This week I took a trip to Santa Fe, NM. The primary purpose was to visit Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, which will be the subject of the next blog post, but in the meantime we had some time to kill so we looked up hot springs and found this amazing and totally community-run free hot springs about 45 minutes outside of Santa Fe. I suppose I should back up - first we landed in Albuquerque and picked up the rental car (after getting suckered for car insurance I didn’t need; mental note, don’t use Ace car rental) and then heading out to pick up lunch - we spotted, of all things, a Waffle House! Apparently there is only one Waffle House in all of New Mexico and it’s right by the Albuquerque airport - but, sadly, it was temporarily closed because they were getting sprayed for pests. What luck! But we promised ourselves we’d try back on the way out (and did; more on that later). So we went next door to Village Inn, which, you know, was better than I remembered. We used to go to Village Inn on A1A in High School and it was known for being the crappiest and cheapest diner in all of Jax, which was all we could afford in high school. But they’ve uppped their game apparently. The whole experience was a weird throwback to not only Jacksonville but also Austin because Albuquerque and Santa Fe were a sea of fast food and quick service restaurants, all of which were Austin-area staples. I even saw a Rudy’s BBQ, but we didn’t go.
On the way out there we drove through Las Vegas, NM (yes - confusing) and decided to stop and get coffee and ended up at this historic hotel that looked like it was right out of a 1920s Perry Mason murder mystery and made really good decaf coffee.
Anyway - on to the highlight, the hot springs. They were perfect. Right by a flowing stream, there were 3 separate sets of springs, all of them quite hot and very picturesque. Of course they were unpolished and there was no services, but we saw a lot of locals come and go, including an army of high school kids. We had some time to ourselves as well, though. The springs were fully natural and really relaxing, and we spread out a towel and laid down for a while. It was really great. I love community stuff and I really felt like we got to dig into the spirit of New Mexico and the kind of grungy edgy naturalist vibe. There was at least one guy who was obviously super high. :)
That evening I had an unfortunate experience trying to check in to the hotel, but maybe we’ll dig into that more in a future post; I don’t feel like ruining the mood and anyway the person I was with helped me out a ton and we dealt with it and moved past it to a different hotel which worked out great anyway because it was a Best Western and they had free breakfast and a hot tub. Just don’t stay at the Sage Hotel in Santa Fe, that’s all I’ll say.
Then for dinner we had a very traditional New Mexico meal; lots of mexican food and guacamole and green chiles on everything, and a tasty margarita for me. I was exhausted but very ready for Meow Wolf the next day.
