Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Mother Road episode 15

Our last night in Tucumcari was far from comfortable. The daytime temp was at 39 degrees C (102 F), no shade and with only the smaller ac unit working its little bones off all night sleep was of reduced quality…!!!

Santa Fe, New Mexico was the next planned stop as 66 looped north and the elevation climbed promising slightly cooler temps.

On the way we pulled off to a small roadside stand just past Pecos where we picked up some absolutely delicious cherries and sweet peas……from this very lovely young lady…

Yum…they were superb……

Next order of business…I had found an RV tech in Santa Fe who had a 5 star rating with over 200 reviews (impressive…!!)

Matt…the RV tech was superb arriving only 15 minutes after I called him. Unfortunately what he found was an enormous puddle of freon on the roof……AC unit officially pooched. There was a lot of dust in the desert and AC had bitten all of it requiring complete replacement…not a job for a mobile tech as it required a forklift to raise the unit onto the roof and he did not have a shop….or a forklift

Santa Fe RV could do the job…but in 4 weeks time….We did not plan to stay that long, so we decided to take our chances in Albuquerque.

In the meantime, Santa Fe required a little further investigation.

Our first foray was to Canyon Road on a recommendation from our friendly RV tech (always follow recommendations of locals) . Canyon Road is a whole neighborhood of art galleries and artisan shop fronts….

It was a beautiful day…in a beautiful place…..

In the meantime…

We had been having a little bit of an issue with a tire losing pressure, Scott could not resist the appeal of stopping at Chihuahua Tire to get it checked out. (Editor. Why attend some bland chain store if there’s a local shop and they were great by the way) An oil change at Oilstop and off to the downtown core of the city.

In the evening, we wandered downtown. Santa Fe is the oldest permanent settlement in North America. The Palace of the Governers in the downtown core is the oldest continuously serving seat of government in North America having held local government since 1610. A very cool place.

The old streets and little stores were just lovely….

It is an incredibly beautiful city. Not just its actual artwork and friezes on the highway barriers and bridges…but the buildings are either adobe or in that style. (Even McDonalds and Starbucks have conformed to the local building requirements.)

We lingered for a while around the cathedral…just because it was lovely…..one of the beautiful things which has made Santa Fe an artist hot spot is the colour of the light, as you will see in the photos below. It has a warm softness, accentuating the natural adobe colours, surprisingly easy on the eyes for a desert location.

Our last evening in the city we tried to capture the remaining neon on Old 66 but unfortunately most of it was no longer lit.

Extra Pix