Heading North Into The Great Southwest

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Simon wanted a trip up to Sante Fe for its Western and cowboy-movie history, rich cultural reputation, and the chance to see northern New Mexico, which we’d heard was spectacular. Reusable canvas grocery bags packed (because we both thought we brought a carry-on bag for the occasional hotel stay, but didn’t), we locked up Fati and hit the road in Nippy for two days visiting Santa Fe, Taos Pueblo, and Albuquerque.

What we found when we got to Santa Fe was even more compelling than we expected. Adobe buildings, a billion restaurants, and art right out there on the street where anyone could swipe it, if they had a crane and a big truck.

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What is it about adobe houses? They’re so cute and different and Southwestern, and we were immediately smitten.

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We’d been given several recommendations for great dining in the Old Town area. What we didn’t know was that New Mexico closes at 3:30pm. We arrived at our first choice at 3:29pm and got a hard “No” when we asked if they could at least do soup as a carry-out after our 4-plus hour journey.

The franchise-sounding Burrito and Co. was open, though, and we’re here to tell you their homemade Tortilla Soup with fresh tortillas and wedges of lime on the side was so warming and delicious, we were almost glad we didn’t have another choice. Oh, the heavenly lusciousness of it all!

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Old Town’s plaza was dressed up for Christmas, and a group of Native American guys were performing traditional chants that evening. They may have been doing it for weekend beer money, as young people are wont to do, but it set a tone so evocative we were spellbound for quite some time. It was the sort of cultural experience we’d been hoping for when we planned this trip, and put a human face on our upcoming visit to Taos Pueblo.

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Restaurants reopened for dinner, so we got a carry-out from La Choza. We shared an order of tamales (one vegetarian, one shredded pork,) but Susan can’t do spicy food anymore, and these were up there a bit, so Simon ate most of it and Susan had a few little Biscochito, New Mexico’s official cookie.

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The next morning, Ruthie helped Simon get a coffee from the hotel…

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…then we set off for nearby Taos Pueblo. We knew it was a 1000-year-old “living village” with adobe buildings dating back to around 1400 A.D. and shops offering authentic Native American arts. There was a cost to get into the public areas and a code of conduct while visiting (basically, don’t be a jerk, and don’t take photos of residents without their permission).

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Only a couple of shops were open, but we were primarily there to see the buildings, which have neither water nor electricity. Residents live in modern homes within the Restricted areas, and use their traditional homes during gatherings and events, and as a source of income from selling arts and crafts.

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It was a fascinating window into a world that was chipped away so profoundly that what’s left of it in this country qualifies as a National Historical Landmark. That weird mix of awe and of despair for a lost way of life remained with us for some time afterwards.  

With a few hours of daylight left (it was getting dark around 5:30pm) we pointed Nippy to the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway for some mountainous sight-seeing that would take us back to Santa Fe.

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That night we grabbed another carry-out for dinner, but this time we won’t mention the restaurant’s name, because it went pretty badly wrong. Susan worked in restaurants in her younger years and knows things happen, but it’s still disturbing when you get a whomping great shard of broken metal in your El Salvadoran Plate’s tamale.

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It was good while it lasted, but it was back to the biscochito for her. Simon was able to finish his Chili Relleno (just; Susan’s metal was off-putting), but he did place a call to the restaurant, who comped Susan’s meal and went out of their way to figure out where the metal came from (it was the tip of a knife, they later told us). They also threw out all their tamales that night, to save anyone else from a potential E.R. visit while they figured out what had gone wrong.

Before leaving town for Albuquerque on our return trip to Fati the next day, we popped into Loretto Chapel to see the “miraculous staircase” built in 1878 by an “unknown carpenter” using wood that is “not of this world.”

As legend has it, the chapel’s 22-foot-high choir loft was not accessible to the nuns running the place, who (presumably because they were wearing habits that anyone could look up) could not use a ladder. They made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, and soon a carpenter arrived on a burro with a toolbox and a solution.

He worked for months, then disappeared without saying goodbye or asking for payment, leaving behind a magnificent circular staircase with no nails to hold it together and no visible central support to hold it up. And what the heck kind of wood was it? It certainly wasn’t wood that was available in Santa Fe. There were questions.

The work of Saint Joseph himself, some say. The wood is spruce, scientists insist. Nail-less construction was far from unknown. But it’s a great tale, and a gorgeous example of craftsmanship, wonky structural safety notwithstanding.

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We gabbed about theories and doubts and storytelling on the way to Albuquerque, but by the time we arrived a serious exhaustion had begun to creep in, and our hearts weren’t in it. It was time to return to Fati and let our brains cool down for 24 hours before making the two-day drive into Texas via an overnight at a Rest Area before reaching our Alpine campground retreat.