We ♥️ New Mexico

The food! The art! The wine! The pretty views! We were not expecting to love New Mexico as much as we did. We stayed in 5 different places in New Mexico and found that the food (local Mexican food in particular) was very good, the local wines were the best we’ve tasted outside of California, the art scene was very impressive and so were the natural views.

New Mexico is also an interesting state by the numbers.

Some fun facts:

• It’s the fifth largest state by area, but only has $2.1M people, making it the 36th state by total population.

• Santa Fe is the highest elevation state capitol in the US - at approximately 7,000ft. Santa Fe is also the oldest capital city in the US, having been founded in 1610!

• The whole state is at high elevation, with four fifths of the state over 4,000 feet! The lowest point in the state is still pretty high - Red Bluff Reservoir is at around 2,800 feet.

• One third of New Mexico’s land is federally owned (National parks, wildernesses, etc and, oh yeah, White Sands National Missile test site).

• “Red or Green?” - I found one website that called this the state question (What? That’s a thing?). Anyway, that’s how they ask you if you want red or green salsa on your enchilada, or other appropriate food. Most of the time, I answered, can I have both? Because sometimes the red chili sauce was better, and sometimes the green! One waitress called that “Christmas” as in, “red, green, or Christmas?” It was all good.

• We will definitely go back.

Santa Fe

We stayed near downtown/old town Santa Fe. It was very hilly, there were lots of good strolling/walking opportunities, and it was a comfortable temperature even in November at 7,000ft elevation. Photo is of one of the walking paths through a residential neighborhood near where we stayed.

One of the nearby strolling opportunities was the famous, historic Canyon Road, where there are all kinds of cool art galleries.

Craig was inspired by the local food and created his own Chili Verde from some recipes he found - YUM!

See more on Santa Fe (and all the other New Mexico locations) in the New Mexico extras gallery.

Taos

Taos was just an hour and a half drive from Santa Fe, and we heard the drive was very pretty, so we spent a day checking it out. As advertised…

We had brunch in Taos, hence the marvelous “Christmas” chili-sauced dishes. On the drive back we hiked in some of the places in the above photos and stopped for some wine tasting - see details in this post. We were surprised and impressed by how tasty the wines were, especially knowing how dry/high elevation the whole state is. We learned that the primary growing region in New Mexico is near Demming, a town in the Southwestern area of the state, but they grow grapes almost everywhere we went (including near Roswell!).

As we were driving out of Santa Fe, on our way to Roswell, we noticed that there was a bunch of fog - which prompted a deep philosophical question. Is it fog or are they clouds? We were so high up in the mountains, we were not sure which it would be. Apologies, the photos didn’t come out, so you will just have to imagine it…

Roswell - The Truth is out There!

We were in New Mexico - how could we not stop in Roswell? Here’s a taste, but please check out my detailed review.

Carlsbad

Carlsbad was a nice town - we didn’t expect much because we were pretty much just there as a way to go to the caverns. We really enjoyed the zoo there - it is quite unique as it highlights so much of the local plants and animals. You can see more about that in the gallery. But of course, the main attraction was the Carlsbad Caverns, which it turns out is a National Park. We hiked into the caverns (instead of taking the elevator down) and it was SO worth it. You walk into this ominous large hole in the ground and take this long switch-backed steep, dark path down. Eventually, you get to the big cavern with the really amazing formations. Note that they have emergency phones at several places along the hiking path that also tell you how far you are from the elevator back up, help and the bathrooms. It did take us an hour to hike down and we decided there was no shame in taking the elevator back up!

White Sands

We had planned to check out the missile test site at White Sands since we were in the area on our way from Carlsbad to Tucson. Sadly, despite our best efforts, we were not able to get into the test site - We had everything we needed, but unfortunately, the national background check network was down and they could not do what they needed to do (you need to have Real ID or a passport AND they have to do a criminal background check when you arrive). We’ll come back another day (I think they guy at the desk sfelt particularly bad because they had had to cancel their once a year open house in October because of the government shut down).

We also learned that we could not miss White Sands National Park, which is nearby - it’s made up of dunes that are formed from gypsum sands, which are white. So cool. We even saw a couple of kids tobaganing down one of the dunes.