A Southwestern USA Expedition: Santa Fe

Santa Fe was a pretty important milestone for our road trip. Aside from being a highly anticipated destination of itself, it meant we had reached the eastward vertex of the triangular itinerary that began in Las Vegas. By the time we left, we would be halfway through the trip and aside from Salt Lake City we would be finished with major cities. We were eager to explore this iconic American city and compare it with Albuquerque, the surprisingly beautiful and enjoyable city we had just departed.

Our visit to Santa Fe got off to a great start with our Airbnb, a perfect adobe cottage in a beautiful enclave of similar homes tucked away on a tiny alley. The entrance to the alley off the main road was so unobtrusive that we passed it twice before figuring out where to turn. The interior was comfortable and inviting, compact but spacious enough to suit our needs.

We had some time to kill before dinner so we headed to Santa Fe Plaza, the center of the old town that dates back to the time when the city was just a Spanish fort on the colonial frontier. Some of the famous buildings in the area of the plaza are the Palace of the Governors and The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. Across from the cathedral is the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts whose colorful pillars have become a city landmark since they were painted in 2015. The galleries and sidewalk craft vendors that lined the plaza were somewhat of a disappointment after Albuquerque's Old Town. We didn't see much authentic, high quality work at reasonable prices. It seemed mostly to be either knick-knacks or overpriced jewelry designed to appeal to tourists.

Our first dinner in Santa Fe was the strangest meal of the trip, and possibly one of the weirdest we've ever experienced. I chose Liu Liu Liu because it was clearly a unique restaurant in a city which didn't seem particular adventurous from a culinary perspective. Our GPS took us far from the center to an unappealing strip mall dominated by the parking lot of a Food King supermarket. The restaurant was nowhere to be seen. There were no address numbers on the storefront and the GPS seemed to be pointing to either a barber shop or a driver's education school. It seemed that Google Maps had led us astray but I double checked the address on our reservation confirmation three times. I was about to try calling the restaurant when I saw there was another door between the barber and the school that didn't appear to belong to either of those business. Sure enough the door had the name of the restaurant in small lettering. Inside was a tiny, dark restaurant with just six tables and a bar. A few more tables were in a fenced-off patio just outside. There was only one other table occupied so we had almost the full attention of the server and the maître d', who was clearly also one of the owners. I felt a little awkward at first in such a rarefied environment with the three kids but they were behaving well and the owner was very laid back. I immediately noticed that the first page of the menu was devoted entirely to different kinds of water and asked the maître d' about it. He told me he had been a "water sommelier" at a restaurant in Los Angeles and began an extensive description of the different kinds of water with respect to qualities such as mineral content. Ironically I belong to a tiny minority of people who dislike water intensely. When I'm at home I only drink carbonated water mixed with lime juice and when I travel I drink mostly beer or unsweetened tea if I can't find the lime juice. I couldn't tell how serious the water thing was meant to be and I wasn't sure how long I should let him expound on it when I had absolutely zero interest in water. It was quite distracting searching for the entrees after the long list of waters and boutique soft drinks, and the eventual selection proved to be quite small. We ended up choosing most of the dishes which were generally Taiwanese-inspired but executed in a very avant-garde manner. I wish I could say that the food was outstanding but honestly most of it wasn't to our taste. Regardless it had been a very interesting and memorable experience and I probably would have done it the same way again, especially considering the lack of other distinctive restaurants in Santa Fe. I'm always happy to see new restaurants taking chances and breaking with a conservative dining scene.

I had timed our stop in Santa Fe so that we would be able to visit the Santa Fe Farmers Market, also known as the Railyard Market, on Saturday morning. The Railyard is a formerly-blighted area around the city's train depot that has been redeveloped over the last fifteen years and is now a hub for art galleries, cultural centers, brewpubs, and all the usual hipster hangouts. The centerpiece of the area is the large Saturday farmers market that sprawls alongside the old railroad tracks. It was a fun and energetic market with plenty of fresh produce and some oddities like a guy selling red composting worms.

Besides the outdoor tents there was a large covered mercado with more fresh produce, prepared foods, and some crafts. At the far end of the market there was an artisans market with more craftspeople and artists that worked in different media. So far we had done very well with farmers markets for two weekends in a row after finding very little of interest in Las Vegas.

We made a brief stop at Liquid Light Glass to see if we could watch any glassblowing. Their classes were already booked even if he had wanted to participate but we were content to watch from outside the studio for a while. The showroom inside had some beautiful glass sculptures but there are few things more stressful than trying to watch three kids simultaneously in a room full of fragile and valuable glass. Cleo is pretty responsible at this point but Ian is a risk for bumping into shelves and Spenser is a total wild card.

If there's one thing Santa Fe is famous for besides adobe buildings it is art galleries. Of course Canyon Road has the highest concentration but there are other areas such as the Railyard that are full of galleries as well. The queen of all Santa Fe's galleries is Nedra Matteuci Galleries, a sprawling two acre estate filled with art that hides an amazing sculpture garden within its walls. The focus here was on more traditional 19th and 20th century Southwestern art than the exuberant abstracts of the Railyard and Canyon Road. We dutifully trudged through the labyrinth of rooms but our real interest was the garden. We finally found the entrance to the garden in one of the back rooms and found ourselves in an urban oasis full of greenery and whimsical bronze sculptures. Somehow we were the only people in the garden despite it being Saturday morning at the height of tourist season. This amazing and unique place may not be available to visit for much longer as the property has apparently been listed for sale after more than thirty years of being the Matteuci gallery.


