We arrived in Santa Fe on March 14, at the beginning of the sheltering orders, and we have been here ever since. We will stay here until it is reasonably safe to travel again, which we hope will be sometime this summer. Then we expect to return to California for a while and see what happens next. Our traveling lifestyle is on hold for now but we hope to resume when we can. In the meantime we both agree that if you have to be stranded somewhere, then Santa Fe is a pretty nice place to be.
Our main entertainment is taking long walks every day. Santa Fe is a beautiful and interesting city, and the weather has been great, so walking around town is a pleasure. The tourists are gone so the streets are largely deserted, which is a little bit eerie but also makes social distancing easy. You can see photos of some of our walks in the galleries below.
Our daily life has not been significantly affected by the pandemic. Charlie goes grocery shopping (with a mask, required in New Mexico) once a week and that’s about the extent of our interaction with the public. Charlie has always enjoyed cooking and we rarely went out to eat even before the pandemic, so the closure of sit-down restaurants hasn’t been an issue for us. We order take-out about once a week, mainly to support the local restaurants during these tough economic times.
We are staying in a friend’s condo about a half mile from the old central plaza. It is in a compound of about two dozen condos. The architecture is pueblo-style and the driveway is gravel, so it has the feel of old Santa Fe. The photo gallery below shows a few glimpses of our condo complex, including an April snowstorm! Click on the first photo in each block to view the slideshow.
We often enjoy walks in the downtown area and the adjacent Railyard District, a former industrial area now reconfigured with shops and galleries. The State Capitol and the state government complex are an easy walk from our condo and from the central plaza, so we often walk through the landscaped grounds.
Canyon Road is another favorite walking destination, about a mile from our condo. Canyon Road is home to many of Santa Fe’s prominent art galleries, many with outdoor gardens and sculptures. The galleries have been closed but it is fun to walk down the mostly deserted street and view the art and architecture.
Another favorite walk is along the Old Santa Fe Trail from Museum Hill back to our condo. This walk features sweeping views of the distant mountains as well as many beautiful homes along the way. Adjacent to Museum Hill is a set of outdoor sculptures commemorating the migrants who traveled along the Old Santa Fe Trail in conestoga wagons. The museums have been closed due to the pandemic, but we have visited them during previous trips to Santa Fe.
About twice a week we like to drive out to Eldorado for our afternoon walk, about 12 miles southeast of Santa Fe. Eldorado is a community of pueblo-style single family homes on large lots (around two acres) so it is not as congested as Santa Fe. We rented a house in Eldorado for two months in the winter of 2018 and we always enjoyed our walks there. The streets are wide and safe for walking and there is a system of walkways/bikeways. There are sweeping views of the distant mountains in almost any direction.
Aside from all the walking, Carrie had a special knitting project during the pandemic quarantine. She follows a couple of knitting designers in Norway named Arne and Carlos and they hosted a “Mystery Knitalong” to keep people entertained while shut in. They posted a video each day with instructions for knitting a square for what would eventually become a pillow. Arne and Carlos are funny and entertaining. Even Charlie enjoyed their videos, and he’s not a knitter.
