Do you know the way to Santa Fe? Dion Warwick would say! Well, not exactly, but now you can’t get that nasty ear worm out! I’ll make up for it by gifting one of our sunrises (yes, we’re up that early).

We found a smart place to put one of the twin rocks we featured yesterday. Someone’s gonna be surprised!

Not really having a plan for touring, we started out at the Farmer’s Market, which is just on the outskirts of the old downtown. It runs year-round on Saturdays (yay!) and Tuesdays. We weren’t pleased to see every single street blanketed with parking meters (greedy capitalists!), but at least relieved that they were smart, internet-accessible ones, and not just the old school quarter-gobbling clunkers. We need those quarters for the old school laundromats. On our whole trip, this is the first place we have found a laundry that takes credit cards. Astonishing that America’s RV parks haven’t caught up with the 20^th Century. Of course, we don’t need to do laundry while we’re here because we did that in Cheyenne, thus lowering the weight of the rig by a few dozen quarters. Smart, right?

We discovered there is a regional passenger train running north-south through town, called the Rail Runner, that has a depot at the Farmer’s Market. It runs as a “commuter” line all the way to Albuquerque and beyond, including the airport. I wonder if it takes quarters.

Wendy dressed all in clothes that our daughter-in-law Dana gave her, and insisted I get this picture as evidence. I have no idea what the sculpture represents, but doesn’t Wendy look great?

The farmer’s market was very crowded as soon as it opened. There were obviously lots of tourists wearing t-shirts from all their stops. There was also almost every type of leafy green you could think of, and many you can’t think of. Lots of other produce too, and turquoise jewelry everywhere. You would never guess we’re having an inflation crisis with everything being disgustingly over-priced. I know that lettuce is getting expensive, but tiny bags of lettuce leaves at $9? Really? Who needs this stuff to survive? The only thing we found of interest at the farmer’s market, which is something we always seek out wherever we go, is the Ice Cream Store. In this case it was the Taos Ice Cream Store, and as luck would have it, they also make donuts! For me, it’s a true Two-Fer, as these 2 things are the keys to my nutritional philosophy. The donuts were expensive, but you can’t really put a price on philosophy.

We’re not much for art galleries, farmer’s markets full of super over-priced stuff, or museums. This seemed to be a lot of what Old Town Santa Fe is, so we opted for a nice walk through all of it, and really appreciated the grand church that abuts Cathedral Plaza. We went inside to sit and ponder for several minutes. It was fantastic. No interior photography, so we’ll treat you to the exterior.

What Santa Fe does have is some very good food. We stumbled across La Fogata (translation: the campfire) who had very authentic street tacos (shrimp, barbacoa, al pastor) and chili rellenos, and a very tasty and spicy bean menudo that we absolutely loved. And the restaurant was, in the southwestern style, very colorful inside.

They delivered our silverware wrapped up in a napkin, with one of those paper rings around it that have one sticky end like a PostIt note. You’ve all seen them. From experience, I know to carefully remove mine and pass it over to Wendy so she can render one of her “idle hands” creations by tearing the papers into strips and looping a chain out of them. She usually gifts them to a server.

Tippy thinks Leonardo was a really smart guy.