Notes from Taos and Santa Fe
A few highlights from my recent family trip, the one thing I always do on vacation, and a plug for my favorite bathing suit.
Over the spring break my family headed out west to meet our new nephew and see my husband’s family in Denver. With a longer than usual break for New York City schools this year, we decided to tack on a road trip to New Mexico (FYI: this was more driving than I’d do on a future trip).
My husband and I had been to Santa Fe before pre-parenthood, and I’d visited a couple times in my 20s when my sister lived there during grad school, but it had been a minute and I’d never spent time in Taos. I liked New Mexico even more than I remembered and wished we’d had longer to linger, especially since I still haven’t managed to book a tour of Abiquiu!
Below you'll find some highlights from our trip: Things to do, places to sleep and eat, and shops that I admired, but first, I want to offer one big recommendation for any trip:
Take a hike!
I moved to New York City when I was 18. I spent most of my adult life as a city dweller and a city tourist, but in the last few years the scales have tipped in favor of getting outdoors during my leisure time. Now when we go on vacation, spending time in nature is the highlight of our trips. Last year when we visited California, we skipped the city and went to Big Sur and Point Reyes Station where we hiked every day, sometimes twice a day, and even when it rained. It was the best family vacation we’d ever taken.
You might think you’re not a hiker, and you don’t need to be ready to climb any mountains, but if you can walk a couple miles I encourage you to plan a hike, a nature walk, whatever you want to call it into your future vacations.
A local trail guide is always the best place to find information about the trails in any area you are visiting (in Santa Fe, this might be is the Sierra Club’s Day Hikes in the Santa Fe Area). More than likely this will not be a book published by a giant like Lonely Planet or Fodor’s—it’ll be from some small press or independently published. If you don’t have one before arriving, go to the local bookstore and ask if they have one.
I am also a big fan of the app AllTrails (I happily pay for the premium version), which can help you find trails near wherever you are (it doesn’t have all the trails or routes in any given place, but it will have some). Of course, any state or national park is likely to have a well-marked trail system (and you can snap photos of the trail maps at trailheads), but finding something off the beaten path is so rewarding (I’ve included two secret-ish hikes in my recommendations for paid subscribers below).
This is by no means a comprehensive guide to visiting Santa Fe and Taos; it’s just the highlights of our mini visit with a 7 ½ year old in tow. I included where we stayed, some transcendent donuts, a hike to a natural hot spring, and a semi-secret walk along one of the prettiest creeks I’ve ever seen. If you’re heading to Santa Fe and can’t swing the $5 for a month of Living Small, email me and I will gladly send you the list as a Google doc.
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