Settled in at Santa Fe

At Santa Fe Skies RV Park, Santa Fe, New Mexico...

After a pleasant 300-mile drive from Colorado Springs, we are nesting at Santa Fe Skies, an adequate RV Park on the outskirts of town. 

There are good things, bad things and interesting things about this park. 

First, the good things: The office and facilities building is large and well-appointed, and the employees are friendly. The wi-fi service is surprisingly good--a rarity, we have found--so this gives our mi-fi hotspots a bit of a rest. The area is quiet, so we find ourselves almost missing the highway noise and train horns that seem to be prevalent at many RV parks. There is some interesting outdoor "art" placed around the park, some of which is for sale. Here are some samples:

I'm not sure what this depicts; it's made of rebar.

This is a 1949 Diamond Reo Truck

More metal yard art. That's an old gasoline engine on the right.

Now, for the bad: The roads and sites are mostly gravel, but some of the sites need to be re-graveled. Dirt anywhere in an RV park is a pet peeve of mine, and this could stand some more attention here. Now I don't mind parking on a firm grassy area, but dirt can turn instantly into mud, and I don't do mud. 

Creeping dirt--not good.

Another negative was how unlevel the sites are. Our site was the least level of any we have encountered in our eleven years of RVing! This put Phannie's leveling system to the ultimate test; after the leveler's brain thought for a minute, trying to determine if the coach was really that cockeyed, it finally raised the left rear wheels well off the ground, causing me to have to shore up the vacant space with some wooden blocks for appearance's sake. (I removed one of them for the photo.)

There are a couple of interesting things about the park. The owner has installed a large solar power array that supplies more than half the park's electrical power. You can see a good video of an interview with the owner discussing the $1.2 million project here. 

They did a pretty good job of xeriscaping the place, using native plants and wildflowers that are drought tolerant, as there is no irrigation system.

A couple of friendly birds landed on the satellite dish to welcome us to the park:

For those who keep track, we've tried three eating joints here so far, and here's what we thought of them:

Blake's Lottaburger - An okay burger that will never, ever, be a Whataburger.

Los Potrillos (New Mexican) - Good food, excellent service, but a little pricey for what we got. Can't put it on the favorites list, unfortunately.

The Shed (New Mexican) - A long wait at this touristy gold mine near the old plaza. The crispy taco was the best thing, enchiladas were good and the red sauce spicy (which I like). Perhaps the worst gazpacho and posole I've ever eaten. It'll be easy to forget this one.

Today was a down day, catching up on chores in the bus (I replaced one of the wiper blades), but we took time to enjoy today's sunset as the sun sank behind the anvil head of a line of distant thunderstorms:

Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful life; please forgive me if I don't appreciate it enough each day.