November 30, 2021

We finished up some stuff we wanted to do in Colorado and hit the road for Sante Fe, NM on Thanksgiving Day.  We had found a spot to boondocks at the Casa Del Rio, part of the Santa Fe National Forest and set up camp for a couple of nights.  Sante Fe was nice, but still fairly chilly so we did not stay long.  I really wanted to see Meow Wolf so that’s what we did.  If you have never heard of it, it’s a large interactive art installation in Sante Fe.  It started off with a group of artists making a much smaller, cheaper, temporary installation and then George R.R .Martin decided to invest.  It is colorful, intricate, weird, and a twisting maze of rooms.  There is a mystery you can solve by looking through papers, computers, going through tunnels to explore, reading mail, looking through cupboards, etc.  The outside looks like a house and the story is that this is the home of the Selling family and you can solve the mystery of what happened to them (they aren’t home).  There were even secret passages.  For example, when you open the refrigerator, you find a tunnel that leads to an inter dimensional computerized travel agency.  Trippy man.  It is described as a science fiction story you can step inside of with an immersive and interactive art installation.  There were winding staircases, secret rooms, a DJ playing ambient electronic music, a dinosaur skeleton whose bones were a xylophone, and actors wandering through.  There were over 70 rooms to explore and I think we saw them all, but I’m not entirely sure.  We didn’t solve the mystery.  I started out with the intention of doing so, but it was far too crowded to linger in one place and read things which was a bit of a bummer.  I’m still glad I got to see it though.

     

After this adventure we moved further south to Socorro, NM and this time we booked a campground with full hookups!  We hadn’t had that for a while so we relished in our hot showers and used the microwave and fireplace heater.  These appliances generally use too much electricity for us to take advantage of them when we are not hooked up to electricity.  The campground was small with few people so we were able to easily get into our spot.  It was called Escondida Lake and was only $18/night.  My mother is coming to visit and stay with us for a few days so we decided it would be more comfortable for all of us if we don’t have three people trying to boondock.  I made a belated Thanksgiving dinner in the rig.  It consisted of turkey breasts, stuffing, rolls, green beans, and keto pumpkin pie.  It was delicious!

Right behind our campground was the starting point for the Quebradas backcountry byway which was a primitive or unpaved road winding through the Chihuahuan desert.  Lucky for us, our Bighorn truck handles these roads with no problem so we can explore them worry free.  

We also visited the Very Large Array and true to it’s name, it is very large.  There are 28 radio antennas in a Y formation and each is 82 feet in diameter.  If you ever saw the movie Contact with Jodie Foster, they used these antennas to pick up an alien signal from space.  The visitor center was closed due to COVID, but several of these big suckers could be seen from the road.