On the Santa Fe trail

Monday, September 26 (Day 10) — Every vacation has to have at least one misadventure, and today may have been ours. We were preparing to head downstairs to our complimentary continental breakfast this morning when Roni let out an "oh no" from the bathroom. She emerged a moment later with her glasses in two pieces. Somehow one of the bottom tension wires that holds the lens in place in the frame broke and there was no way to repair it. Suddenly our plans to spend the morning touring downtown Santa Fe appeared in jeopardy, because until her glasses were fixed there would be little sightseeing for Roni. She picked up the phone book and leafed through the yellow pages until she found a Lenscrafters at a nearby mall. We figured that they advertise glasses in an hour and would be able to solve the problem quickly.

I said yesterday that we are learning a few things about New Mexico from our travels. One, you can't buy alcohol on Sunday before noon. Two, the police here don't mess around with traffic violations. And now you can add to that list the fact that optometrists aren't allowed to issue glasses without a written prescription. Period. So Roni got off the phone with Lenscrafters more befuddled than before. We went down to breakfast and then returned to the task at hand. I suggested that Roni call her physician back home and see if they couldn't fax her prescription to the Lenscrafters. She waited on hold for a while only to be told that Kaiser would put in a message to her optometrist and perhaps they could get back to her in a day or two. That's not good enough, she complained, because we are on vacation and need the prescription now. They said they'd see what could be done. To make the situation worse, her prescription is more than two years old, and apparently the New Mexico law requires that a prescription be less than that old before a new pair of glasses can be issued. Roni was planning to get new frames when she has her checkup in March, so it seemed senseless to pay Lenscrafters big bucks for an eye exam that is covered under our health plan, or to have new frames made up for her old prescription that will be replaced in a few months anyway.

This was ridiculous. Any chance Lenscrafters could simply repair the old frames and forgo all the hassle of prescriptions? We decided to hop in the car and drive over to the mall, which just happened to be a couple of blocks away from our hotel. Roni talked to a helpful clerk at the store and revealed that she had bought her frames from Lenscrafters in Antioch a couple of years ago. Guess what? They had all her prescription data on file already, so we'd just wasted all that time with Kaiser for nothing. The clerk said it was possible Roni's glasses could be repaired and that it would be about 20 minutes. So we killed time by watching Roni try on new frames. Then Ben and I went to a Game Stop and salivated over the latest Gamecube and Gameboy releases. When we returned to the Lenscrafters store, they were just finishing up the repair on Roni's glasses. They had cleaned them and done the repair free of charge since she bought the frames from their store originally. Such a deal. We left there in a much better mood, figuring that even though it was almost 11:30 there would still be plenty of time to go visit downtown.

We simply followed the street our hotel is on until we reached the downtown. Then we sought out a public parking lot. Much better to park your car and walk in the downtown as the streets here are very narrow and not vehicle friendly. But who wants to be in a car anyhow when this is such an incredibly beautiful area? The downtown is an art-lover's paradise. Nearly every other block boasts a museum of some sort, and galleries fill just about every available storefront. Native American and Southwestern themes predominate, and the architecture is classic adobe-style. Most of the buildings are painted in earthtones with settle variations in color — lots of red and terra cota.

Our first stop was the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, which Roni had read quite a lot about. She would have loved to explore it, but it was $8 admission for adults and Ben was in a mood. Let's face it, art exhibits and young kids don't mix well. So we opted to let her browse to items in the museum gift shop. She came away with several postcard prints of O'Keefe's works. Georgia O'Keefe is very much a household name in these parts as she spent much of her time painting Southwest themes. We passed her plaque in the walk of fame or whatever they call it outside the fine arts museum a block away from the O'Keefe museum. She lived to be 98, but the plaque didn't reflect her date of death. The walk boasts many plaques of Santa Fe artists, authors and poets. Seems like most of them were long lived. Must be something in the water. Or perhaps in the air, which might explain why my allergies have been kicking up the past couple days.

