Santa Fe, NM

We had reserved a campsite just outside Santa Fe for a week, but ended up staying a little less than that. Santa Fe has wonderful museums and it's a great place if you want to buy things. And Jim loves to buy things. I'm ok to look at stuff for a while, but pretty soon I get tired and grumpy doing that. I don't want more stuff.  I have too much stuff already.  So after a few days of wandering around shops full of turquoise and silver, beautiful but pricey galleries, and other places selling all manner of southwestern gear, we decided to explore outside the city. More on that later, but meanwhile here are some photos from Santa Fe:

This is the Santa Fe Railyard district where we spend a lovely time at a Saturday morning market. Bought wonderful fruits and vegetables and did a bunch of people watching. One woman was walking around with a pretty big cream-colored pet snake wrapped around her arm (or neck...). Sort of startled me when I realized what it was.

One of the booths was selling composting worms. One sign here reads "hungry worms will work for garbage"

This is the rail station/visitor's center (which has very helpful staff). There is a free shuttle bus that takes you all around town - very handy when trying to avoid parking hassles.

A very large painting in the Art Museum   

The art museum has a wonderful outdoor garden with  many sculptures

These are the most typical decorative plants in this area: hollyhocks and strings of dried red peppers. Both are everywhere.

All buildings here are adobe - usually fake adobe. Even the parking garages look like centuries old adobe.

Next stop - Bandolier National Monument. A treasure!