Ann and I are just back from our first visit to Santa Fe, a three-day weekend in the beautiful small town that is the capital of the state of New Mexico.
Ever since we first met Rob and Dyce, two days after they had relocated to Bend from Santa Fe, they have consistently mentioned that we needed to visit Santa Fe, their former home of ten years. At about 90,000 residents, Santa Fe is just a bit smaller than Bend. Back in the spring of this year, we all decided to visit Santa Fe for a few days during the holiday season to see the town all decorated. In the early fall, we set the date for the first weekend in December. Ann and I planned to fly in Thursday and out Monday, leaving us a nice long weekend in Santa Fe. Rob and Dyce had come in from Boulder a couple days prior.
Ann has never been to New Mexico before and was excitedly looking forward to crossing it off the list of states that she has never visited. I’ve been a few times but not recently. My last trip to the Land of Enchantment was a gig at Sandia National Labs in the mid-to-late 80s. I no longer can clearly fix that visit to a firm date in my mind. Prior to that, I had hiked a fair amount in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southernmost extension of the Rocky Mountain chain. So while I have spent time in and near Albuquerque and in far northeast New Mexico, I have never been to Santa Fe.
I have a fondness for the Sangre de Cristos: those mountains are where I, as a young man from the East, first encountered the Ponderosa Pines that are so familiar to us in Bend and all over the West. I had never seen anything like them. I marveled then and I still marvel now at how they form open savannas of widely spaced trees with underlying grasses and shrubs.
Early December in Central Oregon is not a time that is conducive to air travel. It is our season for freezing fog and no carrier will fly their planes in or out of that icy mess. Nobody wants to stall because of ice build-up on the wings. We watched the weather anxiously as flights were cancelled Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings. If the planes cannot land at our airport the night before, they will not be here for flights out the following morning.
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| Rime from Freezing Fog |
It will come as no surprise then that Wednesday night at 8:00pm, we got a message that our was flight cancelled for Thursday morning. Anticipating this, I had already looked at flight availability out of PDX the next day, so that when we finally got a callback from an Alaska agent, Ashley in Boise, we were able to get her to look into a 14:46 flight out of PDX to ABQ. Ashley was fantastic in getting us rebooked.Naturally, rebooking to another airport has its own set of ripple effects. We had to move our return flight to Portland as well, because our car would be there, sitting in the long term garage. And because our rebooked flight would be getting in very late to Portland, we booked a hotel there rather than risk driving over the Cascades in the dark of night. Finally, I canceled our car shuttle service to and from the local airport.
Sadly and despite my best attempt to prevent a shuttle from showing up at the house unnecessarily, a shuttle driver texted me the next morning at 7:07 from the curb outside the house. Nobody can say that I did not try. I felt truly bad for the driver; it was not his or her fault that the dispatcher messed up.
We did not plan to leave for PDX until 8:30 or 9:00, depending on weather conditions outside. The later in the day, the better the roads through the Cascades were likely to be. It was super foggy when I got up, but that had largely burned off by the time we got underway towards PDX at 8:30. As we headed through the neighborhood to fill up on gas, we marveled at the winter wonderland around us. Every single tree and every single surface was covered in beautiful and delicate crystalline ice as if a giant had sprayed our entire world with massive cans of spray snow.
Even though the fog had cleared in south Bend, as we drove north, we could see the fog bank on the horizon and the sunlight faded with each mile north. Just north of Bend, we entered the fog bank and could barely see the airport exit in Redmond when we passed it. The drive north, albeit foggy, was spectacularly beautiful. Every surface was covered in feathery rime.
The roads were largely clear except for a few miles just on the outskirts of Redmond where there was a little snow on the travel lanes. The weather forecast was for cold and foggy on our side of the Cascades, but for sun and blue skies on the west side of the mountains in the Willamette Valley where the airport sits. Look at the following photos taken just 11 minutes apart as we were climbing up the Cascades near Mount Hood.
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| Clouds and Fog Starting up into the Cascades |
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| Eleven Minutes Later, Bluebird Day at Mount Hood |
It's always a pleasure to see
Mount Hood, but today it was particularly beautiful in the sunshine, gleaming with its huge cover of snow. We found it positively mild at the rest stop just before Timberline Lodge, compared to 21 degrees at home. The run to the airport through Clackamas County was about as drama free as it could be, including no back ups on I-84.
We arrived at the airport just before noon and found parking easily. We did not expect to breeze through security to our gate, but it took only 15 minutes from the parking garage through security. Having plenty of time on our hands, not having had any breakfast, and with no prospects of food until late in the evening, we went in search of some grub, hoping to get a sandwich at Lardo. Unfortunately, no longer living in Portlandia, we missed the memo about Lardo, a favorite sandwich shop, closing. Sadly, we opted for lunch in some generic airport bar near our gate. The food was terrible.
