Santa Fe, NM. 4-6 Oct 2012

We arrived into Santa Fe late Thursday afternoon and found a great campsite at the Black Canyon Campground in Hyde Park, a huge park located above the city of Santa Fe with tons of hiking, biking and ski trails. We set up our site then headed back into town to get some supplies. We got back to our campsite, fixed dinner then headed into the van after dinner because the temperature started to drop pretty quickly. The next morning we awoke to a brisk 40 degree morning. We bundled up before getting out of the van to make breakfast. Since the campsite didn’t have running water we thought it was a good opportunity to use our portable shower. It took us about 45 minutes to warm up the water on our camp stove to fill the shower container. Needless to say warming up the water for the shower took a lot longer than the actual shower.

We were told to explore Canyon Road and the Plaza in Santa Fe. Canyon Road consists of several blocks full of art galleries. So after our mini showers we drove back down into town. The area is very well known to house some of the country’s best artists. There were several very impressive galleries we walked through, there was even a gallery which had original Picasso pieces displayed.

After spending a few hours touring Canyon Road we headed to the Plaza which is basically an open air market with several jewelry and clothing vendors as well as restaurants and cafes. We found a food cart called Roque’s Carnitas which has been featured on several TV shows, including the food network and the Great Outdoors in Australia. They basically make one thing, carnitas, we ordered a couple and enjoyed the famous carnitas outside in the Plaza’s courtyard We enjoyed the rest of the afternoon exploring the city and enjoying the weather.We stumbled across a dive bar and enjoyed happy hour there where the bartender gave us some tips of her favorite restaurants in the area.

We then headed to one of the recommended restaurants called Cowgirls. While waiting at the bar for our table we started chatting with a very interesting Santa Fe resident named Robert. He started talking to us about his first book he recently published called Dolphin Days (which is available on Amazon Kindle). After making a new friend, we had dinner then headed home for another cold night camping. We packed up and left Santa Fe Saturday morning to head to Denver.

Mary