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.