Back at the gate, I was eyeballing the crowd gathering for our flight. I made a mental note of the two worst passengers that I hoped would not be seated near us. The first was an obese woman who would not shut up, yammering on with volume at 11, Spinal Tap style. The second was a special needs girl in a wheel chair who screamed piercingly and frequently.
As we boarded in the last boarding group (thanks to our rebooked flight), I was displeased to see both of them seated in the row in front of us. The large woman was relatively quieter on the plane, eating for the duration of the 2-1/2 hour flight.
On the other hand, the little girl screamed a lot. She did not appear to be verbal, so I imagine that screaming is the only way she can communicate. I felt horrible for the mom. Ann and I would only have to put up with the screaming for the duration of the flight. The poor mother never gets a break from it. Ann summed it up, "That poor woman has a hell of a cross to bear." The mom spoke no English, only Spanish. At one point, she used Google Translate to ask the flight attendant to tell us she was sorry. My kitchen Spanish does not extend to consoling someone with a cranky special needs kid, but at least I could assure her that we were not mad. Poor woman. I feel so bad for her.
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| The Moon, Venus, and Sunset at 30,000 Feet over Utah |
Now during the shortest days of our year, we enjoyed a fantastic sunset as we were headed over Utah into ABQ. We had already received some photos of glorious sunsets in Santa Fe from Rob and Dyce and this sight out the airplane window only whetted our appetite to see more, which we would on Sunday night.
The guys met us at the airport in Albuquerque; Santa Fe is on the short list of US capital cities without a major airport, such as Dover and Annapolis. We made the run up I-25 to Santa Fe in a hurry to get to a restaurant before closing. They had planned to take us to a favorite Santa Fe restaurant, La Choza, back when we were arriving in the mid-afternoon. Our rebooked flight arriving at dinner time put that plan in jeopardy given the one-hour ride back to Santa Fe.
We needn't have worried. Although we were the last table at the restaurant, we were on a short wait to get a table when we arrived at 8:15 or so at La Choza, an unpretentious restaurant with a classic New Mexican menu. I have always loved New Mexican food, especially the more northern style featuring a lot of Chimayo chile (as opposed to the more southern style down in Las Cruces). I promised myself to order as much New Mexican food as possible while we were in New Mexico.
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| I'm the Nut with the Cell Phone in the Mirror |
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| Rob's Quesadilla |
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| My Pork Burrito with Green Chile |
I ordered a burrito filled with rice, beans, and pork adovada topped with green chile. My take on chile is this: red for beef, green for everything else, Christmas never. Ann is going to Christmas it up any chance she gets. Me, I love the complex herbaceousness of a good green chile sauce. In comparison, red seems a bit one-note, though I make plenty of it myself. My first bite of the green sauce on my burrito answered my question if they like spice at this restaurant. Why, yes they do! The chile was delightfully spicy; "live" is the word I used to describe it. Finally, spice without apology! Our server said this year's chiles are on the spicy end of the spectrum.
I must say that this burrito went a long way towards satisfying my itch for New Mexican food. Also, I am a posole fiend and was happy to see a small pile of that cooked nixtamalized corn on my plate as a side dish. I have only seen this in New Mexico. In Mexico, posole is most often served in a bowl by itself as a guisado, a stew. Good on La Choza!
La Choza offers a choice of sopaipillas or garlic bread with dinner or after dinner. Sopaipillas are a fried pastry à la pizza fritta, gnocchi fritti, beignets, poori, or crescentine, basically fried pie crust of which pretty much every culture has a version. Some people eat them as bread or fill them with savory foods, but I would say that the vast majority of people bite the corner off of them, squeeze honey into them, and eat them for dessert.
Sopaipillas bring back great boyhood memories for me. After having learned how to make them as a teenager in New Mexico, I used to make them with my friend Mark on our camping trips in Alabama when we were able to bring along a dutch oven and oil (lard is the best) enough to fry the dough. Those were good times. And times when I could eat anything I wanted thanks to a teenage metabolism!
I totally enjoyed my experience at La Choza as we all did. After dinner, we headed to our house in the hills just north and slightly east of downtown. Because it was pitch black, I couldn't really appreciate anything about the house or the neighborhood or even Santa Fe itself. But once inside, I did appreciate the nicely appointed Pueblo Revival house and especially the gas fire in the kiva, the corner fireplace.
