Santa Fe is only about an hour and a half from Bernalillo, so we decided to go see Bandalier National Monument. Wow! We took the “back road” into the park and it was pretty high in altitude. We were over 8,000 ft for quite some time. We came across Valle Calderas National Monument and it looked amazing. It was covered in snow and the road, although paved, looked very icy. So we went only a short way down the road and Dave got some pictures. I bet it is beautiful during the rest of the year.
We continued on to Bandelier National Monument. It is a site of cliff dwellings and you can actually climb the ladders and get into some of the dwellings. We ran into a common problem along this trip – New Mexico schools had started spring break. So it was pretty crowded in the park and we didn’t get there until 11 am. There were lines almost an hour long to get into the dwellings. Sigh….but it was very beautiful and snowy so we hiked a path and at the end of the path there was a relatively short wait to climb the ladders into the long house. I waited. He said the ladders were pretty well secured but I am not climbing 4-5 stories up a cliff face! I waited with all the other bad knees/chicken people at the bottom.
It is fun for us to find these places we had never heard of and get to visit them. Bandelier is a beautiful park that is only 7 miles from the Los Alamos National Lab and 30 minutes from Santa Fe. So we stopped into the historic plaza in Santa Fe and found The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi. He is my patron saint for my confirmation and I have always admired his conversion to a person of minimal needs. This church and its grounds were spectacular! It was originally sanctified in 1599 and the building there now still contains parts of the original. My favorite thing about this church is that they have a permanent garden for the stations of the cross that is so quiet and calming, and filled with statuary for each station. And so many artworks about St. Francis and Saint Clare! They also has so many plaques explaining the history of the parish.
This day was a really good one and this church was soooo cool!