HAPPILY SETTLED IN SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO

Northern New Mexico has some fabulous scenery! We enjoyed several day trips around Taos - the Enchanted Circle, the "High Road" through the ancient Indian Pueblos, a hike above 10,000 feet to Williams Lake - all quite striking, with fascinating history. Still, I was disenchanted with Taos and was happy to move to Santa Fe yesterday.

We have settled into Trailer Ranch RV Park (read our review and view photos here), an urban RV park on the south end of town. Driving into historic, convoluted downtown Santa Fe, on roads established a few hundred years ago, didn't appeal to us - here, we can catch a bus right outside the RV park that goes straight to the downtown transit center, two blocks from the plaza. It's great - a buck a day for each of us for unlimited riding!

As soon as we set up yesterday afternoon, we visited Santa Fe's Trader Joe's - it had been way too long. Looking at our receipt, I see wine, wine and more wine... and junk food, delicious Trader Joe's junk food: triple ginger snaps, chocolate covered dried cranberries, chips to go with homemade salsa. Speaking of homemade salsa...

It is chile time in New Mexico. Ristras of dried red chiles are on display everywhere. Almost every large parking lot has a tent set up with 3 or 4 chile roasting drums and roasted Hatch chiles for sale, both red and green. It seems like an unusual sight to us, but obviously is very common here this time of year. The smell is delicious!

We took the bus to the plaza today and spent several hours wandering the narrow streets, getting our bearings and people watching. I'm starting to suffer a touch of "adobe fatigue" - as much as I enjoy the pueblo style buildings, it begins to feel a little overdone when even the Target store looks like a pueblo! Check out this great old door, though - there is plenty of architectural splendor to admire.

As I write this tonight, I am watching the excited Weather Channel reporters as they describe the landfall of hurricane Ike on Galveston Island. Our first visit to Galveston was last year, in March of 2007. I posted a message to our blog back then describing the deadly hurricane of 1900 (click here to read the post and see photos). If you haven't been there, and don't know how closely the lifestyle revolves around proximity to water, click here. You will also see some photos of Galveston Island State Park, on the west end of the island, currently underwater. According to the news reports, around 20,000 people did not evacuate Galveston in spite of the mandatory evacuation order - beyond my comprehension. One woman, when interviewed, said she stayed because she didn't want to get caught in the traffic jam. Best of luck to them all.