Santa Fe

We're back from our 10 days in Santa Fe. What a great place! So nice to go back again! We did a bit of everything--hiking, shopping, browsing, museums...it was relaxing and way too short!

You can check out more pics here. We took so many pictures that it was hard to whittle them down. Just a few highlights:

-Tent Rocks National Monument is amazing. We were intending to only do the easy loop, and then I said "Hey, let's just see if that [steeper] trail leads through the rocks. We don't have to do the whole trail." Well, it did, we ended up doing the whole thing, and were rewarded with the most amazing view.

-Bandelier is also fabulous, even though it started raining the second we stepped out of the visitor's center and onto the trail. But we had a great place to wait out the rain and again were rewarded with a fabulous hike.

-The Book suggests that you don't travel above 7000 feet unless you're used to it. Santa Fe, at about 6500 feet, was fabulous and I felt great. Taos, at about 7500 feet, was not so great and we weren't able to spend as much time up there as we would have liked. I hate when books are right!

-In my opinion, you should not be able to identify that what is crossing the road in front of your car going about 50 mph is, in fact, a spider. Just saying.

-Do not listen to Rob when he tells you that I buy too much yarn. He is a yarn-buying enabler. Had I gone yarn shopping alone, I would have returned with 6 fewer hanks than I did.

-We encountered some interesting people in Santa Fe: the worst plastic surgery job I think I've ever seen, the worst eyebrow pencil application, a pair of outfits which made me glad I'm not prone to seizures. But we met some of the nicest people, too: a hostess that got us into Cafe Pasqual's without reservations on a busy night, a lovely gallery owner (OK, so she wanted to sell us an amazing piece of pottery, but she didn't have to be that nice) , an artist that I met at the coffee shop because I wanted to pet his Neapolitan mastiff, Blue (who was 8 months old and had to be at least 200 pounds) who told us to call ahead to the gallery to make sure Blue was there if we wanted to visit him again, and lots of other people who just seemed to take the time to be nice.

And now we're home and back to work. Sigh.....

A new bench

I went home to PA last weekend, to see Mom and Dad, and to see Deb's new baby, Haley. It was a lovely weekend, despite the rather un-lovely heat.

Look what found it's way into my trunk as I was leaving:
A bench, walnut with oak legs, made by Dad. Too bad he doesn't make things that'll last!
It's absolutely perfect right there, by the back door to the mudroom. It's much more comfortable than the stoop for taking off our muddy shoes. It's absolutely gorgeous, too. I'm not sure my pictures do it justice.

Thanks, Dad!