Special Santa Fe
We went on a little vacation to one of our favorite places in the world, Santa Fe, NM. This is a place we still consider moving to and a place that I thought I was originally going to move to when I relocated from NYC. I got “sidetracked” in Colorado and 14 years later, I’m still here.
Whenever we go there, we try to do some new things that we haven’t done before and to also visit with some friends and family that live in northern New Mexico. It is very, very similar in lifestyle and consciousness and attitude (mostly) to where we live now (which I do love where we live). There is just an “extra something special” there with the architecture and art and the energy of the land itself for me. This city has also been there for the past 400 years. I’m drawn to it and recharged by it every time I can spend at least a few days there and we were there a week and it still felt like it was not enough time.
We stayed in a 1 bedroom condo for the week and traveling with a young child, this is the BEST way to travel and have little stress. Since my son is a major picky eater, eating in restaurants is really no fun for us with him so we did take out at night a lot and he got to eat his favorite foods right in the condo and be his loud little self and pretty happy. The wireless for the rooms was down and only accessible in the lobby bldg. so we were internet free for the week. I think I had a harder time with it initially than my software engineer husband did. I tried one night early on to check email in that bldg. with our laptop but it was noisy and annoying and not worth it. We both really enjoyed the relaxing evenings of getting to spend some real quality time together and I think it was great that we couldn’t use the computer in our condo!
This was my very first trip as a raw vegan and I was worried that I would not have much to eat so I prepared different foods before we left and brought it with us which worked out great for me since we had a kitchen. I knew I would go crazy on the guacamole and pico de gallo found everywhere so I made raw corn chips and crackers for that but funny enough, I now prefer to dip into those yummy foods using veggies instead of my chips or crackers. I did eat some green chile (which is cooked but I love it) on my salads and other foods and can now tolerate more heat and spice than ever before since going raw.
I made this new recipe of raw granola I found and my (omnivore) husband loved it and said it was the best granola he’s eaten – and that is saying a lot! I also made raw nori rolls, sun garden burgers with raw ketchup, and a raw bread. I brought my “magic bullet” chopper/blender in case I wanted to make some smoothies. I was pretty well stocked for the week and only needed to get fresh veggies and fruit. I saved a lot of money doing this and didn’t feel deprived at all (I love all of these recipes) and wound up bringing a lot back home, too.
I found the one restaurant in town that served raw entrees and desserts which is inside this cool place called “Body” that is a natural home store, yoga/pilates workout studio that also offers healing services (yes, it was huge). My kind of place! I had a raw pizza and salad to go and it was excellent and now I am on a quest to figure out how to re-make their recipe this week.
So, I managed to stay totally raw for at least 98% of my trip and looking at my husband eating the traditional NM food smothered in cheese didn’t even tempt me – which is very weird for me bec. I love the food there and had the vacation mindset going on. I even lost weight from all the walking and hiking we did. Woo hoo! And, I had lots of energy – even at night. I am loving living raw!!
We took a tour one afternoon of a new community being built that has everything we like – photovoltaic and passive solar design, wind power, reclaimed water for landscaping, geo-thermal, eco-friendly building materials and insulation from top to bottom, beautiful architecture, lots of open space and trails surrounding it, community garden plots, commercial sized greenhouses going in for food sold to the community at a discount first, farmer’s market second, lots of fruit trees planted on the property for the community, parks and playgrounds, only environmentally friendly landscape maintenance used, etc. Basically our dream community. We just need work to support us down there and we are not moving in a bad real estate market for at least a few years. Good thing they will have a few phases being built so we have time to re-consider in the future.
The one new hike we did was at a place called Tent Rocks. It is just south of Santa Fe and a totally awesome place. These other-worldly looking rock formations formed millions of years ago from a volcanic eruption and it’s a soft sand and gravel type of rock pillar with the top part being a harder granite rock which kept it in place all this time. It has very narrow channels to walk through as you ascend to the top which my 4 year old loved doing as well as climbing on all the rocks (although for the other half of hiking he wanted to be in the backpack). It even had a cave that the two of them
climbed up into and my son thought it was the coolest thing and wanted to sleep in it. I guess spelunking will be something we can do with him when he is older. He even pointed out a few formations that he thought were spaceships so even a 4 year old thought it looked alien like.
We took a train ride one day on the Santa Fe Southern Railway in an old 1920’s passenger car out to a train depot in a town called Lamy, had lunch and then rode the train back to the Santa Fe station. My son loved it since he loves trains so much. There was an outside platform to stand on, too which was fun.
There is so much more but this is a little recap of some of the fun and interesting things we did. I’m so glad that even though I don’t get to live there right now, we are only a (several hours long) car ride away from such a special place.
May 08 2008 09:39 am | Health and Leif and Mel and Michael and Travel and food and green living and nature and nutrition and organics and parenting and photos and raw foods and society and travel/vacations
May 8th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Wow! That sounds like a great trip! Beautiful pictures!
Do you know what kind of plastic the Magic Bullet cups are made from? I was going to buy one awhile ago, but wasn’t sure if they were polycarbonate. I hate my blender.
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May 8th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
Allie,
I checked to see if there were any markings on it and there are not but I am guessing it would be PC because it is a clear, hard plastic. Vita Mix is also PC and I think also the Cuisinart food processor. All of which I have and am not too happy about the PC but I mostly hand wash all of those and the food is not in there too long. It’s a bummer, really.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Oh, it looks like you guys had such a wonderful time. I told J. about the train and of course R. & C. would go nuts with that. If our moving plans don’t work out this summer, I see a trip to Santa Fe in our future- for the train rides and Gabriel’s at the minimum.
The rocks are so cool too- never had heard or seen these before. I hope you don’t move away, (obviously) but if you did end up there, we could come visit you, and the boys could ride the train together.
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