Meow Wolf is hard to explain, but very fun to experience. It is an art installation complete with mixed media, lights and sounds. When you enter, you go into a “house” of many rooms, interconnected by doorways, stairways, and slides. You can also go through the fireplace, enter the refrigerator, and walk through the back of closets. We tried every doorknob because you don’t know which ones will lead you to another exhibit.
Los Alamos, NM, is a short drive from Santa Fe. The Los Alamos National Lab is located there, and research from the secret Manhattan Project in WWII in Los Alamos resulted in the first atomic bomb. We toured the Bradbury Science Museum and took the walking tour of the historic neighborhood where scientists lived in the 1940s.
We traveled north one day in search of fiber arts galleries, tours, and yarn, but found the New Mexico Fiber Arts Trails website is sorely out of date – by as much as 6-8 years. Artists that used to participate in the fiber trail no longer do so, or artists still in business are closed for the winter season. However, we did have a lovely drive exploring hwy 84 north from Santa Fe to Tierra Amarilla and Los Ojos. We stopped at the Abiquiu Inn for lunch, then headed further north to Los Ojos where we discovered Tierra Wools was closed for the winter. On the way back to Santa Fe, we climbed to over 10,000 feet and traveled east across the Carson National Forest, then south on hwy 285 to Espanola where we discovered the Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center full of local yarn, crafts, roving and many floor-sized weaving looms for classes.
We took a day trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico, a very historic town about 50 miles northeast of our house. It was a thriving community on the Old Santa Fe Trail in the 1800s and by the late 1800s it was the largest city in New Mexico. The arrival of the railroad in 1879 boosted its fortunes but with the decline of rail travel in the 1950s its economy suffered. Fred Harvey established one of his finest railside hotels in Las Vegas in 1899, the Castaneda Hotel. It fell into decay but is currently being restored by the same group that restored the Harvey House, La Posada, in Winslow.
The New Mexico History Museum has an exhibit on the history of the Fred Harvey Company. The exhibit details greatly enhanced our knowledge and enjoyment of our Harvey House tours. “Artifacts in the exhibit include: the original Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway track sign for Albuquerque’s Alvarado Hotel; Harvey Girl uniforms (including the unique embroidered blouse worn by La Fonda waitresses in the 1950s); furniture designed by famed architect and interior decorator Mary Colter; hand-stamped Navajo spoons; Fred Harvey’s original datebook and an iconic painting of the man behind the empire. Other artifacts include a gong similar to ones that rang travelers to their meals (this one hung in the company’s Chicago office) and an original Doris Lee painting while helping to plan MGM’s The Harvey Girls, starring Judy Garland. The image Lee created was adopted by the Harvey Company and used on menus at El Navajo in Gallup and El Tovar at the Grand Canyon.”
Our house is out in the desert about 12 miles southeast of Santa Fe. The houses are on 2 to 5 acre lots so there is a lot of open land. We both enjoy long walks throughout the neighborhood.
After a brief return to California for visits with family and friends we headed to our next home outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. We traveled along old Route 66 and made a few stops along the way. We especially enjoyed another night’s stay at La Posada, the old restored Harvey House in Winslow, Arizona. Now we’re settled into New Mexico for the winter.
Tiana’s mother, Marilyn, took us to the Basque Block in downtown Boise. Marilyn is of Basque descent and shared a lot about Basque culture and history. We started with lunch at a lively Basque restaurant bustling with the lunch crowd, Bar Gernika, with an interesting list of taps:
Firestone Walker Sticky Monkey Quad
Deschutes The Abyss 2018 Imp Stout
Barley Brown’s Handtruck Pale
Kostritzer Schwartzbier
New Belgium Trippel
Sockeye Christmas Kriek (Sour)
Boulevard American Kolsch Lost Grove First Sight IPA
After lunch we went to the Basque Museum and the associated boarding house next door. There is a large Basque community in Idaho and Northern Nevada and you see their influence throughout the region.
Not to be outdone by Times Square, Boise has its own New Years Eve Celebration, the Idaho Potato Drop. Held in the park adjacent to the State Capitol, a huge replica of a potato is dropped from a crane at the stroke of midnight. There is live entertainment all afternoon and evening. We attended the raising of the potato at 6 PM but not the midnight festivities. It was already cold at 6 PM.
Andy stayed with us for a couple of extra days after Christmas and we visited the Old Idaho Penitentiary. It was in use for over 100 years beginning in 1872 and it is now an historical site. It was very interesting to see how the prisoners lived. The conditions were brutal; it was not a pleasant place.