We were now just a block away from the beginning of Canyon Road and the logical next step would have been to walk down the iconic road hopping from gallery to gallery, but we realized we couldn't face it. We'd been soaking up art in New Mexico ever since Zuni and by this point we'd simply had enough. It didn't seem fair to the kids either since they'd put up with so many galleries in Albuquerque, Madrid, and Santa Fe over the last few days. I impulsively decided that we would embark on the itinerary we had originally planned for Sunday and drive towards Taos along the route known as the Low Road, a day trip that I've written about separately here.

On our last day in Santa Fe I was at something of a loss. We had pretty much blown through our whole itinerary the first day and until the evening I only had our back-up destinations to keep us occupied. Oddly enough it was chilly and rainy in the morning, a sharp contrast to the oppressively hot weather we had endured for most of the trip thus far. After breakfast we returned to the Railyard to visit the weekly Artisan's Market. The market had some interesting crafts but a lot of the stalls were devoted to clothes and antiques which weren't really our thing.

The Santa Fe Botanical Garden and many of the city's museums are clustered together in a small area called Museum Hill, in the southeastern part of town. I've always liked to visit botanical gardens when we travel since they're usually beautiful places and keep the kids occupied in the outdoors. This one had some interesting sculptures but it was quite small and dare I say it, somewhat ratty. We went through it in about an hour.

We're not big on museums but since we were already in the museum zone and I had hardly any ideas left for the afternoon we dropped into the Museum of Indian Arts & Culture. The fellow at the front desk let us know that much of the museum was closed that day so we decided not to go for the half price offer and just visited the gift shop instead. On the other side of the plaza was the Museum of International Folk Art which had a little more to see but was mainly a way for us to kill time. This was the first time on the trip that we'd found ourselves without enough to do. When we couldn't stand to look at any more dolls and masks I started hunting around for an early dinner. I found a Japanese restaurant that didn't really work for us but the spa hotel that it was associated with looked so interesting that we decided to drive all the way to the northeastern outskirts of town to take a look for ourselves. Ten Thousand Waves is a Japanese-style bath house built on a steep hill just off the highway to the local ski resort. Seeing such typical Japanese buildings in rural New Mexico felt quite incongruous. It was the most interesting thing we'd seen the whole day.

We drove back to the middle of town to eat at Chomp, Santa Fe's lone food hall. From the looks of things Santa Fe might be headed back to zero food halls in the near future. Despite being only six months old the space seemed dilapidated and somewhat depressing, with only a few customers. There were only five or six restaurants and just a couple seemed to be open. We were able to put together a meal of pizza and Cambodian food but the dreary atmosphere was a far cry from the Sawmill Market in Albuquerque.

There was no question that this had been the weakest day of our journey so far, but it was only a small damper on a spectacular first half of the road trip. Santa Fe had proved to be a major anticlimax after Albuquerque. We could certainly see the attraction of the beautiful adobe art galleries but there was much less of an authentic urban vibe. Most of the allure of Santa Fe seemed designed for the pleasure of the tourists and the privileged, and the city faded quickly outside of the center. Perhaps we missed some facets of the city during our short stay but we found very little to occupy us in Santa Fe even though we made sure our visit coincided with the weekend. If it hadn't been for the amazing day trip on the Low Road to Taos my decision to spend three nights in Santa Fe would have been a major error. We still weren't quite done with the city, though. I had booked an evening slot at House of Eternal Return, Meow Wolf's original immersive art experience that preceded Omega Mart in Las Vegas. It was another interesting quirk of our itinerary that it had taken us to both of Meow Wolf's installations, and we were optimistic that the second would be as good as the first if not better.

Outside of the warehouse that housed the Meow Wolf experience were several enormous sculptures similar to those outside Area 15 in Las Vegas. There was a colossal robot, a giant dog constructed from blue metal panels, and an ominous spider that reminded me of the one outside the Guggenheim in Bilbao. On the inside, House of Eternal Return was fronted by a creepy house that appeared to have been abandoned by a distressed family. It quickly became clear that the central mystery was far too complex and metaphysical for us to tackle, but at least there were some individual puzzles here that could be solved. And of course the house had all the colorful art, cool audiovisual installations, and secret tunnels the kids had loved at Omega Mart. It was a good way to end what had been a disappointing day up to that point.

Our departure from Santa Fe didn't just mark the midpoint of our journey in time. Up to this point we had been visiting major cities at regular intervals and enjoying the relative comforts of urban tourism. From here on we had a much more strenuous and unfamiliar path through Native American lands, small towns, and national parks with few stops more than a single night. What we were really doing was cramming two separate road trips into one long itinerary, and we were about to embark on the second adventure. We celebrated the moment with one of our best breakfasts of the trip at Dolina, a Slovakian cafe that we had almost overlooked even though it was just steps away from our Airbnb. The savory goulash and other Eastern European specialties were a welcome change from the Southwestern breakfasts we had been growing accustomed to. Pleasantly fortified, we set off for our first major challenge of the second act, the Bisti Wilderness.