In answer to last week’s post: Where Am I?:
For the last few weeks I’ve been in a funk. But that’s not exactly where I was when I created that post. That’s just how I ended up where were last weekend.
Every so often I get a little cabin-bound stir crazy, which this year might even be worse because our weather hasn’t been all that bad. We’ve hardly had any snow and our temps have been, for the most part, very mild this winter.
So, it’s annoying to be stuck at home when I’d rather be out hiking, exploring and letterboxing with my kidlets. Sitting down staring at the computer was making me crabby.
Maybe it’s because I’m a military brat that had both parents serving in the Navy, I get these wanderlust urges. Growing up, we were always moving someplace new, and traveling all over the United States. Before I had my twinlings, I worked for the airlines for over 10 years and every couple weeks I was on a plane on my days off, traveling someplace new, or just flying to the beach for a day or two.
Now Ranchman John works for the airline again (that’s how we met, 22 years ago) and we can fly whenever we want to, but with all the security issues and hassles it’s just not fun anymore.
So, I have taken an interest in doing some road trips instead, even with the awful cost of gas. This is made even more exciting by the fact that there are letterboxes to find in every state. My twinlings and daughter are getting older and it’s important to me to make lots of special memories together that we can treasure forever, while showing them parts of the country they’ve never seen before.
We are making some big traveling plans for this summer and I can’t wait! Nothing’s set in stone yet, but I’m hoping to finally visit the Pacific NorthWest, especially around the Seattle area. And we are also planning a trip to Colorado, Texas and the East Coast, too.
But I suppose none of this has really answered the burning question: Where was I last weekend?
Well, Santa Fe, of course! *grin*
We only live an hour south of Santa Fe and there is so much to see and do up there, that we consider it our “stomping grounds”. There is always something new to see, taste and experience each time we visit. We always enjoy the beautiful art that’s everywhere you look, and there’s terrific shopping, too. Best of all, the entire town is dog-friendly, so I don’t have to leave my special Dobbie Girl at home. Not only is there the area around the plaza to explore, but there are beautiful hiking trails just minutes out of town. And there are a core-group of letterboxers who call Santa Fe home, and they place many wonderful letterboxes for everyone to find. So, that is why we decided to spend the weekend in Santa Fe, even though we could have just driven home at the end of the day. I really needed more than just a day trip and there were some new letterboxes placed we wanted to find, and also one letterbox, City Different Walking Tour, with a 6-part very clever, but challenging clue we needed more time to work on. We also had one letterbox that we wanted to place, too.
So we packed up our bags and the dog and headed north.
We weren’t going to check into our motel until after we enjoyed a full day of letterboxing and exploring, though. First on our stop was a park on the east side of Santa Fe to find two letterboxes. Afterwards, we drove to the location where we left off last time for the City Different Walking Tour letterbox. We took a photo of the plaque we were supposed to decipher, to get us to our next location and part of the clue, so we could work on it later that night at the motel.
Then we drove through Santa Fe and up to Tesuque to locate a series of boxes, of which we only found 3 of the 4, but still had a great time exploring someplace we’d never been before.
Like the Shidoni Foundry and Gallery where I took those silly photos of my kidlets in the last post. There were a lot of photo opportunities there, as well as a cleverly hidden letterbox.
Afterwards we decided to drive the scenic High Road to Taos to visit the famous El Santuario de Chimayo (Please visit that website. It might give you goosebumps and damp eyes like it does for me, when you watch the beautiful slide show and enjoy the music).
El Santuario de Chimayo, a 200 year old Catholic Church, is a sacred and very special place for my family because we were touched by it’s promises of miracles. After 6 years of fertility issues and a miscarriage, Ranchman John and I made our pilgrimage to this spiritual church and we prayed within it’s sacred walls, lit candles and brought home a bag of it’s precious holy earth that we scooped up ourselves from the tiny room at the back of the church which contains the well of holy earth or El Posito.
A month later our twins were conceived, without any medical assistance at all. We strongly believe it was the miracles, prayers and holy earth of El Santuario de Chimayo that gave us our precious twin sons.
We did go inside the church and it looked the same as it did 15 years ago, except now they don’t permit photos. *pout*
But we did go into the tiny back room and I invited each of my kidlets to scoop a tiny bit of the holy dirt and pour it into a bag I had brought just for the occasion. That was a very special moment for me and I wish I could have photographed that. *sniff*
Here are a few photos I took during our visit.
This may be my most favorite restaurant in all of New Mexico!
Notice, too, that Leonita's protects two tall Catalapa trees, which weren't torn down when the restaurant was built. Instead the restaurant just built around them.
The other Catalpa tree is on the wall behind my twinling, Jem, who is searching for some ice cream for dessert.
I still remember our first visit to Leonita’s 15 years ago. Not a whole lot has changed either. It still sits right beside El Santuario de Chimayo offering sustenance to all pilgrims who visit, and locals who live in the village of Chimayo, in the form of inexpensive, freshly made, authentic New Mexican food, including probably the best, most tastiest burritos I have ever consumed!
Read a very accurate review of the restaurant: Road Food ~ Leona's
Leona makes the best tasting, and perfectly textured tortillas ever. Seriously! She makes many different flavors, including sweet and savory, but we had the whole wheat tortillas. Yum!
Leonita’s green chile and red chile are from their own special seeds grown grown in Hatch, New Mexico just for their restaurant, and are full of flavor and the perfect heat. Mmmm! I’m salivating just thinking about them. My twinlings almost talked me into driving back to Chimayo for lunch the following day. *grin*
And we met a curious horse behind El Santuario de Chimayo, too.
He really seemed to like Dobbie and wanted to get to know her a little better.
Dobbie wasn’t so sure that was a great idea.
Do you remember Leonita's Restuarant that I mentioned earlier in this post? Well, during Holy Week, they have been known to serve their delicious food to between 40,000-50,000 tired and hungry pilgrims who have arrived at El Santuario de Chimayo!
You can read more about some of the many pilgrimages, along with their history and meaning, that people make to this very special church, one of them is more than 100 miles long and takes a week to complete!
El Santuario de Chimayo Pilgrimages
We had a busy, full day, but it was a very special day, too.
Thanks for reading along. We hope you enjoyed this little taste of New Mexico.
Next post: The Silver Saddle Motel
