What To Do In Santa Fe, Abiquiu and Taos

Plus, the one thing I always do on vacation and a plug for my favorite bathing suit.

This is an update of a post from April 2023—with lots of fresh content.

Last week, my family headed back to Santa Fe for a family reunion. We’d been to New Mexico the previous spring and I’d visited three time before that, and I love this part of the world even more than ever. Below you'll find some highlights from our two recent trips: 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 and spent most of my adult life as a city dweller and a city tourist. However, in the last few years the scales have tipped in favor of getting outdoors during vacation: Spending time in nature is now the highlight of our trips. For example, two years ago when we visited California, we skipped the city altogether and went to Big Sur and Point Reyes Station where we hiked every day, sometimes twice a day, and even when it rained.

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, or 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, Abiquiu, and Taos; it’s just the highlights of our recent visits with a kid 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.