Smith Family Adventures: A 7th Anniversary Trip to Santa Fe

May 6, 2000 Lee Smith and Kerry Sumpter were married. To celebrate the 7th anniversary of this joyous occasion, we decided to go to Santa Fe! Every anniversary we have stayed at a hotel, and while trying to recall how we had celebrated each year, we decided we should write this down!

2000 - The Crescent, Dallas
2001 - The Crescent, Dallas (saw Angie Harmon and Jason Seahorn on their wedding weekend)
2002 - Castle in northern England
2003 - Hotel Zaza, Dallas
2004 - Wildwood Inn, Denton
2005 - The Mansion on Turtle Creek, Dallas
2006 - Spring Creek Ranch, Jackson Hole, Wyoming
2007 - Hacienda Las Barrancas, Santa Fe

Now to recount the weekend in Santa Fe:
April 27th, left at the crack of dawn and arrived at 9am in Albuquerque. We drove to Santa Fe and had an early lunch at Pasqual's (delicious!). Then we drove north and west to Bandelier National Park. We went on the Ranger walk, and while the older gentleman who had been retired for 13 years did not sweat at all, pregnant Kerry nearly died. We learned all about the cliff dwellings and their viga holes (these help you figure out that the structures were 2 or 3 stories tall), kivas (ceremonial structures), and the Ranger pointed out all of the pictographs (drawn on rock face) and petroglyphs (image created by removing part of rock surface). We then checked into our Bed and Breakfast, Hacienda Las Barrancas. After resting, we drove back into Santa Fe (we were about 20 minutes north), and stopped in at the Georgia O'Keefe museum (smaller than I expected, and all of the famous O'Keefe's are at famous museums) and the Museum of Fine Arts (there was a great Science and Art exhibit). We finished our day with a great dinner at La Boca, a great tapas place.

We woke up Saturday, April 28th to an incredible breakfast at our B&B, and then we went downtown to the Plaza where we enjoyed a great walking tour. We saw the miracle of the winding staircase at Loretta Chapel and then had lunch at Santa Cafe, and then went to Shidoni where we saw the Bronze Pouring, it was amazing! The last mold they poured into was the largest and we don't know if there was an air pocket or what happened but it poured out the bottom. That was exciting, but none of the pourers seemed happy about it. It had started raining, so we went back to our B&B for napping and then we had an incredible 3 hour dinner at El Fuego.

Sunday, April 29th we woke up and had another great breakfast at our B&B and on our way to Santa Fe we stopped at Camel Rock north of town and tried to take our photo with the camel. Then we went to Canyon Road to check out all of the art galleries. We then walked around the plaza and did some shopping. We had lunch at the Coyote Cantina and then drove around town a bit, checking out the statues outside at the Museum of International Folk Art and my colleague's old Methodist church, Zia. We loved looking at the architecture of the buildings, and driving through neighborhoods. Everything looked the same, different shades of adobe brown. We then had an amazing stop at a gallery that had been recommended to me. We had a great visit with the gallery owner who shared with us about his passion for art for over an hour. We had a great time and would recommend the Justin Robert gallery to others. We then drove back to Albuquerque and arrived back home after midnight!