If I had a dollar for every person that told me “You need a vacation” I’d have, well, a lot of dollars. It was obvious to them, and obvious to me that I needed a break from everyday life. First, where to go? I don’t have bags of money all over my house, so this vacation would have to be on a budget. Second, where to go? Time was also relatively limited because of school and other obligations. The destination? Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. Santa Fe is only a five hour drive and could be conquered in a weekend.
We went the weekend after Labor Day thinking “It’s the weekend after a holiday, nobody will be there, hotels will be cheap, it will be great!” Well, for those of you that don’t know, every year in Santa Fe they have the Zozobra festival. The Zozobra represents all the troubles and worries of the people from the previous year, and they have a ceremonial burning of the Zozobra and a week long festival. It takes place the weekend after Labor Day. So, rather than a quiet, empty Santa Fe like we were hoping to find, we walked into a bustling holiday celebration for the entire town.
A festival may sound like a lot of fun to you, and it could enhance your vacation experience. Well, neither Elvis nor I like crowds, loud things, or dirty fair/carnival folk. Luckily for us, they were all in abundance. It was somewhat stressful having to navigate through crowds to get to the things we wanted to see, and because it was a holiday, most of the shops, attractions and businesses closed early. They have apparently never studied economics because everything was closed and there were tons of people who surely would’ve bought things. I digress. It was fantastic to get away from home for a bit, even though there was a festival going on. We saw the oldest church in America- established by the Spanish in 1610 when they settled in Santa Fe- street artists, jewelers, the Palace of the Governors, the New Mexico history museum, St. Francis of Assisi catholic church, hiked to the top of a hill in town and saw a giant cross, avoided a parade of children and their pets, and basically conquered Santa Fe in a day and a half. Had we been around in the 1600’s history would be very different, and Elvis and the Eagle would have ruled the world. Just sayin’.
After successfully conquering Santa Fe, we decided to go through Taos on the way home. Before leaving, people said “Oh, go to Taos, you’ll love it!” Well, we did, and we did love it. Because it’s tiny, we were able to conquer it in less than a day, and have a delicious lunch. (Please note, that we did not partake in any outdoor activity, so I suppose this would only be a half conquered town.) We had two things we wanted to do, and we did them before lunch. We went to an awesome toy store as soon as we arrived, and played with all of the toys- who says toys are for kids?! After going to Twirl, we went to Kit Carson State Park for the cemetery. I’ll repeat that. We went to Kit Carson State Park for the cemetery. Elvis and I love cemeteries, and definitely wanted to go to this one. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when we walked up, it was nothing like I had expected. It was small- we could see all the way across it- there were paved walking paths, a baseball field on one side, volleyball courts on another, and kids laughing and playing on the other side. It was very odd for the soundtrack of a cemetery to be the sounds of children laughing and playing in the park 30 feet away. The colors of the grass, flowers, and sky were vibrant, as opposed to the muted colors I regularly see in cemeteries. It was a bit unsettling, but hopeful at the same time, to have so much life surrounding an area of final resting places. New life was literally surrounding death. I took several photographs while there (which felt, not necessarily wrong, but out of place in a cemetery.) You can look at the photos in the album on the sidebar.
We met several artists while we were there, and want to go back to take art classes with them. I had the best peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream cone ever, with (I think) homemade ice cream, and the most structurally sound cone I’ve ever eaten- not a single drop of ice cream dripped out the end!
It was fantastic to get away if just for a long weekend, and revitalized both of us. Traveling is something that we plan to do more of in the future with day trips hopefully up to full on vacations involving bigger travel, an airplane and the whole shebang.
Everybody says this, but we plan to keep this blog to share travel adventures, plans and photos. No guarantees on regular updates- conquering the world is hard work!
-The Eagle
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