Big day. We moved into the Mountain Time Zone (one of our favorites) and got to Santa Fe, a gem of a small city. We spent a fine day in Santa Fe, the oldest state capitol in the United States and a town with lots of history, attractive architecture, and more culture than we've seen since we hit the road. There are many reasons to visit and to stay awhile. We enjoyed learning more about the history here, particularly in our visit to the Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. This lovely old church, with one wing dating from the early 17th century, holds the oldest statue of the Virgin Mary in North America, believed to be dated from 1610.
Our only disappointment was that we were too late to get a ticket to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, though we did see a few of her works in the New Mexico History Museum just up the street. The Museum had a lovely small garden filled with bougainvillea. If you look carefully at the photo you may spy Sally getting a closeup.
So, you may wonder what made this a strange day. The answer is in this shot of the full sun at about 3 pm. It shown red and orange through a veil of smoke that descended on Santa Fe from three different forest fires burning in the surrounding area. They have come early to this part of the West and they are becoming more and more of the story of the West in the summer.
These fires are propelled by winds, high winds. We noticed the winds on our drive into the mountains here this morning. Gusts up to forty miles an hour. All in all it took the edge off an otherwise fine day and drove us to eat inside Silverstreak.
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