The Rail Runner to Santa Fe

Today was Fantabulas. Ok, I know that it is not a real word, but I don’t know how else to describe it.

I told you before about the Rapid Rail System that is used here, It starts three stations south of our park and has a stop right by the RV Park. New Mexico has these little birds called Road Runners (Beep-Beep) that I have tried to capture on camera for years but by the time I see them and get the camera out, they are long gone. It is very fitting that Albuquerque named their new rail system the Rail Runners. Thanks to Governor Bill Richardson’s persistence and a lot of criticism from the Media, he won out. I remember Jessie Ventura trying to get this going when he was Governor of Minnesota and the Media was so awful that they had convinced people it was a waste of money. Think what you want but if Jessie had been around for another term Minnesota wouldn’t be so far behind in their people mover system. Oh well, I don’t want to get on my soap box or discuss politics here but Minnesota is very far behind with their two lane freeways trying to move 5 million people around the Metro. We have sure been to enough other Cities that could teach them a thing or two.

We chose Saturday to take the train to Santa Fe. The first train didn’t leave until 11:15AM. Usually they start about 5:00am and take people to work. This schedule fit ours today and we walked to the station with just seconds to spare before we saw the sleek train coming into our station. We had no idea of the price but it turned out to be $6.00 round trip. I think that during the week we would have paid $7.00 for seniors but everyone paid $6.00 today…. Now that means we traveled over 150 miles round trip and paid a total of $12.00 for the two of us. No way could we have bought diesel for that price. Not only that but when we arrived about 1 3/4th hours later, a free shuttle was waiting to pick us up and bring us to Santa Fe Plaza or Canyon Road. I haven’t mentioned Canyon Road before but it is the most artistic road in Santa Fe. Both sides are lined with galleries that have some of the best art in the world… We have not been there this year because there is no way we could find room for this beautiful work in our RV. We did go there six years ago when we still had a house but found it out of our price range.

Because we didn’t get in until after 1:00 we headed first for a place to eat. We had been told that the Plaza Café was excellent so we put our name among a long list of people waiting to get in. It only took about 10 minutes before we were seated at a table much too small for our food. We hadn’t planned on ordering Mexican again today but when I saw on the menu that the only thing they served their Sopaipilla’s with was the Mexican dishes, we opted to share a plate of three samplers. Bill added the soup of the day to his and was glad that he did. It wasn’t that we didn’t have enough food but it was not our favorite Mexican… Had it not been for the Turkey Noodle soup and the Sopaipilla we would have been very disappointed.

Every place we go we find specialties that are native to the area we are in. New Orleans has their Beignets ; Pita from Greece ; Scones from Penara Bread, Sour Dough Bread from San Francisco and Sopaipilla’s from New Mexico. If you have never tried it, you are missing something. The best I can describe it is that it is similar to Indian Bread but instead of powdered sugar, they serve it with honey. De-lish…..

The last time we shopped in Santa Fe we went to a great little yarn shop that had wonderful yarns. My friend Jan bought some beautiful yarn to make a vest and I spotted a yarn that I have not been able to get off my mind. We had always driven there before with our GPS named Sumertime leading us (Sumertime she’s right, Somertime she’s not). This time we set out with a map of Santa Fe. Actually, we didn’t have far to go and I satisfied my craving for great yarn. Boy that was a hard sale… A lot of you remember when I had a yarn shop and got all the yarn I wanted at a very reasonable price. This time I paid almost $60.00 just to get enough to make a scarf. Oh well, I had an itch that I just had to scratch. I also saw a scarf in Old Town that was selling for $250.00 made out of the same yarn. I will show you what I come up with. I may try to make it into a vest. It remains to be seen what I mix it with..

We walked back to the Square and went into a lot of places that we hadn’t been into before but we did not make any more purchases except for our stop at Starbucks. You have to see the pictures to appreciate the difference in other Starbucks and the one at the Santa Fe Old Town….

We finally found our way back to the shuttle that took us back to the Santa Fe Station. This station is used for the Santa Fe Railroad, Amtrak and our great new transport, Rail Runner.

We arrived home about 6:30PM tired but satisfied. It was a great day.

Later………..

Apr 26, 2009

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