The Santa Fe Effect

I have experienced The Draw of the Southwest and returned to tell about it.

When Donk and I decided that we wanted to take a trip "somewhere new" and then, in unison blurted out "Santa Fe", I probably should have sensed that there was something otherworldly about the place.

But no. I am not that bright.

Instead, I naively watched as the details of our trip fell together like so many magnetic puzzle pieces, as though some master vacation planner were working secretly behind the scenes making sure that everything was just perfect.

And you know I gave US all the credit for the great planning, timing, accommodations, excursions, restaurant choices, etc, but, I think we really had nothing to do with it.

My thought is this: It is possible that Santa Fe, and perhaps the whole of New Mexico, is something of a blissful vacationing vacuum. As though vacation puppet masters glide along unseen, taking your plans and enhancing them - putting the cherries on top. I say this because there were a lot of things about our trip that we just *could not* have planned better if we'd, ahem, tried.

Example:


We spend all the live long day going from gallery to gallery in Santa Fe so that I can stare lewdly at sumptuous pastel landscapes. Then we manage to fall into a paper store (which is one of Donk's FAVORITE things in the whole wide world) which happens to be showcasing a Pastel Kit. I, of course, buy it and spend the entire afternoon pasteling to my heart's content. The next day, we randomly fall into a little courtyard cafe in Albuquerque and find that an artist colony has set up shop and will be pasteling (yes, I know this is not a real term) in the scenic courtyard while we eat our YUM lunches and the cute hippie dude plays acoustic guitar covers of our favorite songs.

Now, imagine a four day period consisting only of scenarios like that. You make no real plans, you check no details and yet everything happens perfectly, incredibly, inconceivably and then somehow gets a cherry on top.

It's charmingly bizarre.

I believe that I said, "What is the DEAL with this place?" approximately one hundred times over the course of our trip.

We literally got to the point where we were never disappointed when what we'd "planned" to do didn't work out as we'd "planned" because we *just knew* that if we kept going, something even better would come along and make our original "plans" look like overdue gum surgery.

Restaurant too expensive? Oh wait, look, there is the exact incarnation of my wildest lunching dreams RIGHT THERE. Oh, and yes, the prices are wicked cheap, we can sit in the sunshine and OH they have exactly what I want to eat at this exact moment.


We decide at the last minute to take a road trip to Taos. Our butler (separate story here) recommends the most fabulous restaurant *right* on our way.

We get to Taos. Donk says, "Taos must be beautiful covered in snow". It begins to snow. It is beautiful.

All the way down to the last moment...

We are sad to part ways at the airport. OH WAIT, our gates are right next to each other.

Uh-huh, the whole weekend was like this. Start to finish. Bad/awkward/inconvenient/seemingly not perfect turns fabulous/ideal/convenient/perfect without us even trying.

Whether it was due to the aforementioned Santa Fe Effect, our inability to accurately judge our surroundings due to overindulgence in margaritas or actual good planning on our part, I can't say.

What I can say, though, is that I am having a secret love affair with all things Santa Fean because that place is, oh how you say, just right.