May 9 - Magical Mystery Miracle Tour

 

We started our first full day in Santa Fe with a stop at Whoo’s Donuts.  I’m not stoned here, just under-caffeinated, but this would be a great choice if you were.  We got a couple Boston Creme Pie ‘nuts, a Blueberry Something or other, and a Chocolate Toffee thing.  All yummy!

Next we headed to Downtown Santa Fe to see the “Miracle Staircase” in the Loretto Chapel.  The nuns who founded it in the 1800s travelled all the way from the Lorettine Mother House in Marion County, KY, where Mom & Dad both grew up.  Sisters of Loretto even taught Glenda in school!  So they had this chapel built once they got there, and there was only a ladder to the upper choir level, which was normal for monks but everyone knows women can’t climb ladders, so they needed a staircase built.  But - a plain ole diagonal staircase would’ve reduced seating capacity too much.  They prayed for nine days for a solution and legend has it that on the ninth day a mysterious carpenter with only a hammer and carpenter’s square, and a pile of mysterious non-indigenous lumber arrived and constructed a spiral staircase with no central support and no nails.  Apparently the miraculous status is questionable since other similar staircases existed in Europe at the time, but it’s pretty amazing that a carpenter of that caliber was just wandering through the desert then.  

Unfortunately you can’t climb the staircase anymore, but it is a lovely piece of work.  Also, fun/scary fact - it didn’t have a banister at first!  That was added by local artisans later.  

One of the stained glass windows, imported from France.  The chapel was designed and built by Real Live Frenchmen and modeled after Sainte Chapelle in Paris.  Oo-la-la! 

Outside, we found an excellent example of Big-Building-Eating-a-Small-Building architecture.  Also, lilacs are in bloom here now and they’re EVERYWHERE!

We stopped in the plaza outside of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, hoping to look inside, but being Sunday, they were only holding mass services and not allowing looky-loos like us inside.  

The grounds were beautiful on their own, though, with lots of these pink blooming trees that we discovered are crabapples.

We also walked the Labyrinth in front of the Cathedral.  

After walk-meditating on world peace and what we wanted for lunch, we ambled into the main square.

Santa Fe is famous for its red & green chiles, and there are huge strands of red ones hanging everywhere you look in this area.

There are lots of high-end art galleries in downtown but the only one with adorable play-fighting doggos (according to my research, at least.)

We drove up to the Santa Fe National Forest to scout some possible campgrounds for later.  The foothills as you leave the city are very scenic.

Afterwards, we headed to the next stop on our Unintentional Tour of Important Catholic Landmarks - El Santuario de Chimayo, in the town of Chimayo about 45 minutes north of Santa Fe.  It’s one of the most important Roman Catholic pilgrimage spots in the US but is also highly recommended as a fascinating piece of NM history even for the non-religious.  I couldn’t even begin to explain the story behind this, so here’s this Atlas Obscura entry for you to read. You won’t regret it.

The approach to the shrine containing the holy dirt is lined with saint’s shrines, many to different regional appearances of Mary, where pilgrims leave rosaries, scapulars, and mementos.

The gates to the main shrine.  Between them and the entrance are the graves of several generations of care-takers.  

There’s no photography allowed inside the main shrine, including the small chamber containing the holy dirt, or the adjoining room filled with photos and mementos left by pilgrims praying for their loved ones as well as crutches left by those who claimed to be healed by the dirt.  There are photos of these spaces online if you’re so inclined.  The carvings and paintings on the chapel walls are amazing, but the most affecting section is absolutely the walls of photos.  It’s overwhelming to put yourself in the shoes of the people who came here to pray for those pictured in them.

Next door is what was once the family chapel of the Santuario’s caretakers, the Medinas.  It’s a shrine to the Holy Infant of Achota, and is now where pilgrims with prayers for children leave photos and mementos, similar to the Santuario, as well as pairs of baby shoes which line the ceiling. As you can imagine, it’s equally, if not more, moving than the memento room in the Santuario.  

Photography isn’t allowed inside this chapel either.  There is genuinely a sacred feeling to this place even if you are not a person of faith, so it doesn’t feel like an unreasonable request at all.

After the Sanctuary, we looked for the gallery and museum of LowLow Medina, a local artist who specializes in themes of Jesus, chiles, and low-riders, painted on canvases or low-rider cars themselves.

I’d read about LowLow on Roadside America, but those unawares would probably spy his display  with his contact info across from the Santuario.  

We found LowLow and his lovely wife Joan set up a couple blocks down the street.  Since the recent partial reopening of businesses in NM, they’ve begun to alternate days between selling handmade soaps, spice blends, jewelry, and crosses, and running tours of LowLow’s gallery and car/motorcycle museum by appointment.  Unfortunately they weren’t doing tours that day, but we had a nice chat with them and I bought a soap bar and some spicy spices.  

It was cool to see one of his car collection “in the wild” all the same.

Before returning to Santa Fe, we scouted some other campgrounds along the Rio Grande del Norte.

And got back in time for another A+ sunset over the rodeo fairgrounds (I took this from the announcer’s tower!)

Next - Meow Wolf!

Last Route 66 Kicks & Santa Fe

The actual town of Shamrock, TX was our first stop once we got back onto I-40/Route 66.