We walked a bit until we found the Palace of Governors located along the Santa Fe Plaza. What makes the building interesting is that it serves as a block-long marketplace for Native American crafts. Every day of the week peddlers set up shop along the sidewalk and hundreds of tourists (mostly) stroll along checking out such things as jewelry and rock carvings. The vendors are friendly and eager to let you look at their merchandise and ask questions. Ben was keen on all the jewelry because he wanted to identify the types of stones that went into their production. He says he wants to be a geologist like his Uncle Sean when he is older. I hope so, because he'll need a geologist's salary to fuel his interest in collecting rocks and gemstones.

The items for sale here are reasonably priced for what they are, but you have to bear in mind that this is a progressive art community and everything is more expensive than what you'll find in other cities and more out-of-the-way galleries. I'd be lying, however, if I said I wasn't the least bit tempted to take some of the artwork home. I have lately fallen in love with the Kokopelli images that are so prevalent throughout New Mexico. I'm talking about the familiar drawings of the humpbacked Indian flute player usually portrayed in ritualistic dances. You can find the icon on every imaginable souvenir item — except for postcards, and I have looked high and low. Santa Fe is not a good place to be if you are in the market for cheap, cheesy schlock. Everything we saw today was mid- to high-end. Strike that — there was one touristy souvenir shop we ventured into where I bought a handful of postcards, but even those were 33 cents each, compared to the quarter most places we've visited charge. Doesn't sound like a big deal until you start buying cards in the quantity I've been getting them. A few cents can go a long way.

Roni bought a piece of jewelry from the vendors at the Palace of Governors. I'd thought about going inside the place until I realized that it is really just a glorified history museum and that it is closed Mondays. We checked out a few of the galleries along the plaza before settling on a restaurant called the Ore House for lunch. The place had a nice ambience. We got a table on the second floor balcony overlooking the plaza, where a man was selling fajitas from a street corner cart for $4. It was proving very popular. The smoke from the cart was wafting in our direction, making us more hungry for our food that was slow in arriving, much to Ben's dismay. I had a cheese enchilada while Roni had a chicken salad. We ordered some chips and dip that was the consistency of cheap nachos. We spent $35 for our meal and it was only average. Life's too short for average meals.

After lunch we found our way back to the car and drove a few blocks east to the capitol. It was difficult to find because it is shortish and is hidden behind rows of trees. We have seen so many state capitols in the past year that we don't always bother going inside them, but we did poke our heads into New Mexico's. It is really quite beautiful. There is a large rotunda surrounded by four floors of office suites for the governor and the legislators. We toured portions of the third and fourth floors and peeked into the senate chambers. The halls are adorned with an extensive collection of artworks that could compete with some of the best museums. The true beauty of it was that there's no admission charge.

All of these things we saw were packed into about four hours. A lot less time than I thought we would spend here. Ben tried his best for a while, but frankly it was probably too much to expect that an 11-year-old would have much fun looking at art all day. And in all honesty there's no way you can do justice to such a diverse city in one day. You could spend a week exploring the downtown alone. Perhaps one day we will.

We left downtown and drove out to I-25, then got off the freeway and checked out some of the new residential construction. The houses here are just as gorgeous as the rest of the city. It seems poised for a lot of growth. Hard to believe that this city has only roughly 60,000 residents because it feels so much larger. After driving aimlessly in search of more attractions we finally found the Santa Fe Southern rail depot back in the downtown area. The cool feature about this place is that the century-old Santa Fe depot is the original home of the namesake railroad that now dominates much of the West. Santa Fe Railway of course got its start in Santa Fe and eventually merged with Burlington Northern to form the present day BNSF. And since the company's tracks run behind our Oakley home I feel a certain sense of kinship with this place. We bought a few postcards from the gift shop and watched the Santa Fe Southern GP 16 #93 at work in the yard.

We returned to the hotel room about 5:30, all exhausted despite the cooler temperatures today. I napped for a bit while Roni read her book and Ben watched TV. We need a little downtime. Problem is that with a trip like this you don't get much. We cooked up our leftovers from last night for dinner. Good way to save a few bucks and use up some of the food we have kicking around before hitting the road again tomorrow.