Hey Guys!! We always seem to end up in Santa Fe around Christmas. This year (2019) makes our third Christmas in Santa Fe since we started this grand adventure of ours. There’s something so magical about seeing Santa Fe in the snow. I think, for me, it’s the luminaries lit up and the adobe style buildings with their chili pepper garlands all covered in snow. I fell in love with it during our first visit to Santa Fe back in 2015 and it kind of feels like revisiting an old friend now.

We’ve had snow in Santa Fe every single time we’ve been there and this time didn’t let us down! In fact, I scheduled Santa Fe for Christmas because I wanted to have a white Christmas.

So, in between all of our adventuring, we did our Christmas traditions. We have tamales for our Christmas dinner and Guys, it’s almost impossible to find decent tamales outside of New Mexico.

We spent an entire day exploring the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. This National Monument is split into three separate mission sites. It’s quite a drive to get in between them, so if you’re going…go early and plan on an entire day. You do drive through small communities so you could grab lunch somewhere if you didn’t want to pack a picnic.

We started our explorations of the Salinas Pueblo Missions at the Gran Quivira Mission which is the largest of the three missions. Gran Quivira was an important trading community because of it’s location between the Pueblo Tribes and the Plains Tribes who were more nomadic.

When the Spanish explorers arrived in this area in 1583, they reported that there were eleven pueblos with close to 40,000 people. Gran Quivira started as a group of pit houses around 1,200 years ago but grew into a thriving community with over twenty masonry buildings. They had water catchment systems in place for the dry times because there wasn’t a water source close by.

The Friars and the Franciscan missionaries showed up in 1627 and started preaching with translators. They allowed some religious freedoms at first, but by the 1660s changes started to appear in church policies that forced the Natives to hide their sacred ceremonies and beliefs. In 1630 the first priest moved into the pueblo and had the Natives start building a church and by 1659 had plans for a bigger church. Everyone helped…even the women and children.

At some point in the 1660s there was a drought in the area and the already dry pueblo suffered. In 1670 the people of Gran Quivira left and went to Abó and those that were left behind died from either smallpox or a different disease brought over with the Spanish soon after.

Mission San Gregorio de Abó was home to the Pueblo Indians for over five hundred years. In 1622 the Franciscan priests came to this area to “civilize” the Tribes who called this region home. For close to one thousand years, people have been drawn to this area.

Abó had two priests who lived there. That was unusual for that time and made Abó one of the largest missionaries in all of New Mexico. While the priests and the friars worked to Christianize the Native population, they had them building not one church but two.

When the Spanish found Abó, they estimated the population close to 800 Indians. By 1670, drought, Apache uprisings, and disease caused the abandonment of Abó. In the span of just fifty years, this flourishing community was left empty.

The Villages of Quarai are largely unexcavated. The church is really the only thing left standing. They took several ground surveys and based on what they found…they believe this community was around 400 to 600 people.

I didn’t see a ton of info about life here at Quarai. There’s still quite a bit they don’t really know. So, I don’t have a ton of info to pass on to you about this site. We do know that in 1598 when the first priest showed up, Quarai was a thriving community.

I can also tell you that by the late 1670s, the residents of Quarai were all suffering from the same drought, famine, and disease we’ve read about at so many other ancient dwellings and missions of this time. Quarai also had trouble with nearby warring tribes.

It always makes us sad when we learn how thriving and full of life these communities were when they were living and worshiping their way and then to ‘see’ how fast they declined once interference was inserted into their lives. I don’t feel like their lives were made better and I often wonder, while walking amongst the ancient dwellings, what their lives would have been like if they’d been left alone.

Bandelier National Monument is one of the parks we’ve been to numerous times now…and every time we visit we find out some new information or see something with a new perspective. Since we were in the Santa Fe area, we spent some time in one of our favorite parks.

Bandelier National Monument protects close to thirty thousand acres and eleven thousand years of human history. Found on the slopes of the Jemez volcanic field in what’s known as Frijoles Canyon, the Ancestral Pueboloans built their homes out of the volcanic tuff that was left over after the Valles Caldera volcano blew her top over a million years ago. Today, you can see what’s left of several ancient communities.

You can see where the walls of this ancient dwelling used to be. the holes in the rock are where support beams used to be. There is even a small space where you can see how the interior of these homes used to be decorated. We like to walk amongst these sites and imagine what life would have been like for the former occupants.

Our favorite trail takes you up to Alcove House. This is a fun trail where you get to climb up four wooden ladders and some stone stairs to get to an ancient dwelling 140 feet above the canyon floor. They believe about twenty or so people used to live there. There’s a reconstructed kiva at Alcove House, but we’ve never seen it open to the public. The views of the canyon from the top are pretty amazing!

Bandelier not only has some amazing views, fun trails, and ancient dwellings (that you get to explore from the inside) it also has some of our favorite trees…ponderosa trees smell so good! What can I say…we’re a tree hugging/smelling family of nomads.

Back in 2015 during our first visit to the Santa Fe area, we found the little town of Los Alamos and the Bradbury Science Museum. While we were soaking in all of the science goodness, we found out that the National Park Service was actually in the process of making a visitor center for the Manhattan Project National Historic Park in Los Alamos. Our little science hearts were so excited! We’ve tried a few times to make it to the visitor center and every time we were thwarted. But this time…we made it! And…it was open!!! I don’t know if you know this about us, but we’re nerds. Science is totally our jam. Back in 2015 I had the boys read a book called The Secret Project Notebook by Carolyn Reeder. It was a great way to start our Los Alamos explorations and get them interested in the history of the project Los Alamos is known for…the atomic bomb.

If you have the chance to visit Los Alamos, you really should. It’s a great little town with some top notch science nerdery.

Did someone say foodies? We might be slightly obsessed with New Mexican food. Maybe. We ate so much of it while we were there that we started to smell like a Mexican restaurant when we would sweat. Ha! It was fantastic!! We have our favorite spots…but we also found a few new favorites that we will definitely revisit next time!

That’s it for our Santa Fe adventures for this time!

See y’all down the road!!

#NationalParkTour