Beyond Here

Part of what made the Santa Fe part of our trip so relaxing and enjoyable was the place we stayed. It was a VRBO (vacation rental by owner) rental recommended to us by our friends B and R. High up in the mountains with sun soaked decks, vast 180 degree views and abundant windows in the main house where one could sit and enjoy the night sky late into the night, it made for a perfect eagle's nest for us. Nikki was the most gracious owner and we felt right at home. While Master S and I spent a lot of time on the deck lazing in the sun and rocking in the chairs, not surprisingly Mr. S used his downtime to catch up on work. Phew!

I thought I will jot down some quick pointers for Santa Fe... or rather the high points of our trip to the city. The Plaza in Santa Fe is where all the action is. Its a lively section of old town - there is a local street side bazaar of the native americans selling their jewelry, a couple of churches, lots of art galleries and handicraft shops, restaurants, jewelry shops, museums etc. Everthing centres around the plaza. The other notable thing about the town was hanging chilies - they were everywhere. They were being sold in shops and people had them hanging outside their shops and houses. Then there was this restaurant/shack kind of a place that was definitely serving the best chili sauce in town - it was spicy hot, made our noses water but it was yumm to the last drop. The Shed is definitely a must try for any visitor to Santa Fe. And right next to it was this other colorful shop with lots of hanging chilies and strands of vegetables but this time they were made of g...

After Monument Valley we headed over to Santa Fe. I had first heard great reviews about Santa Fe from some friends who took a road trip across US before leaving the country to return to their home country. I had also seen the pictures and it had definitely piqued my interest. The whole city (old Santa Fe) has this Adobe architecture which are mud-caked walls as you would probably see in really remote indian villages. Everything from the restaurants to malls to barber shops to the bank had this kind of a look. The Plaza in old part of the city was where we spent most of our time during our stay in Santa Fe. Here are some examples of Adobe architecture from the Plaza.

Monument Valley, as is evident from the previous pictures, is basically a desert area. The temperatures were high too (ok, not so high as they typically are). But the valley floor at a lot of places had these beautiful white flowers growing.

After refreshing ourselves from the long drive, we were ready for the drive into the valley. A dirt road took us into the valley. We did not have a jeep/SUV or a four wheel drive, so the first few switchbacks, which were bumpy to say the least, had us crossing our fingers. But thereafter it was a fairly ok dirt road. It was a 17 mile loop but it took us more than 3 hours to do the whole thing because we wanted to stop at each and every corner. In addition to the mittens, we saw more weirdly shaped buttes. There was the Raingod Mesa, the Thunderbird Mesa, the Totem Poles, the Three Sisters etc. But the ones I liked the best were the Elephant butte and the Camel butte.

We are back - from a short but nice, relaxing vacation to one of the places that has been on my list of "places to visit before I die" for a long time now. We flew into Alburqurque, NM and then after a midway stop in Farmington, we reached the Monument Valley. Erosion over decades has resulted in these huge buttes that stand desolate in a valley and make for some of the most frequently photographed places in US. It is an Indian reservation area (Navajo Tribal Park to be precise) and so does not fall under the US National Park System. While we first saw the huge buttes from the parking lot, when we checked into our room, the balcony afforded one of the best views into the valley. View from our balcony (midday) These particular formations are called the west and east mitten (for obvious reasons) and the Merrick butte (for no apparent reason). We ended up going click-click with our camera at these for a large part of our trip. I was particularly intrigued by the symmetry of...