Serendipity in Santa Fe

"We've definitely got to find an exotic location to celebrate Christmas this year," I complained to my husband Wayne several months ago.  As much as we love our home town of El Paso, Texas, after decades of spending Christmas at home, we had pretty much partaken of all the holiday spirit that is offered locally.

So that's how we found ourselves this December in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  A short drive (in West Texas terms) of six hours took us from an altitude of about 4500 feet to 7000 feet and from about 50 degrees daytime high temperatures to the 20's and 30's. I pulled jackets, sweaters, boots, and gloves out of the back of the closet.  I even found an old pair of long underwear that I tossed in the suitcase at the last minute.

A four day stay at the lively La Fonda Hotel on the Plaza was plenty of time to discover small pleasures that are often not mentioned in travel guides. The first afternoon we sat for a quiet moment in the ornate Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.  Soon the very entertaining dress rehearsal of a Christmas pageant began..The leader instructed children with angel wings to position themselves on the top row of platform, the shepherds to take the middle row, and the animals to position themselves on the bottom row.  Delightful!  

Rehearsal at St. Francis

     

The next stop was the lounge in La Fonda, always an opportunity for great people watching. Chips and salsa and tea sustained us until dinner that evening.

View down the bar at La Fonda Lounge

Dinner  at La Fonda gave us a decorating inspiration for our home.  Why couldn't we (or rather Wayne) paint some of our glass window panels like the ones adorning the hotel dining room?

Decorated glass panels at La Fonda

And why was the guacamole concocted and served fresh at our table so much better than the guacamole we make regularly at home?

Dusk arrived early, but the views around town were memorable.  Our room with a balcony overlooked a quiet side street.

View from our room

The main plaza turned into a wonderland of lights in the evening.

Main plaza

And the Basilica of St. Francis was especially inspiring at night.

St. Francis Basilica

But the highlight of the trip was joining 30,000 revelers in making a Christmas Eve walk, with a full moon adding to the magic. Bundled figures of all ages ( and some magnificent furry dogs) made their way slowly up Canyon Road, stopping to admire houses and art galleries adorned with farolitos and Christmas lights.  Groups of carolers joined in spontaneous singing of Christmas carols around small campfires. The Ghost of Christmas Present must have sprinkled the revelers with magic dust, because a holiday spirit hovered over the crowds.

Canyon Road with moon peeking through tree

We had a memorable Christmas holiday, enjoying the serendipity of small delights in Santa Fe.  I hope your Christmas was a merry one as well.

My First Escape Room Experience

 

Lock me up in a room for an hour with a group frantically searching for clues to escape?  Not my idea of a fun evening, given my tendency to suffer from claustrophobia, I thought.  But a recent escape room experience with family members and friends in my home town of El Paso, Texas, changed my mind about this trending entertainment.

Escape rooms go by several different names, such as puzzle rooms and mystery rooms.  I prefer the emphasis on puzzles and critical thinking.  After all, Clue was my favorite board game growing up, and I am still addicted to Agatha Christie mysteries.  Some have observed that escape rooms are a real world version of video game challenges. Others have compared escape rooms to physical adventure games.  

So, what exactly is an escape room?  It is a decorated room into which you and other participants (usually two to six) are locked until you manage to escape or sixty minutes is up, whichever come first. The room contains numerous hidden clues, puzzles, codes, and gadgets that, if located and interpreted correctly, allow you to open the door to freedom.

The El Paso escape room version is named "Disaster, Room 915."  It is located in a house in an older section of the city.  After being greeted by the host in a small living area and receiving a short orientation, we were ushered into a 70's era kitchen, informed that we needed to find an abducted child, and locked in.

One of the aspects of escape rooms is that they can serve as team-building activities.  I was fascinated by roles that different members took on.  The leader of our group was a young, thirty year old professional, a friend of our son's, who quickly assumed a leadership role.  He told us to search everywhere for clues and to call out anything we found, without stopping to analyze if it was a true clue or not.  Working together, we eventually located a hidden key.  Someone said, "I wonder what this key opens?"  Probably ten to fifteen minutes later, someone else said, "I wonder if this key opens the door?"  Duh!  It was, but we only escaped to a locked hallway with two other rooms to explore.

In the next room, someone spied five letters written on the ceiling, hidden by a thin piece of cloth. My husband Wayne, always ready to solve a problem quickly, got on a chair and climbed up to rip down the cloth.  (We later learned from the host who was watching the activity through a video camera that tearing down the cloth was not what was intended.  If we would only have turned on the light switch in the room, the letters would have become illuminated!  Oops!)

The next small room off the hallway was narrow and dark with a bookshelf stacked with movie videos. We knew they must have held a clue, but once again we failed to find the light switch outside the door and were trying to read with small flashlights. (Our cell phones had been confiscated, of course.)  Several of our group became engrossed in remembering how a combination lock worked.

About this time, a voice came through the intercom, advising us that time was up.  "Just five more minutes?" someone in the group begged.  No, time was up.  We were among the 80% of escape room participants who do not solve the puzzle.

Escape rooms have become a lucrative business around the world.  They started in Japan, moved to Europe and other parts of the world, and then arrived in the United States.  Our Los Angeles based son informs us that escape rooms are especially entertaining in his city because of the abundance of actors and set designers available.  The last one he participated in involved being locked in a jail cell!  Local themes are often incorporated into escape rooms, which are after all part game and part theater.

If you are interested in visiting one of the 2800 escape rooms in the world, you can check with escape room directory.  Trip Advisor reviews escape rooms as a favorite entertainment.

And did I suffer from panic or claustrophobia in the escape room?  Not for a minute!  I was too mentally involved in finding clues and interacting with my group.  Of course, our puzzle was not like another one I heard about. That one had a zombie who approachs you and only disappears when you successfully locate a clue!  Yikes!

      

A premier climbing destination ( and more) in my own backyard

Rock climbing, bouldering, hiking, and picnicking- who would have thought we could find all of that in our own backyard? Well, not exactly right behind our house, but only thirty miles east of my home town of El Paso, Texas.  I'm talking about Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site (http://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/hueco-tanks).

A visit from out-of-towners over Thanksgiving holidays pushed my husband Wayne and me out of our comfort zone for an outing to an area that I had been aware of all of my life but had seldom visited.  I thought Hueco Tanks was dusty, barren, dangerous, and devoid of human comforts. I was embarrassingly misinformed.  This rock formation at the entrance to the park sets the stage for a setting of unusual beauty.

A hint of things to come

First and foremost, the rock formations challenge rock climbers and boulderers.

The park offers opportunities for roped free climbing with a guide in certain areas   The more popular type of climbing is bouldering, which is strenuous climbing over rocks, using only holds that naturally occur on the rocks.  Hueco Tanks State Park has a worldwide reputation for excellent bouldering, both because of the innumerable possibilities that exist for climbs and the lure of  temperate winter weather. Reservations at the park are a must November through March.

The younger and fitter members of our group spent the day bouldering.  Wayne and I opted for a less strenuous day, hiking on easy paths to view rock art left by ancient peoples and locating spots for future picnics.

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I enjoyed viewing the many huecos, indentations in rocks that hold rain water and give this unique park its name.

I was also impressed by a stop at the restored Escontrias Ranch House, now an interpretive center, where viewing of a short video is required,  reminding visitors to respect the land.

Spending the day communing with nature at the end of November?  How cool is that?  And I can't fail to mention the wonderfully clean and heated restrooms provided throughout the park.  I do like my creature comforts!