theboondork's RV blog

A day trip to Santa Fe

5/8/2018

since I went a lot of places, and took a lot of pictures I'm going to be posting pictures of different places over the next few days so you won't get to see pictures of Santa Fe until tomorrow. On the way to Santa Fe I saw there was a Tiny bit of snow on the peaks around Santa Fe.

I struck out this morning for Santa Fe at 9 o'clock, since it's about an hour away I figured that would give the traffic a chance to lighten up a bit before I got to the big city.

I knew the traffic was going to be pretty bad around the old historic Spanish Governors Mansion, which is like the heart of the tourist district of Santa Fe. But the volume of tourist both driving and walking surprised even me.

I had to park many blocks away from the center of activity and walk, that's right walk, to where all the touristy stuff is. I don't take walking lightly, I believe that were born with a certain number of steps that we can take in our life, and when we reach that number that we're limited to.... We fall over.

But I got to see some of the things I went there to see, even though the day was too short to see them all. Which brings me to the idea of day trips. In the past I didn't like to leave the Arctic Fox all alone for more than a few hours, so that limited the places I could go and the things I could see without dragging the Arctic Fox along with me. But I'm trying to force myself to branch out from wherever I'm boondocked and visit places, like I did today that will take most of the day or longer to visit and enjoy.

And I say enjoy because today I tried to pack too much sightseeing into a one-day trip, and dealing with the crowds, the traffic, and all the walking just plum tuckered me out. I can't imagine what Santa Fe would be like to visit on the weekend, but for me it just wouldn't be enjoyable.

But I do like the idea of doing more day trips and mini vacations. So I'm going to spend some more time thinking about how I can comfortably stay overnight or for several days and boondock either in my truck or in a tent so I don't have to stay in $100 a night motels, and from the looks of Santa Fe I'll bet a $100 a night motel would be a bargain if you could find one.

theboondork

the first place I stopped this morning was the Pecos national Historical Park which is only about 10 miles from Santa Fe. there's a very old church there I wanted to see. And to get to it I had to walk about half a mile down this trail through the forest.

Adobe Spanish mission take us New Mexico

this is the first view of the old adobe Spanish mission.

Old Spanish Adobe church near Santa Fe New Mexico

this is actually the second Mission the Spanish built here. The first one was totally destroyed in 1680 when the Indians that lived here revolted and ran off all the Spanish that were living in this area including Santa Fe. Any Spanish that decided to stay, which included a lot of priests were summarily killed in new and interesting ways. They then destroyed everything the Spanish built especially the churches.

This church was completed in 1717 and most of the damage you see now was caused by wind and rain and not Indians. since it was built out of Adobe, which is a fancy name for mud pies, in less constantly cared for it doesn't hold up very well.

if these walls could talk.... They would probably speak Spanish and I couldn't understand a word of it.

the view looking out of what used to be a Spanish Mission.

6 Comments

Barney Ward

5/8/2018 05:47:14 pm

Really nice pictures and commentary. Thank you.

Tom

5/8/2018 07:01:17 pm

Thank you Barney, it's a tough job but somebody's gotta do it.

Tom.... Toooo tired after doing Santa Fe in one day

Tim

5/9/2018 07:19:02 am

Cool place and great photos - I'm adding this to the list of places to visit. It's tough sometimes to make photos look good during the middle of the day with few clouds, but these are excellent and really give a sense of the place. In fact, you've taken a liability (few clouds and a lot of sun) and made it into a asset; that first photo of the mission on the hill is striking because you framed it so well and used the pure blue palette or the sky - very well done.

5/9/2018 08:02:43 am

Well thank you for that Tim, but I think you're confusing skill with luck. I just take a bunch of pictures and hope I get two or three that are good enough to put on my blog. I figure the law of averages will give me a couple of good pictures if I take enough to overcome my lack of talent.

But your right about the clouds, it takes some nice clouds to get a decent landscape picture but unfortunately in the West clouds are few and far between. remember the song, give me a home where the Buffalo roam and the skies are not cloudy all day? Well that's actually true. Except the whole Buffalo thing. So the clear blue skies that are a blessing for my solar panels, are a curse for my photography.

And actually at the Pecos historical Park there's a lot more to see than just that old Mission. I could've spent a couple of hours there taking pictures of other things but I was on my way to Santa Fe and I knew Santa Fe was going to take up most of my day.

And it's a good thing I didn't walk another mile or two at that Park. Because if I had I'm not sure if I could have made it back to my truck that afternoon after walking around Santa Fe.

Tom

5/9/2018 08:27:05 am

If there is even more at the Historical Park, then it's definitely going on the list. I really enjoy walking and hiking, but I wonder how hard it's going to be to adjust to the climate out west, where the elevation is typically higher and much more arid than here.

Before I started dabbling in photography, I thought good photographers went somewhere, snapped one photo that was the perfect shot, and was done. When I took some online classes from some professional photographers, one of the most important epiphanies I had was that they take hundreds and sometimes thousands of photos and sort through them to find those few shots that they keep, to say nothing of the post processing time. So, it's more than luck, it's a learned skill and can be hard work to get those few good shots. (Sorry, this is probably letting the cat out of the bag that you aren't quite as lazy as you present to the world).

5/9/2018 09:32:22 am

Yeah they were Pueblo Indians living there. Their the tribes that settle down and build permanent houses out of rocks and store their food in deep holes in the ground, and some of that stuff is still there.

There was also a Civil War battle fought there, oddly enough, and you can see the sites where things happened. It's an interesting place and it's even free which is strange for a federal government run operation.

You will adapt to the climate and altitude pretty quick. When I go back to where I used to live in Colorado it takes me about a week of feeling lightheaded to get used to being at 9000 feet again. And your hiking will slow down considerably until you get used to the altitude. I always try to spend a little time at 9000 feet before I actually go up into the mountains. As for the single-digit humidity, just carry lots of moisturizer or in no time at all you'll look like an alligator.

I saw a documentary on television long time ago about how Playboy magazine gets the cover photo for each monthly addition, and it was a huge process. But the most interesting thing to me was that the professional, well-known, highly paid photographer, with a crew of lighting specialists, scene decorators, assistance to hold reflectors, makeup, hairdressers, and photo editors, took 30,000 pictures over a period of days of that girl in the same scene just to get the one picture that Hugh Hefner liked. I think even I could get a good picture by those standards.

Tom

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A day trip to Santa Fe

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