then we'd find out if the Bugaboo was really worth its price tag. If I wind up being made redundant after all maybe that's what Louis and I can do with my payoff.  

The Turquoise Trail

Cerrillos, NM

And again

More metal sculptures, Madrid, NM

Old advert, Madrid

Easy Riders

How apt that the final drive of our roadtrip should take us down the Turquoise Trail. One of the most scenic US highways, the route links Santa Fe with Albuquerque, our ultimate destination. I say apt because the 52-mile stretch is famous for its mining history, making it the perfect illustration to the book I'm reading - or trying to at least. 

Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose is about the West's 19th century colonisation by miners hoping to strike it rich by exploiting what lay underneath the land rather than on top of it. More specifically, it's about the battle they faced trying to tame the Wild West by imposing Eastern standards on vast swathes of nothingness while making peace with their surroundings.

Driving down the Turquoise Trail, so named for the blue stone that has been excavated from the area since 100AD, we stumbled upon Cerrillos, an old mining town largely untouched since the turn of the last century. All but deserted, its unpaved streets, adobe houses and shuttered up old bars and hotels make it the ultimate ghost town. There is even an old opera house. Shut your eyes and you can almost feel the bodies of yesteryear wandering the streets. It is exactly like one of the towns that Susan Ward, the heroine of Angle of Repose, would have lived in back in the 1880s. 

Unlike Cerrillos, the next town we stopped at, Madrid, which all but ceased to exist following WW2, had reinvented itself as a(nother) artists' retreat. Cue yet more metal sculptures. Still, it was keeping the passing bikers happy: the Turquoise Trail is a prime destination for the Easy Rider crowd. I'm not sure how many of them were carrying their copies of Stegner but I guess the themes of discovery at least overlap. 

Santa Fe

Chillies, mountains and strollerable sidewalks: holiday heaven

A family Hitchcock moment

Sunset over our Motel

Wind sculptures on Canyon Road

After more than 1,000 miles on the road, Santa Fe was always going to be more than a mere pitstop. In the end, the New Mexico capital will go down in our holiday history as the place where the wheels came off our roadtrip. Quite literally. First there was the puncture: Louis' stroller got a flat. And then there was Daddy J. A combination of Grand Canyon germs and Taos tonsillitis laid him out cold for the three days we'd planned to stay there. 

Luckily we'd stumbled upon a decent place to spend some time: the Santa Fe Motel and Inn, which also got the thumbs up from the New York Times. While DJ recuperated, Louis and I explored the adobe rich town. A magnet for celebrities and artists alike, Santa Fe has been luring visitors for centuries. At 400 years old, it is America's second-oldest state capital and features such gems as the country's oldest church and oldest house. 

It is almost unique among American towns in having stroller-friendly sidewalks, making it another top Mom-and-baby holiday pick. That may also explain its appeal to Julia Roberts, Mom of three, who lives on a ranch somewhere outside town. (Despite keeping our eyes peeled, we didn't mange to spot Julia. Shame, I'd figured that with three kids under 4, including 18-month-old Henry, she might have a few good mothering tips to share: I bet her kids sleep through the night.) 

Santa Fe's beautiful setting, amid the sagebrush-dotted foothills of the Sangre de Christos mountains, also explains its lure for artists and wanna-be-artists alike. All come in the hope that they too might follow in Georgia O'Keeffe's footsteps, the town's most famous former resident. We couldn't help but think how much Louis' Great-Granny B and his Grandpa Derek would love the place. G-G B's pastels would lift the quality of much of the work on Santa Fe's famed Canyon Road, while G'pa Derek's metal sculptures would fit right in. 

As for the family lurgy - we finally managed to shift it thanks to the restorative power of Santa Fe's other claim to fame: its legendary Green Chile. Even Louis got better - I guess the chile must have filtered through the breast milk. I never did need to give him those antibiotics. Darn, we could have put the $137 we spent at the doctors towards our Motel bill. 

Is there a doctor in the Taos?

Taos Plaza

Taos chillies

Taos slopes

Day I've-lost-count of Louis' illness and it was time to face facts: the alleged healing waters of Pagosa Springs were nothing but a sham. There was nothing else for it. We'd have to bite the bullet and brave the American healthcare system. That I'd made it this far into Louis' US adventure without taking him to a doctor either spoke realms about my bravery as a Mom - or my carelessness. You choose. If he'd been a proper American baby, and I'd been a proper American Mom, he'd have had countless check ups with his own personal pediatrician by now. Instead, Louis got me and some snuffle rub I'd brought from Boots. 

To be honest, I felt a bit cheated that he'd even got sick. Okay so he'd braved sub-zero dawns and sunsets at the Grand Canyon and in the desert, not to mention bathing outside with snow on the ground, but isn't breast milk  supposed to be stuffed full of special antibodies that make babies invincible? Or do they just tell you that so you don't use formula? 

Despite spending at least half the night coughing, Louis failed to cough even once for the doctor. Or I should say, so-called doctor. She turned out just to be some sort of trumped up nurse, and not a very convincing one at that. All that she did was weigh him (he'd lost weight), measure his oxygen (it was 96, whatever that means) and take his temperature. He had one. I knew that. Even without a thermometer I knew that. 

But to make us feel like we'd got our $100 worth, she prescribed him two lots of medicine and gave me a long internet print out about what do to if your baby has croup. Er, thanks. I thought the last thing most doctors wanted you to do was worry yourself sick by browsing the web for the scariest illness possible? Yet here we were, 100 bucks down, and we'd been handed a list of symptoms for a Victorian illness that Louis most certainly didn't have. It was almost enough to make us miss the NHS.