Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is a very interesting and cultural town.  I loved the look of all the little adobe houses and buildings.

We parked at the visitor center that had plenty of space for a big truck.  Then we walked around and looked at some of the interesting sights.  First we saw the oldest church building in the USA.

Then we visited the Loretto Chapel with the Miraculous Stairway.

The story behind this staircase is that the when the chapel was built in 1873, no access had been provided to the choir loft 20 feet above the chapel floor.  The Sisters used the chapel daily for Mass but were unable to use the choir loft.  Legend has it that the Sisters asked local carpenters to build a staircase, but none of them had the skill to build a circular staircase, and the chapel is too small for a standard staircase.  So the Sisters prayed for 9 days straight to St. Joseph.  On the 9th day a gray haired, bearded carpenter with a donkey came to the chapel and built the staircase. The reason they call it miraculous is because it was constructed without the use of nails or a center support.  The railing was added later in 1887.  The carpenter who built the staircase needed total privacy and locked himself in the chapel for 3 months.  When he was finished he was gone, so nobody knows his identity.  But the staircase is truly a work of art.

We took a break for lunch and had the best pizza at Upper Crust Pizza on the Old Santa Fe Trail. Yum!!

Next we visited the beautiful Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

Then we walked down Canyon Road where there are several art galleries.

Santa Fe is beautiful and I’m glad we had the chance to visit it.  We usually steer clear of cities due to difficulty finding places to park a big truck and we are not exactly fans of large crowds.  Crowds and traffic come with big cities so we usually avoid them, but this was a fun city to visit and on a Saturday it wasn’t that crowded at all.