Tuesday. After a final breakfast at Casas de Sueños, we set out for Santa Fe.  Pro tip: take NM 14, aka The Turquoise Trail, instead of sticking to I-25.  The scenery is the usual fabulous.

Plan on stopping in Madrid (pronounced MADrid) for lunch or just to shop around.  Madrid is a former coal town that was sold to hippies back in the day — much like Jerome, AZ — and I wish we had spent more time there.  We shopped in The Crystal Dragon, one of the original galleries there, and it is quite nice. Interesting jewelry and crystal stuff, all nicely hippie-woo.  Much turquoise, of course.

I bought a lovely small bowl made of carnelian, which I forgot to take a photo of.  (I’ll do a swag post after we get home.)

Santa Fe is only about an hour north of Albuquerque, so those of you who get your jollies watching me suffer through hours in the vehicle will have to learn to live with disappointment.

We headed straight for lunch at the Tune-Up Cafe, where the food is very tasty, although mostly Mexican which is not my thing.  Perhaps you mileage junkies can get off on my trying to find something on the menu that wouldn’t bother me.  I had a burger, which was good as well, but because of my increasing altitude sickness — and possible interaction with alcohol — I was unable to finish.

We checked in with our rental property people and headed back to SITE, a post-modern installation gallery, which we had passed on our way to the check-in:

The main exhibits were not open on Tuesdays, OF COURSE, so we will return tomorrow.  However, the lobby had much that was fun and beautiful, and then this:

It’s an ATM in the sense that you can get money out of it, but mostly it’s art.  What you see it doing here is spitting out a receipt that turns into a booklet once you follow the instructions on the wall:

This is a cool idea that I will be definitely stealing for writers at Backstreet Art.  Full disclosure: I censored the photos for the sensitive among us.

Onward to Old Town:

First stop, the Cathedral of St. Francis.

It’s a beautiful church, still decorated for Easter.

Second stop, the chapel of the Sisters of Loretto:

Outside this former chapel are some neato wind sculptures:

The Sisters of Laretto ran a school for girls from the late 1800s to 1968.  They built the chapel in 1873, and because of their limited land there was no room for a large staircase to the choir.  The story goes that one day an unnamed carpenter showed up and volunteered to build a circular staircase.  With “nothing but a hammer, a saw, and a carpenter’s square,” he built the staircase, then left without payment.  The nuns believed it was St. Joseph (patron saint of carpenters, of course) who had heard their prayers.

To this day, no one can explain how this thing stays up without a central support.  Really.

Even more, we learned from the narration that plays while you visit, the balustrade was added later when the nuns and girls found the ascent to be an unsettling experience.  So imagine this thing without the balustrade.

I found it very difficult to imagine.  The chapel is now run by a private company; admission goes to the Sisters of Loretto retirement fund.

In the gift shop, I found a cheesy angel that I will use in the labyrinth periodically.  It has potential.  Pics in the swag post next week.

Finally we checked in at our VRBO condo.  This is the view:

At this point, I was full on sick, and everyone else felt like crap as well.  Others went to Trader Joe’s for victuals, we ate a simple repast, and retired.

As you may recall, we pulled into Albuquerque too late on Sunday night to do anything but collapse.

We’re staying at the Casas de Sueños, which translates to “Houses of Dreams.”  It’s a collection of casitas around multiple courtyards.  Here’s the main house and lobby:

It was built in the 1930s by a man who had come out to visit and never left. He built the main house for himself, and then added the smaller houses and invited artists to occupy them.  Yes, we were staying at an artists’ colony.

Have a look:

…and…

…and…

…and then our casita, outside the walled gardens.  We think it might have been the servants’ quarters.  Oh well.

We highly recommend Casas de Sueños: the rooms are lovely, it’s conveniently located to Old Town and other areas — we walked almost everywhere — and they have a chef cook your breakfast to order.  The desk staff are knowledgeable and helpful in their recommendations, and the place is quite affordable.

We headed over to Old Town, the usual collection of galleries and gift shops, just to scope it out before heading out to the airport to pick up our intrepid traveling companions, the Honeas.

Ever since we got out here we’ve been admiring New Mexico’s new car tags.  They are quite lovely.  (Apologies to whoever’s car this is. I swear we’re mostly harmless.)

Then there was this sign on the main drag up from our casitas:

Very zen, but what it’s referring to is the Albuquerque Rapid Transit initiative, which apparently has torn up streets and sidewalks and made life a living hell for small businesses all over town, and is way behind schedule to boot.

