Day Trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is only 40 min away from where we are staying. We had the choice of taking the train or driving to the little town. After doing a bit of research, we choose the car as the different areas of Santa Fe looked hard to get to one another without a car.

Santa Fe is probably a lovely little town to explore when you don't have kids. It's full of art gallery's and museums and unfortunately nothing we wanted to try and conquer. Our first stop was the railway park which had a playground with slides and ropes.

While there we met a lady with her 2 young kids. She was from Czech Republic and her husband is American and set up his Dr practice there in Oct. She said that there is very little for kids in Santa Fe. She home schools her eldest, who is 5.5 and talks as much as Brandon. She said they go to the library and the children's museum, but it's not so great. She was good to talk to, but we felt a bit underwhelmed with Santa Fe.

We drove down Canyon Rd, the arts district, and wanted to get out , but there was no parking to be found, and the street didn't have sidewalks and wouldn't be safe with 2 kids to have a Sunday stroll.

We continued our car ride to downtown or the old town and found parking for an hour. We saw the plaza, and the little tables locals set up to sell their handmade jewellery and items.

There was a community arts center which had statues outside for the kids to touch. We tried to go into a shop /gallery but it was stressful for them to just look and not touch or bump into anything, plus the shop staff were not that friendly.

Old town has a distinct look with most buildings square and pueblos style with the sand/brown colour. Old town has to look like it did and therefore finding a public toilet for a 5 year old is impossible and there are no trees anywhere either. We became patrons at a cafe, for the toilet and a coffee. The shop assistant told is about Meow Wolf, which became our next stop.

Meow Wolf, is a art installation which was collaborated by over 200 artists, established in 2008. This permanent installation was launched in 2016 and had support from George RR Martin.

Meow Wolf creates immersive, interactive experiences to transport audiences of all ages into fantastic realms of story and exploration.  House of Eternal Return, where guests discover a multidimensional mystery house with secret passages, portals to magical worlds, climbing apparatus, and surreal, maximalist & mesmerizing art exhibits along with a children’s learning center, top ten in the U.S. music venue and cafe area.

The house/maze was never ending and we all had a great time. There is a storyline and clues to follow but that was impossible to do as Brandon and Inara kept moving to another secret room or something new to see or experience. It was very easy to loose one another but also to miss a room as there was another one to see instead.

On the drive back, Elisa drove while the other 3 had much needed naps after an exhilarating few hours. Josh and the kids has a short play in the pool, scootered around while dinner was being made and then off to Kactus brewing company, which is attached to the KOA.Read more