Cruising with the Land Yacht: Santa Fe, New Mexico Part 1

Thursday, July 9^th we drove from Tucumcari, NM to Santa Fe, NM. The landscapes are brown with scrub bushes and mountains. You can see MILES and MILES across the dessert to the base of the next mountain.

We arrived in Santa Fe at Trailer Ranch early in the afternoon. It is a nice RV park and we had a prime spot. We would definitely stay here again when in Santa Fe. It was on the main street and very convenient to get to shopping and other places we needed to go. A note on Santa Fe: all of the buildings are required to be adobe style in the city of Santa Fe. So houses, offices, businesses, shops even fast food places are adobe style architecture. I like it but it means you have to really watch signs to find what you are looking for because that is all that makes them unique. This time of year there are flowers everywhere which really brighten things up.

After riding in the RV all morning it was time for a walk. We drove over to Canyon Road. Canyon Road was once homes, now it is Art Galleries and Studios. There are a LOT of galleries and studios!!! We walked down part of the road and wandered in to some of the ones that got our attention. We saw many beautiful works of art, but did not see many that would fit with our beachy Florida decor which is probably just as well because original art is expensive! We finished our walk with dinner at Vegan Thai. It was OK but not sure we would go back.

This is the only house that is still a house on Canyon Road.

All through New Mexico we saw fences made out of logs, This was on Canyon Road to separate two properties.

Friday we took a day trip to Bandelier National Monument (http://www.nps.gov/band/index.htm). Entrance was free with Wayne’s National Park Senior Pass. The park had a flood in 2011 that destroyed much of the parks visitor center and parking lot. The visitor center has been restored but the parking lot has not been restored so they provide a shuttle from White Rock up to the visitor center. Bandelier was the site of an Anasazi Indian Village that was active around 1200 AD. Some of the tribe lived in a central village adobe building the rest lived in the caves. The foundation of the adobe homes at the base of the caves is still there and also the ruins of the cave dwellings. There is a trail to follow around the park with a brochure you can read about the different areas. There were petroglyphs on the walls, we called it Indian Graffiti. You could go into some of the caves. The Alcove house was high in the side of the mountain with 140 steps by ladders made out of logs to get to the actual alcove. Wayne went all the way to the alcove, I stopped half way up. They had a hard life and only lived to an average age of 35. There was also a movie about the park which we also watched.