Better Three And A Half Years Late Than Never…

I’ve spent hours and hours (and hours) over the past few days organizing, deleting, and consolidating all of the files on my old laptop in preparation for transferring everything over to my new laptop. Adequately describing the enormity of that job is another blog post all by itself, so I’ll save it.

In going through my folders and folders (and folders) of pictures, I was able to see, all in one place, how many trips I’ve taken over the past few years. (Counting my blessings for the ability to travel, by the way. SO LUCKY.)

I revisit some of those trips via my pictures regularly (the 2010 Germany trip, cruises, BlogHer conferences, and visits to friends are my favorites) but a few of them—if you can believe it—I had forgotten about until rediscovering the photographic evidence.

Like Santa Fe.

The funny thing is, I didn’t even write about this trip. I mentioned it in the first post upon our return and SAID I was planning to write about it, but I never did. What kind of blogger am I, anyway? (Don’t answer that.)

Better late than never, I guess.

Jim and I took a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico back in July of 2011. I think it was the first “real” vacation beyond a weekend getaway here or there that we had taken without the boys. One of us was excited about the destination and the excellent bike riding conditions, and the other one of us was excited about being able to just get out of Dodge for a few days and take some pictures. I’ll let you figure out which was which. I’ll give you a hint. Here’s a picture I took:

Santa Fe train station

What stood out about that trip is we actually went there to explore the possibility of our moving there someday, post-retirement. While I am against living anywhere out west that has a mostly brown landscape and I’m really a fan of places where the seasons actually change, Santa Fe did have patches of green so at least there was that. That said, while we had a nice vacation, neither one of us liked Santa Fe as a potential future home. A server at one of the downtown restaurants summed it up nicely: “Everyone here is either a millionaire, an artist, or a server.”

Still, it was a nice getaway and I got some killer pictures. (I took 550 over just a few days!)

Santa Fe, New Mexico
Toto, we’re not in Illinois anymore.

In fact, looking through all of the pictures in my “Santa Fe 2011” folder put what’s probably a much warmer and fuzzier glow on that town for me than I felt at the time, and I actually thought for a moment that I might like to go back and visit again someday.

Then I remembered that I left there exclaiming, “If I see ONE MORE PIECE of turquoise anything, I don’t know what I’ll do!!!”

Way too much turquoise in Santa Fe. It’s those dang artists. And millionaires.

Still, the flea market near the train station was fun and it set the stage for a picture that is one of the very best images I’ve captured in my entire life, and that’s a long time.

Santa Fe bass
It’s all about the bass (no treble).

I don’t know. Maybe there wasn’t THAT much turquoise? I should go back and check.

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