Santa Fe Part 2 (10-07-13)

There’s nothing that makes time fly faster than a visit with friends or family.  As soon as our good friends Mike and Julie arrived, the second half of our Santa Fe visit began.  Once we came up for air from all the talking, we made some plans for how to spend our time.  Eating, as usual, played a large role in our itinerary!

The Santa Fe area has quite a bit of hiking available, and even though the trail we wanted to hike is on Federal land, and therefore,closed because of the government shutdown, we found a great trail that afforded awesome views of the city of Santa Fe.

With only one more day left in Santa Fe, we headed for the Plaza square. We were all interested in seeing the Loretto Chapel  so we made that our first stop.



The story of the chapel goes like this:  When it was built in 1878, there was no staircase to the choir loft built. The sisters of the chapel called every carpenter they could find, looking for someone who could build them a staircase.  They all said the same thing- you need to build a ladder-any staircase would intrude into the chapel too much. The Sisters made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the final day of prayer, a carpenter showed up, looking for work.  He said he could build a staircase, and sure enough, he did.  He worked on it for months and when he was done, he left without saying anything, and without collecting his payment.

  The staircase makes two 360 turns and has no visible means of support. Many shows have showcased the staircase, including “Unsolved Mysteries”.  Years after it was built, the banister was added, for safety reasons. Of course, it completely changes the look of the staircase, but its still pretty neat looking.

  After touring the chapel for about 15 minutes, we headed to the plaza, where all the shopping and restaurants are. 







We had a particular restaurant in mind for a late lunch, but found out the hard way that most of the restaurants close at 2 pm and re-open for dinner at 5:00.  We finally did find one with decent reviews though, and had lunch at Maria’s New Mexican Kitchen.  New Mexicans like their food spicy, and so do we, so it was a great fit!

As I said, time flies, and the next morning it was time to move the rigs down the road to the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta!

Santa Fe, NM Part 1 (10-03-13)

The first thing I noticed about Santa Fe is the elevation.  It sits at about 8,000 feet, working my lungs to the max.  I don’t do too well at high elevations- it takes me a long time to acclimate, so I find myself getting winded way too easily.  It’s also much too cold here!  Low temperature our first night here was 28 degrees. 

After a bit of craziness trying to figure out where we were going to stay, we checked in to an RV park just outside of town, with easy access to the city.  The woman who checked us in was a wealth of information about what to do and see, and  she mentioned that the New Mexico History Museum has free admission every Friday night.  Since it was Friday, we decided to take advantage, and save some money!


The museum was divided into 3 sections- early history, recent history, and temporary exhibits.  All 3 areas had interesting displays so here a couple of tidbits I learned in each area (no picture taking was allowed anywhere in the museum) :

Spanish Conquistadors arrived in the 1500s and, of course, promptly decided that the already existing Native American population needed to be converted to Christianity, and began that process immediately. They had their way until the late 1600s when the pueblo Indians planned an uprising.  Because the many different tribal languages and locations made communication difficult, each tribal leader was given a length of rope with knots in it.  They were instructed to untie one knot each day, and attack when there were no more knots left.  Ingenious!




The temporary exhibit revolved around cowboys, their lives and their work. One of the displays was about branding.  Apparently there is a correct way to “read” a brand, so you’ll know what it says.  You read from the top down, then from the outside in, and from left to right. 








In more recent history, the Santa Fe area was one of the homes for the Manhattan Project- the building of the atomic bomb. People working at the laboratory in Los Alamos all had an address of P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, NM, and in place of their name, their driver’s license had a number.  They lived here for years, working on the project and it was so secret that all of their outgoing correspondence was censored, and it had to be done in a way that the recipient did not know that it was censored.

The museum was well done, and worth the price of admission!


Saturday morning we were off to the Santa Fe farmer’s market.  The produce was so colorful and looked so good, I searched the web for a Roasted Green Chile Stew recipe and bought all the ingredients to make it from the market.  It turned out pretty good!

We had time for a hike in the afternoon so we headed for Glorieta Ghost Town trail.  It sounded interesting, and started off ok with old rusted out cars along the trail.

After hiking 3 miles, however, we determined that mostly the only thing left in the ghost town is the ghosts. It was a little disappointing, but the Eagle Scout in Paul came out and he did some impromptu trail maintenance along the way, so at least he feels like he accomplished something.







This morning we watched the Patriots lose to the Bengals as we wait for our friends Julie and Mike to arrive.

El Paso (09-29-13)

The last week has been a flurry of activity while Paul and I visited his mom.  We started our visit with dinner at the local country club- what a view!

Paul spent a few days helping his mom with some projects around the house, and also took advantage of her workshop to refinish a couple of our cabinet doors.  As in most homes, the doors in front of the sink take a bit of a beating so he added a coat or two of polyurethane before they showed any wear.  






Of course, we don’t call his mom the energizer bunny for nothing ( if you ever wondered where Paul gets his energy and his intelligence, look no further!). She is extremely busy with her many philanthropic endeavors so we took some time to do some hiking.

  The nearby Franklin Mountains provide plenty of hiking  trails, so we set out on the Ron Coleman Trail. 

We were supposed to get to the peak of the mountain, but after almost 3 hours of hiking, we turned back.  We’ll get to the peak some other (cooler) day. The views from the trail were still spectacular, including this one, where we could see not only the City of El Paso, but into New Mexico and Juarez Mexico.

The week flew by and pretty soon it was our last night in town.  We spent it attending the first of a month long series of events celebrating the city of El Paso.  We heard two famous El Pasoans tell the story of “their” El Paso.  The first was Ginger Kerrick (who attended via video), a flight director with NASA, and the second was astronaut Danny Olivas.  It was interesting hearing what it was like for them growing up in El Paso, and the influence their childhood here had on their success.

We are now on our way to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  We’ve had to adjust our plans and our campground reservations because of the government shutdown.  For us, its just a minor inconvenience.  Others have been much more adversely affected by the shutdown.