At Trinidad, CO we rejoined the Santa Fe Trail from our little detour. From this point it pretty well follows I-25 to Santa Fe. One of the hardest mountain passes for the Santa Fe Trail travelers was the Raton Pass on the border of Colorado and New Mexico. We topped this pass at 7894 feet elevation.
Once over the pass and into New Mexico we dropped back down to the mid 6000 ft range, again for many miles. The signs keep telling us that we are on the trail!
The landsape in New Mexico is more of the same to start with - more high plains front & rear. Later it changes.
We started seeing lots of antelope - one herd was fairly close to interstate so we stopped for a few pictures.
As we got farther south, the landscape changed - went from high plains/grasslands to high juniper scrub with a few pines and some scrubby kind of little hardwood that we don't know what was.
For the final 10-20 miles of the day's drive we climbed back to over 7000 feet and came into Santa Fe - at 7198 ft. We checked into Santa Fe Skies RV Park for the weekend after a 278 mile drive. We're not too fond of commercial RV Parks - we'd much rather stay in state or national parks, or Army Corps of Engineer parks. However, when none of those are around you have to take what you can get. As you can see, you are much closer to your neighbors in a place like this.
Saturday we went out to Denny's for breakfast and got kind of a shock - everyone in there was speaking Spanish, customers and servers (luckily, ours was bilingual). After breakfast we toured Old Town Santa Fe - a very interesting place. The streets are all one-way and pretty narrow with cars parked along the sidewalks.
In the center of Old Town Santa Fe is a plaza (or park) with all kinds of shops and stores on the surrounding street. There is a stone plaque marking the end of the Santa Fe Trail! Yeah, we made it!
Along one side of the plaza was a covered sidewalk where people had set up for selling their wares on Saturday morning. They didn't have tables, just had it spread on the sidewalk on blankets. A regular flea market! There was also a store advertising itself as "The Original Trading Post" - maybe it was.
Just off the main square was several other interesting buildings including St. Francis Cathedral - lots of adobe used in construction around here.
Then there's the strange looking folks you happen to see -- these two looked like Bohemians or Gypsies, or something. We saw several of these "travelers" around town.
Saturday was an on & off rainy day, temperatures in the 40's, with a few snow showers. It was also our domestic day - had to take care of a couple of weeks worth of dirty clothes at the RV park laundry. One time it sleeted enough to build up on top of the Jeep, but a little later it stopped and melted pretty quick.
Sunday (today) we were slackers on going to church. Yesterday we looked up and checked out a couple of churches, but they just didn't feel right to us. As you can imagine, the population of Santa Fe is primarily from Mexican descent and the churches we found were deep in the Mexican flavored subdivisions. One had a high chain link fence all around with a high gate that was closed & locked on Saturday. I guess they had it open today. It's not that we're predjudiced against Mexicans, and they probably would have welcomed us with open arms, but we just didn't think we'd feel comfortable at one of those churches. Also, we were concerned that the service might be in Spanish and we wouldn't understand it -- might be like Denny's yesterday!
After our little private worship service - reading our Bibles and asking God for forgiveness for our skipping church today (hoping He understood why) - we went out to Olive Garden for lunch and then went back down to Old Town Santa Fe. Yesterday we didn't get out and do any walking - the weather was just too cold, rainy, and windy. Today it was cloudy with a few sprinkles, but it was warmer and no wind. We parked in a lot and walked around a couple of sides of the plaza checking out some of the shops. We couldn't believe how many jewelry stores there were - almost every other one. Not cheap stuff either - LaVerne was checking out a couple of rings in one of the windows and liked them a lot until she saw the prices - $2450! We also went in a western wear store - coats over $3500, vests for $1850, belts $69-$99! We didn't buy anything today!
On a side street was a more colorful Mexican store that sold everything from T-Shirts, serapes (blankets), and chili peppers.
We've enjoyed the weekend here in Santa Fe, but tomorrow is moving day again. We're headed farther south - down below Alburquerque near a couple of National Wildlife Refuges that we want to visit.
Best advice of the day was to fight back hard if a mountain lion attacks you. Better carry that cannon of a pistol you have. Ha!
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