We hung around the house this morning watching the snow flurries and talking about Santa Fe – I had expected it to be a touch on the mercantile side because everyone kept telling me about the jewelry and art galleries and stuff to buy – but actually I am surprised by how few people are here given that it is Easter weekend and how confined the shopping is to just certain areas.
When I first began thinking about the first of my five 50th birthday celebrations – Santa Fe was the launching point – the spiritual journey to begin the others. I didn’t realize when we booked the dates that it was actually in the middle of Easter and Passover and that sanctuaria walkers would be hiking down the shoulders of the highway making a pilgrimage to Chimayo for their sacred dirt.
But there it is.
Today we headed out of the snow flurries and found the most beautiful passageway on the road up to Los Alamos and Bandolier National Monument. The huge red plateaus, the snow capped Jemez mountain chain in the backdrop, and then down below the hoary tops of cottonwoods lining the Rio Grande. Now that is what I call spiritual. And we drove up and up into the snow.
It was snowing up a storm by the time we got up to Bandolier and the ranger thought the roads might start getting bad, so we headed instead to Espanola where we stopped at Angelina’s and had a fabulous lunch of lamb burritos and tamales with the best sopapillos that have ever melted in my mouth and washed it all down with ice cold Tecates. A big yum. And a big must stop there to eat any of you traveling this way. The woman at Ojo Caliente told me to stop at Chili’s for lunch and I said to her: CHILI’s, ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
After our delicious lunch, we headed to Ojo Caliente and arrived in the midst of rain and snow and were shown to our outside thermal private pool where we undressed quickly in the freezing weather and plunged into our oasis. We stayed there for two hours, not emerging till our fingers and toes were prunes. Ahhhh. Spiritual indeed – can’t you see our spirits rising?
