Santa Fe, New Mexico

May 11 - 13, 2015;

We took a short hop from Las Vegas to Santa Fe, New Mexico on route 25 south skirting the Sangre de Cristo foothills.  We set up at the Rancheros de Santa Fe Campground on the south east side of Santa Fe on old route 66.  The campground is kind of built on a hillside nestled amidst the trees with rather rough roads to maneuver around, kind of a RV drivers test.  However, it is nice to be in the trees again and it is convenient  to downtown Santa Fe. 

We met our friend, Lilia, our winter neighbor at Desert Trails in Tucson for dinner at a local restaurant, Harry’s Roadhouse.  Harry’s is very popular for good reason, it was excellent !  Lilia has moved into an apartment here where she will spend the other half of her year.  We are only planning to stay here a few days as we have spent considerable time here in the past.

Harry's Roadhouse

Santa Fe is a special place in a class by itself in many ways.  Santa Fe is the oldest state capital in the country going back to days of Spanish rule.  It also has about the highest concentration of southwest art, jewelry and dining anywhere.  The downtown square area is sort of exhausting, so many shops, so much stuff we want, but can’t buy.  We did the usual thing, we walked around the square looking at window displays, went in a few shops and people watched.  Oh, the southwest architecture is pretty good here too !  

Fantastic old theater building

New Mexico Roadrunner

Downtown view on the square

Looking down San Francisco street to the cathedral

The Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi

Beautiful serpent details against blue sky

I call it the sands of time mural 

Santa Fe Southern Railway, I'm wondering if the CNJ 1158
could be a former Central of New Jersey railroad car  number ?

We visited the Art Museum but were actually not that impressed, there wasn’t much on display.  They must get comments about this as they had a sign explaining how many art works they actually have and that only 3% are on display at any one time.  The building itself is another work of art and the Colors of the southwest  exhibit was excellent, but I could do without the abstract modern stuff.

interior courtyard at the Museum of Art was beautiful

Colors of the Southwest exhibit was very good

These bright colors were revolutionary in their day

Another use of vibrant color

We had a lunch at probably our favorite Santa Fe spot, the Cowgirl BBQ, it’s as good as we remembered.

The Cowgirl sign

On Tuesday night, I checked out the music at the Cowgirl, which was good but too quiet and uninspiring.  I moved on to a new venue for me, the El Farol where they were having a blues jam.  This Canyon Road Blues Band jam session has been a Tuesday night event at the El Farol every week for the past eight years.  The place is small inside, intimate as they say, it was packed with people, the band was great, people were dancing and having much fun !

These guys rock !

This is the end of the Santa Fe trail but it’s been a good ride.

Monument at trails end

Next stop is somewhere near Taos, New Mexico;

Twinkles and Slick