Indian Market

This weekend was Santa Fe's 93rd annual Indian Market. Even though Santa Fe has a population of under 70,000, over 100,000 tourists flood the city during this weekend in August every year. The Indian Market showcases artists from many many different Native American tribes. I was lucky enough to attend the market Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday! 

On Thursday, I went by myself to an offshoot of the original Indian Market called the Indigenous Fine Arts Market (I think it broke off because of infighting). I bought these beautiful earrings:

On Saturday, I went with Annie to the Indian Market (starting at the ungodly hour of 8am to beat the crowds). There were so many booths with beautiful pottery and jewelry that we couldn't possibly see the whole thing without being overwhelmed.

We took a break and stopped in at the St. Francis Cathedral:

The Loretto chapel at the cathedral had a mysterious spiral staircase that is called the "Miraculous Staircase". As the story goes, the chapel was built without a staircase (as was common at the time). However, nuns who sang in the choir needed a way to get up to the chorus. Normally, men would just climb a ladder, but that was too unladylike for the nuns. So they prayed to St. Joseph to help them. A while later, a strange carpenter (with no name) showed up and built this staircase without any central or side supports. Given the engineering abilities at the time (and even now), the staircase could only have been made by St. Joseph himself!

Later, we went to lunch at the Guadalupe Cafe where I had a rediculously delicious breakfast tostada with green chile! (Check out the guy photobombing my picture in the background!)

On Sunday, Stoops and I went back to the market:

We watched children do hoop dancing! The dancers progressively used 1 to 5 hoops to make animal shapes while dancing. Hoop dancing was originally used by this tribe as a healing dance.

Stoops and Stephen's Birthday!

For Stoops and Stephen's 30th birthday, Stephen came down to visit us from Las Vegas! This gave us an excellent opportunity to explore the Santa Fe nightlife (or lack thereof)

The night began with scotch at home (because real men drink scotch!)

As we left the house, there was a beautiful sunset over the Railyard!

What was not so beautiful was the bathroom at the Matador, a punk bar near the plaza. Trigger warning for poop.

Ewww! Poop!

We left the Matador, and wandered around the Plaza area, which was popping! There was a guy with a guitar (whose face I failed to get in the picture) who played happy birthday for the guys.  People here are so friendly that some yelled their birthday wishes from their cars!

Between a rock concert and a bunch of sweet old cars, the Plaza felt like a sockhop in the 1950s.  However, because old people go to bed really early, and Santa Fe is full of old people, the plaza was empty by 9:30pm.

We finished the night at the Second Street Brewery in the Railyard, just behind our apartment.

Petroglyphs and a Rainy Day at the Botanical Garden

Last weekend, I went with my new friends Annie, Ann, and Sylvia (and Joya the dog!) to see petroglyphs. We hiked up a mostly non-existent trail to the top of a mesa.  Since we were in the middle of nowhere, there were no other hikers or tourists anywhere, so we had the whole place to ourselves. It was amazing to be up close and personal with these messages left by the ancient Ancestral Pueblo people thousands of years ago.

These images were so vivid and they were everywhere! If you look closely, you can see snakes, lizards, birds, elk, and humans. Kokopelli is the image of a person playing what looks like a flute - I've heard it represents fertility. The most interesting petroglyph that I saw (which I did not take a picture of) was of a fish!  Here's the view from the top of the mesa. There was a storm moving towards us and we could see a bunch of lightning strikes - the danger level was pretty high!

This morning, Stoops and I went to the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens. There was a special exhibit by Kevin Box called Origami in the Garden, which was very cool.

Overall, the garden was quite small, but it had plants that were either native to New Mexico or that grew very well in this arid climate.

Even though they looked like paper, the origami sculptures were made out of steel so they didn't melt in the rain. Since it was raining (it is very unusual to have a rainy day in Santa Fe - usually if there is rain, its only for a half hour in the afternoon) there were very few people in the gardens. We had it all to ourselves!

Rock Paper Sisscors! 

These horses were the coolest!

Though this Bison looked just like it had been folded out of a giant sheet of paper.

Stoops found his spirit plant! Thumbs up :)

This was my spirit cactus:

I love living in a place where we can see the mountains from basically anywhere we are:

Santa Fe is the BEST!

Road Trip! Madison to Santa Fe in 3 days

We packed up all of our belongings, threw out or donated all of our furniture, and hit the road. Although there was really no rush to get to Santa Fe, I was ready to leave and wanted to get down there as soon as possible. Look! You can see from this picture how excited I was:

Here's the car all packed - we even got spacebags so we didn't have any extra air taking up cargo room.

First rest stop - Iowa! As the song from Oklahoma goes: "The corn is as high as an elephant's eyeeeeeeeee.... and it looks like its climbing clear up to the skyyyyyy"

We stopped in Omaha, NE for the our first night. For the first time, we tried out airbnb and had a great experience. There was a slight snafu getting the key to our host's house, but once we were able to get in, they were very nice. I was particularly appreciative that they were not serial killers.

On our way the next morning, we saw this all day: 

I was quite surprised by how pretty Nebraska was, but after 8 hours of driving across it, the flat flat flat landscape got a little boring.

However - we made it to Denver! My cousin Alissa and her husband Lou were our hosts. We got incredible ice cream from a place that sold weird flavors like "sour cream and chive" or "black pepper strawberry" but also delicious flavors like "cookie butter"! I panicked when I was asked to order and got vanilla - but it was a tasty choice nonetheless.

The next day, we finally got to see some mountains! The whole ride from Denver to Santa Fe was beautiful, and only took about 5 1/2 hours. 

We finally arrived at our new home!

DANGER LEVEL 11

In my family, we rate our hikes based on a "Danger level" which is mostly arbitrary, but partially determined based on how much of a chance of dying there is on the hike. For example, hikes with narrow paths along steep cliffs might have a danger level of 6 or 7. If there are bears spotted along the same trail, it might be upped to an 8 or a 9. You get the idea. The main loop/Alcove House trail is known for its tall ladders and steep dropoffs, but the danger level increased even more than we expected during the hike!

Luckily, in the Hall family, everyone's middle name is Danger.

The trail wound around steep cliffs and up short ladders into the former homes of the Ancestral Pueblo people (formerly known as the Anastazi) who used to live in the Canyon where Bandelier is located:

Here's a view from the inside of one of the dwellings: It's really high up!

Stoops liked to hang out in the kitchen.

Before we even got to the highest, steepest ladders, we (I) got scared by a rattle snake! It was very close to the trail and rattled to warn us of its presence. This brought the danger level up to at least a 10. I'd never seen a rattler before - they are beautiful! And also terrifying. 

Then we came to this sign:

If you can't read it, the general idea is that this particular part of the trail in Bandelier National Monument goes straight up via ladder and people who are afraid of heights or with health conditions should not attempt!

After 140 ft of ladders (AWESOME!) We got this view :) 

Luckily, we were there before dusk, but after the tourists had come and gone, so we got the place to ourselves. It was very peaceful. 

To top it all off, we saw a double rainbow on the way home! This picture doesn't do it justice, but it was very bright!