We grabbed lunch at Vinaigrette, and it was very good.  Highly recommended.  We returned to the Old Town Plaza for some shopping, where I found this:

Don’t know what that means? WERE YOU NOT PAYING ATTENTION TO YOUR MEDIA SPECIALIST?  The answer will appear below. That shop, the Shop of Infinite Curiosities, was a lot of fun, mainly because most of their wares were made by the proprietor and her daughter, so they weren’t that same of a sameness as one finds everywhere else, especially here in the Land of Enchantment. I bought another object that I cannot show you because it is a surprise for my 3 Old Men crew, but trust me when I tell you that it is one of most fupping weird things I have ever come across.

Sidenote: in a very large, very touristy place, I came across this:

I immediately sent it to the Peter & the Starcatcher group chat.  “It’s left, ya idjit, left!” — which triggered a flood of mermaid images and “I miss you guys” messages.  (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s because you missed the show. Pity.)

We sat for a rest — altitude sickness is real — and were entertained by a trio of musicians who were playing their pan flute/pop tunes/new age fusion stuff, and it was a balm to my soul.  I bought two CDs:

Go check out track 5 here.

After retreating to Casas de Sueños for a nap, we set out for our evening.  First, we went to the Hotel Chaco for their bar, Level 5.  The hotel is boutique in the extreme, quite lovely.  We stopped in their gift shop, and since I had left my 5 Below purple plastic sunglasses in the casita I bought something more bougie for the rest of the trip:

The cocktails were amazing, so it was a good start to the evening. (We will say nothing of the exasperated look on the maitre d’s face when we told him we were there for cocktails on the terrace.  The barstaff were a little overwhelmed.)

I had a Pueblo Alto, and I’ve already forgotten what was in it — altitude sickness is a thing.

The hotel sits on the edge of the Railyard, a rapidly hipsterizing area.

From there we walked to Seasons for a fabulous dinner with another fabulous cocktail, and finally we Ubered to Apothecary, which had been listed as one of the top bars in Albuquerque.  It is not, alas.  Part of the appeal for going there was that the hotel it’s housed in used to be a tuberculosis hospital, and then a mental institution; some of the decor uses that idea, but not enough.  Cocktail-wise, the specials cocktail list was nothing amazing: I could have made every single of them at home, i.e., I had all the ingredients.  Not only that, but the one cocktail I chose the bartender couldn’t make because they were out of mezcal. Bless his heart, when I backtracked and ordered a Bijou, I had to show him the recipe.  Sweet kid, and competent, but the bar is not amazing.

Altitude sickness is a thing — I’ve mentioned it several times, and there’s a reason for that. The medication I’ve been taking to ward it off wasn’t working, and even worse compounds the effects of alcohol (and marijuana, for the record).  If you’ve been counting, I had had three cocktails, which normally would barely phase me.  But now I was not feeling well at all, so much that I punched in the wrong destination for Uber and we had to take the long way back home with a lovely young woman who apologized to me for my mistake.

Next up: Santa Fe!

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398.2 is the Dewey Decimal number for fairy/folk tales. If you knew that, we can still be friends.

A couple of apologies: first for posting a day late — you’ll understand why by the end of this post.

Second, I must apologize for slandering the mighty Pecos River. When I asked the desk clerk at the Comfort Inn about the lack of water, he seemed to be a little miffed and told us that back up at Church St. there was an actual River Walk that people really liked.  I acknowledged my mistake as gently as I could, but the bottom line was that the water in the channel could only be seen when crossing directly over the stream (as we did when we left town that afternoon).

Our first stop was Carlsbad Caverns. Do this thing! The approach is through a canyon which is more spectacular than the photo looks:

What you’re not seeing is the 122 caves underneath, almost none of which have been fully explored.  (Not even Carlsbad has been fully explored.)

Isn’t this nice?  It’s where the rangers live.

Eventually you reach the entrance, and this is the view from the top of the ridge:

And here’s the entrance/museum/gift shop:

So far so good.  A pleasant and short drive, easy parking, and we get to take the King’s Palace tour at 9:00.

Only not.  We were greeted along the way and again in the lobby with the announcement that the elevator was out of order, and when we stepped up to the counter we were told exactly what that meant: rather than a 60-second ride 75 stories down into the earth, we could hike the “Natural Entrance” to meet our ranger.  That would take about an hour, so they’d moved the 9:00 tour to 10:00 to give us time to hoof it.

