We arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico on day 10 of our road trip, and we were spent. We decided to find a place to stay for two nights so we could relax a bit. I stumbled upon the Rancho de Santa Fe Campground, just a few minutes drive to the old town.
This was the best campground experience in our travels to New Mexico. Other campgrounds were just gravel or paved pads and offered very little character. This campground had great sites and the landscape reflected the region with the plantings and adobe style buildings.
The pool had adobe walls at Rancho de Santa Fe Campground.
We spent an afternoon walking through downtown Santa Fe. There are lots and lots of shops, art galleries and restaurants in adobe style buildings. It was really quite lovely. There were also historic sites like the Loretto Chapel with its miraculous stairway, Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, and the oldest house in Santa Fe.
Tradition has called this building the oldest house in Santa Fe.
The downtown adobe buildings were really fun to explore!
I had been New Mexico more than 20 years earlier with my cousin, Lisa. The Taos region was my favorite area and I wanted to show my parents and kids. We rented a car through Turo.com, it’s like an airbnb for cars. We picked up a Nissan Altima for $40 a day, much better than the 32′ RV to drive the the windy, mountain roads up to Taos, New Mexico.
Visiting Taos from Santa Fe is an all day adventure, and about 170 miles. Thanks to the advice of our campground hosts, we took the high road to Taos and the low road back and had beautiful views along the way.
Our first stop was a small village called Chimayo – my favorite stop of the day. There we went to El Santuario de Chimayo, a small adobe church dating back to 1816. The placard read,
“El Santurario is an internationally renowned Roman Catholic pilgrimage site. In 1816 Bernardo Abeyta and other residents of Chimayo finished building this adobe chapel honoring Nuestro Senor de Espuipulas. The chapel is noted for is six-foot crucifix and healing dirt.”
If you’d like to read more about it, here is an article on the National Parks website.
El Santuario de Chimayo, a small shrine located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Chimayo, New Mexico
We drove through Taos and stopped at a few shops along the way, had a great lunch at Antonio’s “The Taste of Mexico” (chile relleno), and drove over the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. At 650 feet above the Rio Grande, it is the fifth highest bridge in the United States. We parked and walked over to check it out. A large truck went by which shook the bridge and sent K2 running back to the RV.
We stopped to walk over the Rio Grande Gorge bridge, 650 feet above the Rio Grande.
Our last stop north of Taos was at the Earthship Biotecture homes. An Earthship is a type of house built with natural and recycled materials with energy conservation in mind. It’s designed to produce energy, water and food for its own use. There are dozens of Earthship homes dotting the landscape in Tres Piedras, New Mexico. They all look different and pretty futuristic. This three bedroom Earthship home could be yours for $950,000.
An Earthship house in Tres Piedras, NM.
The drive from Santa Fe to Taos and back was the highlight of our visit to New Mexico. I highly recommend planning it in if you’re visiting the Santa Fe area!
