My Trip to Santa Fe, NM. Part 2

If you missed it, part one is here.

• We slept late due to our hangovers and got up around 11am. We headed back to the plaza for lunch only to find the place we were going to go to so busy that there was a corpse on the list ahead of us. We settled on the Sleeping Dog which is this dark lit bar and restaurant under the Blue Corn Café. There I had a chicken alfredo type dish with green chilies in it. I got to say, green chilies and Italian food don’t mix well. Might as well have eaten an ice cream sundae with ranch dressing.

New Mexico and Italy are easily confused for one another

• While shopping in the plaza, one thing became apparent real quick. Every store is either an art gallery or a kitschy shop with tourist trap junk. It’s like every store in Times Square selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, and other crap that says “I Love New York” on it.
  
  Jewelry was in every store too. My eyes can no longer see the color turquoise since I have seen so much of it my brain has reached a new plane of consciousness. There was so much jewelry in fact that if I ever set foot into another jewelry store I am going to strip off all my clothes, put on war paint, fashion a primitive club out of a chair leg, and scream nonsensical gibberish at random patrons. Nobody would be able to buy an engagement ring while I’m transformed into Ranak, Lord of the Wolves, I can tell you that! “Female no want shiny rock,” I would tell the likely frightened prospective ring buyer. “Give female slain elk carcass. Good for eating. Female will give you sexing”

• We went to the New Mexico History Museum and the Santa Fe Art Museum Friday evening for free. We would never have gone when we had to pay as they were absurdly overpriced. $20 for two exhibits at the history museum? What the hell? Do they have Hernando Cortez in there? (No, no they did not). The history museum was admittedly better than the Colorado History Museum but that’s the ticket price for the Denver Museum of Nature and Science which has many exhibits including dinosaurs. Prehistoric monsters makes the ticket price reasonable.
  
  The art museum was alright but it was one of, I think, 23 million art museums in Santa Fe. Why is everything spread around? Why not put it all in one massive art museum and charge one price? The way it’s set up here is to charge tourists a new ticket price for every museum which is bullshit. I didn’t know Santa Fe was into art extortion.

The art museum, in the Santa Fe plaza, has it's own plaza.

• On our way back to the car from the plaza, we stumbled upon a street performance by Polyphony something-or-other. They were an all marimba band and they kicked ass. The not so cool part is once we headed for the car in the parking garage after the performance, I found out I nearly drained the battery by leaving the headlights on all day. I must have forgotten about them during my amazement of finding a parking garage without fake hours posted on the entrance. Also, I almost left without paying the attendant since he didn’t have the gate down at the exit and I didn’t think about stopping. The dude seemed annoyed with me like I did it on purpose. If there is anything I have learned from the board game Monopoly is that free parking magically gives you lots of money. Of course I did it on purpose.

I believe this is "GO" and that is the line to collect your $200.

• On the last day, we left the hotel and headed to Taos, NM since it was kind of on the way back to Colorado. On the way to Taos we passed through the town of Hispanola at the blistering speed of 35mph. This is the same type of highway that would have a speed limit of 45 or 55 here in Colorado. Why did I have to go thirty-fucking-five on a highway in a trashy commercial area? Do children play in the street out in front of liquor stores? Do they want cars to drive by slow enough so people can test out their new gun from the gun store? I honestly don’t know why anybody would willingly live in Hispanola. I can only assume all of the town’s residents have given up and are just waiting to die.

• Taos was a cool town though the traffic jam around it’s plaza is like getting teeth pulled. The shops were the same jewelry and tourist trap crap. My main complaint is the public restrooms without locking stall doors. I just ate a heavy enchilada dinner Taos. I need a quality toilet stall. Next time I will just take a dump in the bushes until you fix your restrooms.

The native metallic plant life of Taos.

• The weirdest part about Taos is the Taos Pueblo, the oldest, still occupied pueblo in the United States. These peoples homes were a tourist attraction and they make money by selling arts, crafts, and OF COURSE, jewelry from what is basically their living rooms. It felt really awkward and I’m not sure why. Oh wait, yes I do. The only other people who do business this way is drug dealers. I felt like I was being set up while buying pottery laced with heroin from an undercover cop.
  

And that is pretty much it. The drive back was mostly uneventful (other than not being able to find the onramp to I-25 in Walsenberg, a town without a single new resident since 1957) except my driving arm sunburn getting worse. We made it back in just about 4 and a half hours. I returned to work the next day and already feel like I need another vacation.


Disclaimer: This article is based on opinion and first hand accounts. I claim nothing as fact. Hispanola still sucks though. That is not opinion.

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