Santa Fe, NM

We had a lovely time in Santa Fe. We arrived on July 28, and on the 29th welcomed Brian and Gage Wann, who had just finished a 4-day backpacking trip in the Pecos Wilderness northeast of Santa Fe. We stayed in Los Campos RV Park on Cerrillos Road. It's a lovely, small RV park with a nice area right behind our RV for walking dogs (always a consideration for us).

The weather has been wonderful....warm during the day and cool at night. Several days we had the typical summer afternoon thunderstorms to refresh things. A violent hail storm came through parts of town on Thursday afternoon, but fortunately it missed us.

Santa Fe also has a world-class dog park, the Frank Ortiz City Park northwest of downtown. There we found 200 acres of well-developed off-leash trails complete with water stations and poop bags. Gage found lots of places to explore, and the Bagley Pack found plenty of canine friends to play with.

While in Santa Fe we had dinner with Rob Pecherer and his wife, Donna, at their favorite Mexican sea-food restaurant, Puerto Penasco, on Airport Road. Then on Sunday, we had brunch with them at Tortilla Flats. Santa Fe has its share of wonderful restaurants, and we agree that these are two of the best, though better-known to the locals than to tourists. We also got a tour of the 100+-year-old adobe home that Rob has meticulously restored and updated. Its 18-inch thick walls kept us cool and comfortable.

Since we've been here for the better part of a week, we had time to visit the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, the Garrett Smith Photography Gallery and the Summr Festival and Frontier Days at El Rancho de las Golonerinas.

We also drove to the Rio Arriba County Fair in Abiquiu. We were just in time for the bull riding, which provided lots of excitement.

However, I think Gage's favorite event was the greased pig scramble, in which the first kid to capture a greased piglet got to take it home.

We were a little disappointed that we didn't know about it ahead of time so Gage could enter. (After all, he does have experience catching pigs since Earl the pot-bellied pig lives at his dad's house.) I'm really glad, though, that John and I aren't responsible for transporting a piglet back to Austin!