Day 23: Favorite Vacation

O.K. here I am playing catch up again! That's not really surprising!

Day 23 is Favorite Vacation and I feel like it's somewhat repetitive. So instead of telling you all about Colorado Springs again, I'm going to tell you about my Most Recent Vacation! It's my blog....I'm changing the rules!

Dan and I knew we didn't want to leave on a big honeymoon right after the wedding! AND good thing we didn't because we were EXHAUSTED!! But we did want to get away and enjoy ourselves for awhile, so we took 2 days off work and left Sunday. We set out for Santa Fe, NM! Neither of us had ever been so it sounded like a good idea!

These are the things I learned about New Mexico

1. You can't get a good steak without paying A LOT of money!


2. Everything shuts down EARLY....like old people early!


3. Antelope are only cool to see for the first few......after that they are really boring

That makes it sound like our vacation sucked.....and it definitely did not. But it is not on our list of places to return to that's for sure.

We left Sunday and drove to Santa Fe. It was a fun drive at first. We laughed about the wedding, filled each other in on things we had missed, and really just had a great time being alone after all the wedding festivities! It was only supposed to be a 7 hour drive and with changing time zones we gained an hour, so we started out thinking very positive about the drive.

That is until we got to this 82 mile stretch of NOTHING. I mean absolutely nothing but Antelope. This got very boring, very very very boring. I would be perfectly happy if I never saw another antelope in my entire life, I have seen enough.

We did keep going after that TERRIBLE stretch and made it to Santa Fe Sunday night. Grabbed a bunch of brochures, went swimming for awhile, and then crashed!

Monday, we got up and headed out for a day of casual browsing and adventure. We found a lot of pamphlets for this place. The Loretto Chapel.It wasn't even really so much about the Chapel, but more the staircase in the chapel. I was somewhat skeptical at first because I didn't understand how a spiral staircase could really be that interesting. I was wrong, it was really interesting once you got the history on it. This chapel is tiny and doesn't hold a very big congregation. When the chapel was completed in 1878, there was no way to get to the choir loft, aside from a ladder because it caused the least interference with seating. The Sisters of the Chapel sent up a novena, and their prayers were answered. Some mysterious man showed up with a carpenters square, a handsaw, and a hammer. For no pay or thanks, with no nails, he built this magnificent staircase that makes 2 360 degree turns, and still baffles architects and engineers today. It really is something to see. The Catholic faith is strong in Santa Fe. We also toured this church, while we were there, The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi. There has been a Catholic church on this site for over 400 years. It really is a beautiful church.This was also a very interesting part of Santa Fe. The Indians sit down on the square and roll out blankets to sell their BEAUTIFUL handmade jewelry. It's awesome to just walk up and down to see everything they have made. Dan, being the AMAZING husband he is, bought me a ring and the indian we bought it from showed us pictures of the mine that he got the turqouise from. It was very neat to see them with all their goods. I could have dropped some very serious cash!We ate lunch and felt like we were running out of things to do. So we started grabbing more pamphlets. Dan found one with this picture on it. It was for a Trading Post. He thought it sounded neat, I thought it sounded neat, so we decided to check it out. WE WERE WRONG!Very Very Wrong. We went to the Wheelwright Museum and the Trading Post was in the basement. This is what was in the Wheelwright Museum.Yep, rugs. They were pretty, but they were still just rugs. That's it walls and walls and walls of rugs. Sure didn't take us long to walk through that Museum. We get down to the basement and almost immediately ran out. The Trading Post was actually just their gift shop and EVERYTHING was expensive. Like handmade rope baskets for over 2 grand. "Dan put your hands in your pockets, don't bump into anything, and let's get out of here."After a long long failed search for a steak that didn't cost us a small fortune, we did find somewhere to eat but weren't quite ready to call it a night. So we decided to head out to the Casino. We wound up at Camel Rock Casino. Of course, I lost money FAST, but I always do. I pulled out another $5 more than I wanted to spend and Dan and I started playing Blackjack. And we both won all of our money back. It was a good time and a great way to end the evening.

This is Johnny. Johnny is who made our trip to Santa Fe one to remember. A little backround information....I had gone on a hot air balloon ride when I was little, like 8 or so, and I have wanted to do it again as an adult. When we went to Colorado, I wanted to do it but Dan is a bit afraid of heights and he wasn't to keen on the idea! But something must have been o.k. with it in New Mexico and he let me book the flight. So I called Santa Fe Ballooning and booked a flight for Tuesday morning. They told us they would pick us up at 5:45 a.m. at our hotel. Whew, thats early! But I was excited and we were ready to go when he got there. He took us on a short drive north of Santa Fe to this place. We took an hour long balloon flight of these ravines and it was absolutely breathtaking. Dan loved it, I loved it, and Johnny was the best pilot in the world. He even let us run the controls. The flight was definitely the best part of our quick little Honeymoon!