And of course, they reminded us, we’d have to walk back out the same way.  Oy.

The walk didn’t concern us as much as the time.  The plan was to do the tour 9:00–10:00, move on to White Sands, and then to Albuquerque in time to try one of the craft cocktail bars I had so carefully researched.  If we did the cave tour, it would add two hours to the schedule.

So of course we went into the cave.

This is the amphitheatre where you sit and watch a bazillion bats fly out at dusk.  The bats are not in residence at the moment; they decamp to Mexico for the winter and won’t be back until May.

And…

Switchbacks.  Lots and lots of switchbacks. More switchbacks than you have ever dreamed of encountering.  More switchbacks than Lombard Street in San Francisco times 100.

This is Texas mountain laurel in bloom.  It’s quite lovely.

Halfway down into the entrance.

The bats were not in residence, but the cave swallows were.  I was previously unaware of the cave swallows, but about 50 years ago a colony of 2,000–3,000 cave swallows took up residence in the entrance.  Here’s a video:

Obligatory selfie.

 

Looking back at the entrance once we were down:

…and then…

… more switchbacks.  Steep switchbacks.  Remember, we were trekking downwards 75 stories.

Cthulhu showed his presence early:

More switchbacks.  It was interminable.

Down and down and down. Eventually we reached the snack bar/restroom area where we were to meet Josh, our ranger for the tour. The first people we encountered, though, were maintenance people emptying the trashcans.

Ah, we said, and how did you get down here? They hemmed and hawed.  When pressed, the man smiled and said that he could neither confirm nor deny the presence of a service elevator.  When pressed, he said he would not want to risk the public on it, so apparently it’s in bad shape. The LFW said bluntly that she was willing to offer money, and he at least laughed.

Finally we gathered round Josh, a bright, good-looking young man, who was an excellent tour guide: just the right amount of information at any given point, and with a clear passion for the cave.

Here’s what we saw on the tour:

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Words cannot describe the vast spaces, the intricate constructions, the overwhelming multiplicity of forms that you see in this cave.  I recently read Breaking Open the Head (Pinchbeck) in which the author— pursuing/studying modern shamanism — convinced himself that we are surrounded by multiple dimensions inhabited by beings of alternate energy and they are somehow responsible for life as we know it, i.e., intelligent design of some kind.

However, unless the aliens had a hand in every molecule in the cavern — and Pinchbeck would probably say that’s the point — you have to confront the fact that randomness will produce an infinite number of forms, and if those forms are self-replicating, then evolution is mind-boggling but not unpossible.

That was a lot of deep thought, so have a naughty formation:

Have a cute doggie:

And one last tribute to Cthulhu:

The climb back up was, shall we say, a lot more strenuous than the trip down.  I feared for some of the people we saw going down: frail elderly, people with toddlers, and obese Americans.  I began to formulate the theory that the park people were not making the risks clear so that at least someone would collapse and die, scandalizing the nation and prompting an uptick in funding. Sneer if you like, but hey, we were right about there being a service elevator.

Then, nearly three hours late, we hit the road to White Sands Monument, three hours away. Lots of boring landscape, although the little town of Artesia seems to be a happening place.  Multiple pecan groves, people, although there were not any places to stop and sample them.  (They wouldn’t have been open on Easter afternoon anyway, I suspect.) The landscape changed into foothills, finally giving us actual trees and a river. Up up up and over a mountain and then steeply down:

This was on the way down.  See that white patch in the distance? That’s 275 square miles of white gypsum sand dunes.

That is not rain in the distance.  It’s wind blowing sand around.

Finally we popped out of the mountains into Alamagordo, then through and on out to White Sands.

The road into the Monument:

The way this works is that the solid rock of gypsum…

…is eroded by the wind.  When it rains, the sand will form crystals…

…which will erode back into fine, fine sand:

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You will have noticed that yes, I drew a labyrinth.  I wish we had had more time; there was a sunset walk led by a ranger that I would have like to gone on, if for no other reason than to see the mice and lizards and foxes and critters.

However, we had another THREE AND A HALF HOURS to get to Albuquerque, and that’s if we didn’t stop to eat.  Not that I’m complaining, but we didn’t stop to eat after Carlsbad either, so that meant for the entire day I was eating out of the snack bag.  And do I need to point out that there were no cocktails involved?