You may be surprised to find there is a lot of Irish iconography here!

We parked across from this cute restored service station.

Shamrock is famous for its not one, but two Blarney Stones. Encased in this green concrete... thing... is the “real” one, which was cut off of the original in Ireland and shipped over when the officials of Shamrock asked really nicely.  But might this story be a whole heap o’ blarney itself??  Since this one doesn’t have an attendant who sanitizes the rock after every kiss, like the real deal, I opted for an air kiss.

At some point the town felt the need to have a second extra-extra-blarney-y stone made and installed a couple blocks away.

Texas Theaters was once a state-wide chain.  This is the only one that still shows a new movie on a regular basis.

Authentic Irish Tex-Mex

The most popular tourist stop in Shamrock is this gorgeous restored Art Deco Conoco station with an attached coffee shop.  It’s now a gift shop and visitor center.

The cafe section has been display-only for decades, but the lady in the gift shop said they’re planning on making it operational again later this year!

Elvis once stayed at the inn across the street, ate in this cafe, and then had his foot run over by a local kid on a tricycle.

A ways further down Route 66 in McLean, TX, is another old and very tiny service station.

Near Amarillo, we stopped at Cadillac Ranch, a line of old Cadillacs stuck grill-first in the dirt. 

Over time visitors started to tag the cars, and eventually every other man-made surface nearby, with spray paint.

There is now a truck parked to the right of the Cadillacs selling spray paint at marked-up prices, but I picked up the first discarded can I found and it was more than half full!  Time to be a Li’l Punk!

I thought hard about how to best express my torment and angst, but all I could think of was “REBA” 

The paint is so thick it looks like the beginnings of cave formations.

Before we left Texas, we hit up a rest area with a large scenic overlook deck.

That’s a whole lotta Texas!

If this Horse Motel had free HBO I’ll bet it would be a lot busier.

The truck (which runs on diesel) ran out of DEF fluid suddenly and we had to make a couple emergency stops to get more as we crossed into New Mexico.  The second stop took us through Tucumcari, NM, where we passed the popular Blue Swallow Motel.

The truck fully DEF-ed, we drove on to Santa Fe, NM and our site for the night in the Rodeo de Santa Fe Fairgrounds.

RV parking is only available here when there isn’t an event, so there are no bulls, cowboys, and thank god no clowns, but we were greeted by a couple of horses who live on the grounds.

The RV hookups are on the north and south sides of the arena.  Our camper is on the very far left.  Once we were docked, I took a walk around the grounds and found the rodeo mascot.

Our laundry bag was getting full, so we ran out to a local laundromat and just managed to finish before closing.  While the clothes were drying, Dad and I went across the street to pick up dinner from Lotaburger, a local fast food joint that does burgers NM style with green chile sauce.  Good stuff!

I’ll end with a very special edition of Daily Sunset Photo featuring a Beef Jerky truck parked next to an Express Crematorium, taken from the Lotaburger parking lot.  Laundry, body disposal, junk food.  All your basic needs on one block.

 

Overnight on a farm in Shamrock, TX - May 7-8

After our longer-and-weirder-than-expected visit with Harley, we rolled into Texas later than we’d hoped.

“Drive Friendly the Texas Way”

At 6:30 pm we pulled into the second Boondockers spot of our trip - an operating farm surrounded by nothing but sky and grass as far as the eye could see.  It used to produce manure for sale, but now they just raise cattle.  

The skies were growing turbulent as we set up.  At first it looked like it might be moving away from us.

Dad and I went for a quick walk around the grounds and met the two sweet dogs that guard the property.  

This is Jake, he’s the daytime guy.

And this is Panda, the night guardsman.  This picture was taken the next morning when he was sleeping off his long night.  He’s also just gotten a kind of awkward haircut (he’s a Great Pyrenees mix.)

It quickly became apparent that the storm was not going to spare us.  We watched the lightning in the distance for a while before it got too close for comfort and skedaddled back to the camper.

Nothing ominous about this storm cloud in the shape of an angel of death coming straight towards us!

The storm got pretty intense, with shaking wind and  lightning cracking right over us in our little fiberglass box.  It was pretttty cool, although Mom was not a fan.

After the peak of the storm had passed, it was still raining hard, but the sunset came through the clouds for a few eerie minutes.  Here’s a time-lapse I got of it.

We made fancy healthy-person salads to compensate for the afternoon’s assault on our guts.

The bad weather passed in the night with no damage incurred, and the sunrise Saturday morning was all the more beautiful for it.

We spent some more time with Jake and Panda, the best dogs in Texas.

Then we met up with our host, who’d invited us to watch him bottle-feed one of his calves.

Poor little guy’s mom had been found dead in the field of unclear causes. :-( He runs over to get his bottle as soon as anyone comes into view.

Once the bottle is done, if you get your finger, hand, arm, or any other appendage near him, he’ll just keep going at it!

We would’ve loved to have spent more time here, since Mom and Dad both have fond memories of family farms in Kentucky, and I loved those puppers.  But we had a reserved spot in Santa Fe to get to (the last of our advance reservations - from here on we’ll be winging it more) - so west we went!