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| Welcome Warm Fire in the Kiva |
The story of our fantastic long weekend with our great friends Rob and Dyce continues in separate posts:
Friday: Shopping Downtown
Friday Part 2: Friday Night on the Town
Saturday: Ghost Ranch and Dinner at the Pink Adobe
On Monday, after our splendid weekend in New Mexico thanks to wonderful hosts Rob and Dyce, we had to face going back home. I awoke about 15 minutes before sunup to coyotes howling. We don’t hear them at our house in Bend like we did in McMinnville, but they aren’t far away. Still, I love to hear these guys yip and yap.
We were facing a long layover today because in leaving Oregon, winter weather forced us to reroute our entire trip through Portland instead of Seattle. The rerouted return flight was several hours after our originally scheduled flight. Because we carpooled with Rob and Dyce who had to be at the airport by noon, we were facing a long wait in Albuquerque: our flight did not board until nearly 19:00.
On the drive in to Albuquerque, we looked for mustangs alongside I-25 to no avail. We did, however, have great views of the New Mexico landscape and of the Sandia Crest, views that we did not see on the way in because it was dark. We also had tantalizing views of the greenbelt and canyon around the Rio Grande River, but never a glimpse of water.
Before the airport, we stopped for gas and brunch in Albuquerque at Tin Can Alley, an indoor food court. From the parking lot, we had beautiful views of Sandia Peak in the background. We ended up waiting a few minutes for Cuban food at Guava Tree Sabor Latino. It was worth the wait. The guys assured us that these were cubanos worth eating. And they were so right. We enjoyed classic cubanos: the bread, mustard, cheese, ham, pork, and pickles were just as they should be. Delicious!
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| Arriving at Tin Can Alley |
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| Waiting for Lunch in the Large Atrium |
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| It Would be Hard to Find a Better Cubano |
On the way to drop off the rental car, Rob and Dyce dropped us at noon at the departures curb where we said our goodbyes. We will not see them again until they move back to Bend from Boulder, hopefully in about six weeks. By 12:30 we were through security and at our gate in the very small terminal. We chose seats and set about whiling away the hours until our flight. We had the option of taking a Uber into Albuquerque but we were tired and it seemed more appropriate just to hole up at the airport even though that would be no fun.
Four hours later when we were just about out of our skulls with boredom, we went to the sports bar across from our gate to kill some more time and eat some dinner. We planned, on arriving at PDX, to go straight to our hotel and go to sleep without stopping to eat.
Our food was surprisingly good. I got a green chile burger and our bartender was kind enough to have the kitchen smother my fries in green chile. While the green chile was good, the red chile sauce on Ann's dinner was the best we had all trip. Go figure! Add that to my list of airport surprises: the best cubano ever at MIA and the best chile relleno at ABQ.
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| Final Green Chile of the Trip |
Naturally, after waiting seven hours to board, we had to wait some more while the mechanics repaired a broken seat that was needed on the full flight. Once boarded, just ten or fifteen minutes late, I found the seats in the new Embraer 157 to be terribly uncomfortable.
We arrived at PDX more or less on time and got our car out of hock, arriving at our hotel at 22:00 where we proceeded to pass out. I slept surprisingly well for being in a hotel, especially one directly in the flight path of the primary runway with jet engines roaring all night long.
The original plan was to depart for home at 9:00 to give the road by Mount Hood a bit of time to thaw. But at 8:10, I was done being cooped up and proposed to Ann that we leave immediately and stop in Gresham for coffee. A quick search found Autumn Coffee Roasters in Gresham directly on our path home.
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| Fine Coffee, Fine Scone at Autumn Coffee in Gresham |
We took our time with our drip coffee, which was pretty good. After coffee, we went around the block to highway 26/Powell Boulevard and headed east towards Mount Hood. We encountered a couple inches of fresh snow just as we were getting up to Mount Hood, especially in the section from Government Camp past Timberline Lodge.
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Fresh Snow in the Cascades
Selfie in the Side View Mirror |
Other than the new snow by Hood, the roads were reasonable with only about a 30-mile stretch of somewhat icy road. I am amazed at the number of drivers of four-wheel-drive vehicles that think that having four-wheel-drive is somehow going to help them on ice. We did not have any problems with traction, and I only felt the traction control system engage once as we moved out into the snow to pass a tandem UPS truck going up the mountain.
Driving east on Mount Hood Highway, it was gorgeous to see that big volcano in the early morning light silhouetted against the horizon. Once across the Cascades on the east side, it was unusual to be driving with Mount Hood in my rearview mirror and Mount Jefferson just over my right shoulder in my peripheral vision. That's a sight I could see every day!
And so ends the saga of our first visit to Santa Fe. Rob and Dyce, we are so grateful for your friendship and your hospitality. Thank you so much for showing us "your" Santa Fe! It was so much more meaningful than if we had just visited on our own.
