Do You Know the Way to Santa Fe?

No matter when you visit Santa Fe (and my first time was on my honeymoon in 1978) someone usually says "Oh well, it's changed so much. You should have seen it "X" years ago. I'm sure they say that about any unique city, but time does march on, and we each experience a place in a moment that is only fixed in the blink of an eye. And anyway, some things about Santa Fe are just eternal. There is still a "there" there.
Nonetheless, I had decided I needed OUT of town for a weekend, so I took my daughter as my sidekick and we were off on the open road. Miles and miles of open road.

Naomi plugged in the iPod and we listened to her new(old) favorite folk/blues singer, Jackson C. Frank, whose only major album was produced by Paul Simon back in the Sixties before the downward spiral into obscurity. Check it out on iTunes. Moody broody road music.
 First stop: Muleshoe, where the town mule was all decked out for the 4th of July, and Naomi was only a hipster passing through:

Next we went through Clovis, a dismal little town that greets you with nasty, so-called Christian billboards slamming Muslims, liberals (i.e. anyone who disagrees with them), and President Obama.  ("Welcome to Clovis, bitch! Now move on!") Couldn't wait to move on. On past the grave of Billy the Kid, on to Santa Rosa and the slow gentle change from prairie to mesas to mountains. A small trip on Route 66, and then the inevitable Clines Corners, a craptacular truck stop/gift shop filled with all things wonderfully kitschy and Southwestern.

And finally the one hour drive up into Santa Fe, where we checked into the La Fonda Hotel and immediately went to eat at the French pastry shop downstairs, where all the recipes and pastries were just as I remembered. French Onion Soup! Milanese Torte! After that we were off and walking. That's what you do in Santa Fe. You walk and eat and look at art. On the second day after wandering through the new arts district at the railyard (where Naomi took her only photos of the trip, a series of images of graffiti on the walls and sidewalks) I became overheated and exhausted. If I had hoped to get away to cooler temperatures I was sadly mistaken. Santa Fe was in the middle of a heat wave. I went back to the hotel to lie down while Naomi wandered farther afield and came back with two animal skulls she had bought from some gallery owner who just happened to have them in the back of his shop. Naomi has good skull radar. It's a thing with her. I may have promised her my own skull when I pass on but some people may find that disturbing. I just figure I can 'keep an eye on her'.
Anyway, nothing major happened over the weekend. Just some good mother-daughter bonding, some good food (at The Shed Friday night, Pasqual's Saturday morning, and The Palace Saturday night) and shopping for little fun things we bought that didn't break the bank. Here are some of the photos from the trip. None are Naomi's as she hasn't even downloaded her images yet:

Cheers!