Santa Fe, NM

Updated 09/09/2018

Santa Fe. I’d been waiting for Santa Fe ever since I’d heard the name, and everything you’ve ever heard about the beauty and romance of Santa Fe is true. As of this writing (before a close look at Utah), if I had to choose a new home today, I’d struggle between Santa Fe and some great places we’ve seen in Colorado. It has everything – culture, recreation, Trader Joes AND Whole Foods, recycling, adobe, incredible natural beauty, and a wonderful historic city center. If it had a huge wind-surfable lake and truly nearby skiing, I think I’d have Dorian hooked. The summer heat and glare are noticeable even at the 7,200’ altitude, but the nights cool quickly. Oh and did I mention how beautiful it is?

The Santa Fe Plaza spans many walkable city blocks replete with historic buildings, sculptures, charmingly landscaped adobe grottos and trellised spaces, art galleries, museums, and delightful restaurants (we chose L’Olivier , which offered this delicious preparation of escargot).

They say that on a clear day you can almost see Chuck Prophet.

At the Santa Fe Bandstand series of well-attended, summer-long free live music events, I was excited to catch Chuck Prophet and be treated to one of my favorite songs (You Did); the Santafeans, apparently accustomed to such luxuries, noshed, checked their cell phones, and clapped drowsily, if at all. On the other hand, Santa Fe’s wonderful museums are not free, and you should definitely purchase a New Mexico Culture Pass to more economically check out the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, History Museum, Museum of Art, and Museum of International Folk Art (our favorite – offering amongst other treasures a smorgasbord of fanciful, highly wrought miniature dioramas.)

Apache Mountain Spirit Dancer, said the plaque

Zozobra! (Part of a mural by Will Shuster)

Gustave Baumann

A Zozobra celebration mock-up. For city planning purposes, no doubt.

Santa Fe’s recreation offerings are endless, and I’m longing to return in cooler weather to experience more of the nearby trails. We headed out in the morning relative coolness to hike Sun Mountain Trail, a nice, in-town 1.4 mile up-and-back providing expansive vistas of the city. Another day we took a gorgeous drive to Ghost Ranch (made famous by Georgia O’Keefe, who was frequently inspired there) and hiked Chimney Rock trail, where we completely drained 3 litres of water between us and Pippi; although the hike was only 3 miles and 600 feet elevation change and we took multiple shaded breaks, it felt like more in the afternoon heat and wind. This is where we learned Pippi really does not like hiking– and subsequently, we’ve taken her only on much shorter, cooler walks.

Pippi is more of an art gallery dog. She leaves the hiking to...to...those "other" dogs.

Pippi starts off gamely on her Ghost Ranch hike, little knowing the trials which await her.

Look at these views! This makes it all worth it, right, Pippi? Right? ...Pippi?

And people say we don't make room in our lives for religion! This is us on Cross of the Martyrs hill.

The courtyard of one of the art museums.

You won’t find a more fascinating, wacky way to spend a couple hours than visiting Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return. Loosely wrapped around a story of a family that experienced something …unusual, perhaps other-worldly … are myriad rooms and staircases and unexpected doorways (such as refrigerator doors) into other spaces of interactive, sometimes eerie, sometimes musical, usually luridly-lighted areas that you move through at your own pace, in your own direction, sometimes encountering white-coated researchers who are … who knows what they are doing. In a set-up of the family’s office, where Dorian perched at the computer testing its security and I rifled through piles of papers (a last will and testament, letters to grandpa, etc. created in support of the “story”), a young woman approached me asking, “Excuse me, can I ask you, are you alive or dead?” In just a beat I realized she thought I was part of the House of Eternal Return experience, so I said nothing and stared at her, willing my eyes to grow larger and stranger upon which she said “Okay, thanks,” and turned to leave. If only I’d had the presence of mind to gasp and whisper, “Wait a minute…. Can you see me???”

This seemingly desaturated picture is an unedited photo from Meow Wolf, taken with a phone. See the bottom of this page for clues about how it was accomplished.

I get all my news from Facebook!

We looked at real estate, we watched the sunset from the Cross of The Martyrs hill, we said “The OLD Pecos Trail” with a western twang of questionable competence each of the multiple times we traversed it, we shared an evening at friends’ lovely, close-to-town home, and had a beer at the Roadhouse restaurant because really, how can one resist a roadhouse? And we only scratched the surface of this glorious city.

Would we come back here?

Oddly, we might come back with a view to living here, but the sight-seeing draws are not compelling enough to get one of us back just for Santa Fe itself. Having said that, there are plenty of spectacular places to visit. For example, we really wanted to stay at Hyde Memorial State Park based on friends' recommendations, but it was closed due to the highest-stage fire ban. And Ghost Ranch, made somewhat famous by Georgia O'Keefe's patronage, deserves multiple visits.

We stayed at a KOA about 6 miles from the center of Santa Fe. It was a typical KOA, meaning crowded but well-maintained. Their WiFi, however, was so intermittent that I still remember the frustration of it nearly two months and dozens of campgrounds later. Having no WiFi is preferable to almost-usable-but-not-quite WiFi. Hyde Memorial State Park would have been preferable but for the fire ban.

Would we live here?

Santa Fe made the top five so far. So, yay, Santa Fe! Vaguely-stated locations in Colorado might also be in contention. And we like Idaho, too, which is from whence we pen these very words. There are some nice desert lakes near Santa Fe, Cochiti and Abiquiu. And skiing is a couple hours north in Taos. The architecture is nice, the city blends into the junipers around it (so much so that it looks like the next big fire could sweep right through the city, but hopefully some fire prevention geniuses are ready for that occurrence). One of us likes it a lot and the other likes it enough. So we're getting closer!