The 92nd Annual Zozobra

In September of  last year Chris and I got to spend a month in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It ended up being one of our favorite places of 2016. There is a lot to do in and around Santa Fe. The weather was in the 70's most days and it was monsoon season so it rained a little each day but most days it was followed by rainbows.

My cousin Russell Thornton and his fiance, Elizabeth live there. Russell had just won the 92nd annual Zozobra poster contest with his amazing artwork. When we arrived we were excited to find out that the event hadn't taken place yet and we would be able to go with them.

Elizabeth, Russell and his awesome poster

Zozobra is an annual event where a 50 foot tall fully functional marionette named Zozobra aka "Old Man Gloom" is burned to cleanse the city of it's gloom.

The event takes place on the Friday before Labor Day and it is staged by the Kiwanis Club of Santa Fe. The tickets are very inexpensive at just $10 per adult.

When we arrived and saw Zozobra on stage we were pretty amused but not sure what to expect.

That is a big marionette

They had a band playing and then eventually some beach balls were making there way through the crowd while we waited for the event to start.

beach balls

A woman came on stage and sang The Star Spangled Banner and Zozobra slowly started coming to life by moving his arms and his eyes began to glow.

The stage was quickly filling up with fire and dancers. Things were getting intense.

I can't remember exactly when it started because I took 4 months to write this(oops) but people start chanting "burn him" over and over. It was really a big part of the fun.

The torch bearer on stage taunting Zozobra

There were lots of fireworks. He was getting more and more angry and letting out lots of loud groans.

After a lot more chanting from the crowd to "burn him" he eventually caught on fire.

Yeah by this point he was pretty much a gonner. He continued to burn and then it was all followed by an impressive fireworks show. Kind of forgot to get pictures of that. I was too busy enjoying them.

 If you are in the area or planning on being in the area around September you should check it out. Chris and I had a great time. We would definitely go again.

What have we been up to? Where to next?

Chris driving to San Marcos

Well, we are a little behind on our blog posts...it's been over 4 months since we have posted anything. In that time period we were in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Fort Davis, Junction, Kerrville, Houston and we are currently in San Marcos, TX. We have some catching up to do. We will most likely be doing weekly blog posts for a while since we went to some cool events and saw beautiful places and haven't been able to share it all yet.  

Our Fleetwood Bounder (Lucy) looking all festive for Christmas

We decided to go "home for the holidays" in November  to spend time with our families and friends. We really only consider Houston home because it is where most of our favorite people are and we are so glad we got to spend time with them and eat at some of our favorite restaurants again.  We LOVE food. Speaking of that Chris is going to start writing separate blog posts on some of our favorite restaurants as we travel. 

Our little tree and fireplace heater in the RV

Rachel's family on Christmas- Jenny, Matthew, Dad, Rachel and Chris

We were really busy during our time in Houston. I pretty much crocheted 24/7 for my first craft show and I got my etsy shop CCsWhimsicalCrochet set up. The craft show went really good. Thank you so much to the friends and family that came out. I might have to do another one this year.

Chris has started a new business of buying things from estate and garage sales and selling them on ebay. His store is called The Big Red Store. It's been pretty fun to go to the sales together on the weekend. We like to think of it as treasure hunting.

  

We really have learned to move slower to save money and it is less stressful than moving every weekend. We will be in San Marcos for the month and then we will be working our way west. We want to go to Big Bend, Carlsbad Caverns and then to Arizona. After that we will be heading up the West Coast.

Our pups at the dog park in San Marcos and our RV & car in the back

If you have any suggestions of fun things to do, visit or whatever drop us a line below. We would love to hear from you. 

Palo Duro Canyon State Park

The Saturday before we left Amarillo, TX Chris and I decided to go to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. It was about an hour drive from our RV Park. We heard it can get really hot there. Especially at the bottom of the canyon where the temperatures can get up to 15 degrees higher.

To avoid the heat we decided to get up at 6:30 am and try to get there by 7:30. Of course that didn't happen it was more like 8:30 when we got there. We enjoyed watching the beautiful sunrise on our drive there.

The price to get in is only $5 per person and we were given a map of the trails at the pay station. Upon entering we immediately drove to the visitor center but it wasn't opened yet. We are glad we stopped because the view of the canyon from there was gorgeous.

Palo Duro Canyon is 120 miles long, 20 miles wide, with a depth of more than 800 feet. It is considered the second largest canyon in the U.S. It's kind of sad we lived in Texas all those years and had never heard of it.

From the overlook at the visitor center we started our drive down the canyon to our trail. It was a beautiful drive and you can stop and get out at some of the overlooks.

The Lighthouse Trail is the most popular trail and the full hike is 5.75 miles. There is a warning sign posted at the beginning of the trail to make sure you bring a gallon of water per person because it gets so hot. We had already read about this before so luckily we had our giant water bottles.

Chris at the start of the Lighthouse Trail

The trail was pretty flat and there were no steep inclines. The temperature wasn't too bad at the beginning either and there was a nice cool breeze. We enjoyed the scenery.

Capital Peak

a cactus that look like a heart

As we continued our hike we could see the Lighthouse Rock in the distance.

We thought we were going the right way and then we got to this end of trail marker with no sign of the Lighthouse Rock in sight. Our phones weren't working and our trail map didn't really help us figure out how to get to lighthouse rock.

Chris decided to hike up a little further but  it looked as if we had actually gotten further away from the rock. It was at this time the giant horse flies started biting us. If you start to sweat and stand still too long they will get you. They are HUGE.

It was also starting to get hot by this point and we decided to hike back. These are our best pictures with Lighthouse Rock.

We felt like boobs. We were disappointed but still enjoyed the beautiful hike back.

We decided this was a house with a chimney

Chris liked this little seahorse. We might have been delirious.

It really did get really hot by the time we were leaving.  The hike probably took us about 3 hours or so.

If you have been on the Lighthouse Trail feel free to tell us what we did wrong. haha

Meow Wolf's House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, NM

Today Chris and I went to Meow Wolf which is a multi-use Art Complex located in Santa Fe's Midtown Innovative District. It was previously a bowling alley that was purchased by George R.R. Martin in 2014. It is home to the popular interactive art experience, House of Eternal Return.

When you first walk in you see the front of a Victorian style house that you are able to wonder through and explore.

While you are walking around you are also trying to solve a mystery of what happened to the Selig's( a fictional family).

Chris looking through some of the Selig's paperwork

It almost feels like a chose your own adventure. You walk into one room and then there is a secret passage way to another one.

Chris coming into the kitchen through the fridge

Another secret passageway through one of the kids bedrooms.

There are things lying around in the different rooms you can look through like photo albums and diaries.

 There are some pretty trippy rooms. There are actually 70 total that were created by over 500 artists.

Seriously, if you go make sure you open doors and cabinets. Really look around because you never know what you will find in there.

I am trying to share enough photos so you can see how cool it is but trying to not ruin the fun of seeing it for yourself.

One of the things we both loved was that there is a free arcade inside with some old games. We played some Simpsons, Mario Kart and Street Fighter II together.

We thought the whole experience was awesome.

 It was $37 total for the both of us to get in which may sound pricey but it was definitely worth it. We were probably there for about 2 or 3 hours.

It is not just for adults either it looked like the kids and their parents were both really enjoying themselves.

Have you ever been? If so what did you think?