New Mexico

Thursday 11/2: Lillian and I woke up and ate a great breakfast down the street at a diner. She headed off to work and I headed towards the airport to pick up Jaclin! Jaclin Hastings is one of my best friends from high school. I told her about my trip plans a few months ago and she bought a plane flight the same weekend. She's awesome!

Once Jaclin flew in (around 10am), we hit the road towards Taos, New Mexico. What a beautiful place! New Mexico has quite a few mountains and buttes. They boast being the end of the Rockies. Is that true?! We even drove through the graveyard of Volkswagen Diesel cars!

Taos is adorable. It has perfect little shops in a small town. We stayed in an adobe house with beautiful New Mexican art and a lady named Sola. Sola used to live on a compound (of course she did!) and raised her kids in Taos.

Jaclin and I hung out with Sola and watched the sunset out of the amazing fence and backyard. Then we went to dinner at the most fantastic New Mexican restaurant (Orlando's). Green and Red Chile, YESSSSS PLEASE! After dinner, we went back to the house, hopped in the hot tub, watched the

moon and stars for a bit before settling in for a good night's sleep.

Friday 11/3:
Jac and I wanted to explore Taos before heading to Santa Fe. We checked out the beautiful art galleries and cute shops. We ate a little lunch and headed to Bandelier National Monument on our way to Santa Fe.

Bandelier is full of ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings in caves. Wow. These Native Americans lived in these little cliffs, built adobe villages, and lived in this beautiful canyon filled with cottonwoods for hundreds of years. There are petroglyphs, pottery pieces, and a lot of evidence of human life. We had a fantastic walk through the bright yellow fall trees and climbed through ladders and holes to get into these little homes. It was very beautiful.

After Bandelier, we drove to a hotel in downtown Santa Fe and pretended we were fancy!

Saturday 11/4:
Jaclin and I woke up and ate a fantastic New Mexican breakfast at the Plaza Cafe in downtown Santa Fe. We knew it was going to be a whirlwind day, lots of museums and cute shops to see. After filling up on breakfast, we went to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum. What a beautiful place. I loved learning about her, she is a really fascinating person. This museum included many photos of her and a video about her life, which I really appreciated. Sometimes, I feel like when I go into a museum, I want to learn about who these people are personally. This museum let us glimpse into her life and influences on her art.

We walked around, checked out Native American art and jewelry in the Plaza. Another meal of green/red chile at the Shed (where we saw Mitchell from Modern Family!) and fantastic margaritas. After lunch, we went to the Contemporary Native American Art Museum which was VERY thought-provoking. I haven't ever thought about modern art being tied with Native American artists at all, just traditional art forms.

It was a very heavy museum, many deep discussions on our personal American culture and Native culture. It was a really important museum and opened some discussions about how "out of sight, out of mind" our Native populations are. New

Mexico is filled with beautiful spaces, many are reservations. I don't know anything about reservations or life there, and am curious about how to bridge the gap between our neighborhoods and reservation neighborhoods.

We needed a break after that museum, we were going to head straight to Meow Wolf. Instead, we ate dinner, hung out and enjoyed a little Santa Fe at night.

Sunday 11/5:
Jaclin woke up sick! Booooo! We decided to skip Meow Wolf so that Jac could rest a bit. Meow Wolf seems like the craziest museum ever, so we'll definitely have to do it another time.

We drove towards Albuquerque and stopped at Petroglyph National Monument. Um...it was the worst. The trails were through the petroglyphs, so they're all worn and rubbed. And the trails are in the backs of neighborhoods. It was very weird and not what I thought it would be at all. I was disappointed. Jaclin was not as deeply disappointed as I was, but it was kind of the worst.

We ate lunch in Old Town in Albuquerque and looked around the little Plaza. It feels like you're transported to Mexico in these Plazas. It's very cool! We stayed in a beautiful Air BnB here and enjoyed a movie night and rested up. Hoping to get Jaclin healthy!!

Monday 11/6:
Jaclin has a tattoo appointment today in a shop in Albuquerque for a little desert rose bud. I am currently in the shop, writing, and reading my grad school textbook. Haha. There are some very interesting places that I have found to read "Behavioral Disorders in Children and Youth".

After the tattoo, we headed towards White Sands National Monument. This turned out to be a bit of an undertaking but a really beautiful drive. Jaclin and I had a great little road trip here, jammed out to some tunes and rolled the windows down. It was really great.

We showed up to the park and quickly got a backcountry camping permit. There is a backcountry trail that is marked with huge posts stuck in the sand. If they weren't there, we would have been verrrrry lost. I guess they have lost people out there often, they made a very big deal about packing lots of water and following the stakes. We threw our stuff into backpacks and hiked up and down these endless white dunes. It was just beautiful. The sand was SO bright white, I can see it blinding people in the summer! We set up camp in one of the troughs between the dunes and sledded around the dunes for a bit before settling into a bottle of wine and a magnificent sunset. It could definitely be the best sunset I've seen so far. SO many different colors and contrasts with the white sand. Jaclin was LOVING it.

We camped out under the incredible stars. Jaclin had never backpacked in, so she really soaked it all in. It was a beautiful night and we slept wonderfully in our little tent!

Tuesday 11/7:
We woke up in White Sands and hiked around there for quite a while. It was endless amounts of sand and beauty. Jaclin was really loving every moment of it, so it was really fun to see this part of the country with her. It was like having a fresh pair of eyes and really getting into the adventure again.

After the hiking around, Jac started feeling really sick. She got a fever and was looking TERRIBLE. We checked into the hotel in the afternoon, Jac rested all afternoon, and we waited for Karen to fly in! Karen's plane was delayed, so I walked over to the airport to greet her around midnight while Jaclin slept. Karen had a crazy day of travel, so we just went straight to bed to be rested for our big Texas roadtrip.