To cut a 1000-word post short, we sped through empty landscapes, not stopping for dinner, and arrived in Albuquerque after 10:00 pm.  No time to write, no time for cocktails, no time for anything but collapsing, then sleeping late.  And that’s why I didn’t blog yesterday.

The sunset was, however, lovely as always:

Flying across Texas is not as bad as driving across Texas, but it’s a close second: we flew into Dallas (nice little airport — sorry, Texas, but ours is just bigger in every way), had a layover and lunch, then flew into Austin to let some people off and other people on, and finally landed in El Paso.

Then we got into a car and drove back across Texas.

Oh sure, it started out with that thrill you get when you see the mountains…

…but then you turn left and drive straight back into Texas for three hours.  After our GPS got us to a WalMart and then back onto US 180, she fell silent.  We thought maybe she had died of boredom. Every hour or so she’d tell us to “bear left,” but since there was only an arroyo to turn onto, we think she was messing with us.

This was the interesting part.

By the way, the last time we were in Santa Fe, not realizing it was 7000+ feet above sea level, we had a touch of elevation sickness, so this time we got a prescription for a drug that’s supposed to assist with that.  We started taking it before getting on the plane in Atlanta; our doctors disagree in their dosage, so this will be a test.  The bottles came with the now-standard warning label that drowsiness may occur with the use of alcohol or marijuana, and I’d like to say that the single glass of chardonnay I had at lunch was effective.

On the plus side, I finally used Afrin® before getting on the plane, and my ears did not explode like they always do.

And if you thought the last two paragraphs were boring, you have some idea of what driving east on US 180 is like.  Once out of El Paso, it devolved into a two-lane road.  Fortunately, there were enough straightaways and passing lanes that getting stuck behind an old man in a little red truck — swear to god — was not a problem.

For a couple of hours, we were intrigued and awed by this:

That is the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and it loomed large.

It was beautiful, and not because it was the only thing on the horizon. Note: you think you’re seeing the setting sun or something light up the top, but it’s the actual color of the rock: white limestone (?).

The highway actually went up and through the mountains.

And then we were past it and back to wondering how much longer it was to Carlsbad.

There was one moment of excitement: your tax dollars have built a Customs/Border Patrol stop in the middle of nowhere, and we hit it on a day when they were stopping everyone. “Are you U.S. citizens?” we were asked, and I restrained myself from flashing my fupping passport or answering, “Da, tovarich.” But white privilege being what it is, my cold “Yes” was hardly even necessary before she waved us on.

re: how much longer it was to Carlsbad — the GHS display told me that it was 5:10, we were 45 miles out, and we’d be there at 5:20. It was inexplicable, until we finally crossed into New Mexico and the time flipped to Mountain Daylight Time: suddenly it was 4:10, and I was left wondering why it was going to take us over an hour to go 45 miles.  (It’s also probable that the time change going north to Carlsbad is the reason the LFW’s guide book claimed it was only two hours from El Paso — do not be fooled.  It is three.)

Finally we got to our Comfort Suites hotel, right by the mighty Pecos River.

That’s it. There is currently no water in the Pecos River.

We dropped our things, dragged ourselves to dinner at the lovely Yellow Brix downtown (remember, it was after 10:00 EDT), and then collapsed.

The moon was full over the mighty Pecos.

Tomorrow will be moderately more interesting.

We have arisen at an ungodly hour so that we can make an early flight to El Paso.

Yes, we’re on the road again, and you may very well wonder why, if this series is entitled Santa Fe 18, we are flying to El Paso when Santa Fe has a perfectly cromulent airport.  Allow me to introduce you to my Lovely First Wife.

My LFW is a determined traveler.  She loves to travel, and I’ve learned to step back and let her do all the planning because a) it’s always brilliant; and b) have you met my LFW? So when it was decided^[1] that we would revisit Santa Fe^[2,] she sprang into action and included 1) Carlsbad Caverns; 2) White Sands Monument; and 3) Albuquerque on the intinerary.

What my LFW hates is these blog posts, because a) she hates anyone knowing anything about her despite the fact that I am fairly well known out on the intertubes, at least to those with any taste; and b) she just knows someone reading this is going to break into our house while we are gone, because of my solid dozen of readers probably half of you are career criminals.  Or something.  Anyway, don’t do it: we have a house-sitter plus two fully grown adults living full time there.  Also the Assistive Felines™.

Off we go!

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^[1] Passive voice is used deliberately.

^[2] We first stopped there on the Cross-Country Caper.