Atalaya Mountain Run

Santa Fe is a great trail running town. Really, that is the best option - no Galloping Goose or Burke-Gilman. The best is running up Atalaya Mountain.

It starts at St John's College, which is at about 7,600'. The summit is at 9,121'

Round trip "they" say is 7 miles. But it took me an hour and 53 minutes

The pics from start to summit are self-explanatory



The first mile is relatively mellow, gently up...often sharing the road with seasonal "arroyos"...

New Mexico Pics

Santa Fe was awesome. We are going back May 15th for 3 weeks before heading towards Seattle. The weather was odd - sometimes beautiful with glorious sunsets as seen from our house...





...and sometimes stormy with strong winds, usually in the afternoon...



Santa Fe has quite the arts scene, especially on Canyon Road which is lined with maybe 50 galleries. All the pieces below are too big to fit in the car (especially the horse's head)











About April 15th we headed to Taos for the second time. We loaded up The Grumpus...



Along the way we stopped at Santuario de Chimayo:

http://www.elsantuariodechimayo.us/

Yes...I did take some soil...







We continued on our way and into more stormy weather





It was good to see our old friends





What we didn't expect was snow. I mean...late April in New Mexico?





Hopefully better updates to come (as in back to weekly)

GO CANUCKS! GO HABS!

Easter in Santa Fe

So our 3rd trip to Durango was another great time. Here is a final sunset before we left town...



On Thursday we headed down to Santa Fe. It was windy and snowy...very windy at times





Fortunately it's a (relatively) short drive of just over 200 miles, so after unpacking we had lots of time to head into town so I could buy local ghost story books. Our house is a little less than 15 minutes North of downtown Santa Fe and the drive is unique

These shots along US-84 / US-285 are walkers along the shoulder - making the annual Holy Thursday / Good Friday pilgrimage to El Santuario de Chimayó. We'll make the trip next week, as there is a chapel and clay with mystical healing powers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Santuario_de_Chimayo

Ironically, the town of Chimayó supposedly is a bad drug place

Regardless, the faithful walk a variety of distances. These folks have a good 25 miles to go and it was cold and snowy. Hard to see but one of the guys in the 2nd pic is carrying a wooden cross







A few exits up from our place is the Santa Fe Opera Theatre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Opera)



Also along this short stretch 7-mile stretch is fun art, apparently native designed and painted (http://www.highplainstraveler.info/pages/84-freeway.htm)







And finally we approach Santa Fe...



One of the fun things we passed by Thursday and went back to Friday was The Ghost Ranch. I guess it is run by the Presbyterian Church and the one not in Santa Fe is where Georgia O'Keeffe spent a lot of time. The one in Santa Fe is a B&B, amongst other things, and has some fun sculptures (http://www.ghostranch.org/lodging/ghost-ranch-in-santa-fe.html)









Walking around historic Santa Fe, there is fun art everywhere. Here are two examples:





There are also plenty of cool Catholic icons and architecture. Hopefully tomorrow we'll swing by The Loretto Chapel and it's amazing staircase (also with healing powers)



Today - Good Friday - was a strange day. Lots of dark clouds, snow and then sun. This kept repeating itself all day. Here is Maureen getting covered in light snow



And here is a shot from our house at 3pm. Hard to see but a bit of a white-out. I remember when I was growing up a good Catholic boy it always seemed to storm at 3pm - the time Jesus died. I guess I'd be pissed too...



We are here for at least another 9 nights...and it should be sunny and over 60 the next 3 days, including 67 on Monday