Having grown accustomed to the warmer climates of Florida and Texas the first morning in Santa Fe resulted in thermal shock for the Hoblets. The overnight temperature had dropped down below freezing, being that Santa Fe is 7000 feet above sea level things do get chilly here in the winter. We had managed to keep reasonably cosy inside the comfort of our motor home but we had forgotten (or at least Mark forgot!) to unhook the water line. Consequently the whole pipe was frozen solid by morning – we are still learning about living life on the road.
Not deterred by the chill in the air we dressed up warmly and went into look around the historic old town of Santa Fe. This is an old western frontier town, famed for its rail road and in the past has been a tough place to live. Today it is a genteel town with a focus on antiques and arts and crafts. There are some very fancy shops here selling some gorgeous things – a great place to mooch around, unless you have an 8 year old girl and 10 year old boy in tow. Actually Emily is becoming a bit of a retail-o-holic, particularly when it comes to jewellery, clothes, fossils, minerals and moose. It does not bode well for the future. Jack on the other hand gets bored quickly of shopping and mopes around outside the store hoping that his tirades of winging will force his mother and youngest sister to withdraw. He has not learnt yet the futility of his actions. The architecture of Santa Fe is primarily adobe style buildings, with their attractive round edges and imperfect earth coloured stucco exterior walls. We just loved this style of building.
After perusing a shop or two we come across the Loretto Chapel, and what drew us in was the sign about it famous staircase. The chapel itself is very small and is now privately owned, but the staircase itself is a magnificent spiralling unsupported staircase. The stairway's carpenter, whoever he was, built a magnificent structure. The design was innovative for the time and some of the design considerations still perplex experts today.The staircase has two 360 degree turns and has no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. A true piece of master craftsmanship!
When the Loretto Chapel was completed in 1898, there was no way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel. Legend says that to find a solution to the seating problem, the Sisters of the Chapel prayed to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the ninth and final day of prayer, a man appeared at the Chapel with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work. Months later the elegant circular staircase was completed, and the carpenter disappeared without pay or thanks. After searching for the man (an ad even ran in the local newspaper) and finding no trace of him, some concluded that he was St. Joseph himself, who came in answer to the Sisters' prayers.
One of the things we particularly wanted to see was the great American artist Georgia O’Keeffe'sMuseum. Jack had studied the works of Georgia O’Keeffe in 3rd Grade so we felt it was important for Emily to make this “field trip”. Her works are primarily abstract but cover a wide range of subject matter although she is probably most famous for her close-up paintings of flowers. Through her early years she lived in New York with her husband Alfred Stieglitz, but when he died in 1946 she moved to her house at Ghost Ranch, north of Santa Fe. The mountains and deserts of New Mexico had been spiritual home for O’Keeffe since her first visit in 1929. She lived and worked from her Ghost Ranch home until her death in 1982 at the age of 98. The museum exhibited a large cross section of O’Keeffe's body of work, covering both her water colour and oil paintings. Our particular favourites were the landscapes she painted in the time she spent in New Mexico. The museum building itself was delight to be in - there was a guest artist, Marsden Hartley, a contemporary of O’Keeffe but his works did not appeal so much to us. We really just wanted more O’Keeffe.
Our day in Santa Fe was wonderful, a bit cold but just walking the streets amongst the adobe buildings was relaxing in itself. We need to have days like this where we just chill out!!
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