Santa Fe, New Mexico

The next morning we decided to take a walk around Red Rock State Park before saying good-bye to it. We found ourselves walking up a wash that ran along one side of the red rock hills and were amazed yet once again at the power of water to carve out such deep washes through the desert landscape. We are developing something of a liking for hiking in washes.

After returning to the Big Sky, we packed up and headed off for Santa Fe. We had been undecided for some period of time whether to include Santa Fe in our itinerary this fall out of concern that its high altitude could lead to very cold weather in October and perhaps even snow. Fortunately, Santa Fe had been experiencing something of a warm spell in the last few weeks, so we decided to include Santa Fe and Taos as our last stops before heading down to warmer climates.

It was a long drive from Gallup to Santa Fe, and we were glad to pull into the campground we had selected south of the city. The campground didn’t have a lot of amenities but it did have a great view of the western sky, and we enjoyed the prettiest sunset we had seen for several weeks.

The next day we decided to take in a flea market north of the city as our first sightseeing adventure. Their idea of a flea market was certainly different from what one would expect to find in a flea market back east. It was really just a collection of tents and stalls for selling the products of local artists, most of whom were Native American. There was virtually no used or old merchandise providing the bargains that we enjoy searching for when visiting eastern flea markets. As David said, this was more like shopping in a retail mall!!!!!

After the flea market, we headed to downtown Santa Fe for more traditional sightseeing. The young fellow at the visitor’s center downtown was very helpful in giving tips on some of the sights to see downtown as well as the best way to and from Taos -- good sights to see on a loop through the areas of the west of Santa Fe. Our first two stops downtown were traditional ones, one visiting the oldest church/chapel in the U.S. and the other visiting a larger, newer church with a unique, interesting spiral staircase going from the floor of the church to the choir loft above. The staircase had no visable nails and, when originally constructed, had no hand rails and no supports attaching it to the wall or any other supporting surface. Rather fine craftsmanship and design particularly for something built so long ago. The story line is that the nuns at the church had been praying for some solution to the fact that their church had been built without a way to get into the choir loft when some unknown young man appeared and volunteered his services to design and build a staircase. The locals treat this as a miracle whereas we were more inclined to view it as a nice bit of engineering design and woodworking craftsmanship.

We thereafter walked over to the old plaza at the center historical Santa Fe. The historical buildings surrounding the four sides of the plaza have of course now been converted almost entirely to retail stores, galleries and other facilities targeted to tourists. Nonetheless, it is still attractive architecture and David had a fine time sitting on a bench in the plaza while Jo strolled around some of the shops.

After lunch at a small café on the plaza we walked over to the Georgia O’Keefe Museum. Unfortunately, the museum is so small that it can only display a limited number of the many works they have in their inventory. Even this number was reduced because of a special showing they were having of the works of other women artists in her circle. But it was a pleasant stop nonetheless.

We concluded our afternoon in downtown Santa Fe by a walk through the commercial and residential blocks surrounding the plaza. We found that we really like the adobe style of construction widely used in downtown Santa Fe, and we also like the soothing earth tone colors used with this adobe construction. A very pleasant stroll. An added bonus when we got back to the campground later that afternoon was yet another pretty sunset in the western sky.