My Local Escape

Over the past few weeks since I got back from Santa Fe, I have been way too busy and stressed out with work (such a dirty word sometimes)! One of the local places that I feel extremely inspired by is the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. I am coming to love and appreciate this incredible place more and more these days. It seems that the more time I spend here exploring, the more I am in awe of it. It is like being in a different world...my escape.

I think this is a place that I would like to work on preserving. This is going to be my New Year's goal (not calling it a resolution because I don't believe in them...they are usually left by the wayside a month or two into the new year)...volunteering in any way that I can to help this wild and incredible place...whether it be picking up trash, creating a website, doing some gardening work...whatever!

I thought I would share a few recent photographs from my weekly visits to this magical world.

Palm trees at dusk.

A bench to the sky.

One of the many beautiful wetlands paths.

A lone walker on the "swamp" trail. This area is a bit off the beaten path and it looks like a swamp. You can usually spot Ospreys and Turkey Vultures over here. This is also where the "Egret Convention" took place in a few of the photos later in this post.

A very misty dusk at the wetlands. Swamp Trail.

The moon between tree branches.

A gorgeous Blue Heron that flew down and landed about eight feet in front of me.

A Brown Pelican friend waiting on the trail for me :)

A beautiful Forester's Tern.

A Snowy Egret with windswept hair.

A Seagull!

At Tern at dusk with street lights.

A convention of Egrets. I had never seen so many in one place before. They just kept flying down and joining the feast. If you notice the one Egret in the middle is all fluffed up. She kept chasing the other Egrets away and making lots of noise too. She must have been having a bad day!

An Egret family with an adopted child.

Ms. Fluffy (Crabby?)

Marbled Godwit.

A large group of Egrets waiting on dinner. This is the area that I call the Feeding Ground. There are almost always some sort of interesting birds over here looking for food. I think the fish come in from the ocean near here.

A hovering Brown Pelican.

Another Egret. I loved the colors on this one.

Yakkity Tern.

A Seagull in flight (monochrome).

Last Monday, I decided to take off early from work and instead of going to yoga like I usually do, I headed to the wetlands. There was an extremely thick marine layer all during my almsot three hour walk. I was assuming that I would not see a sunset and was heading back to the bridge, when all of a sudden I turned around and saw this incredible sight! Perfect!

Exploring Canyon Road - Santa Fe, New Mexico

There was one last place on my list to visit during this trip to Santa Fe....Canyon Road. A road filled with incredible art galleries of all types. A street filled with beautiful colors, bright flowers, music, shops, outrageous clothing, and interesting people. Our first stop was El Farol for lunch. We both ordered the crispy avocado sandwich with bacon and tomato and they were delicious! I also had a Rio Grande Chile Cerveza, which was crazy good! I need to look for that around here. After lunch, we headed down Canyon Road. Of course, the first thing I come across is a lovely sunflower, which I cannot pass up without taking a photo. What can I say...I am drawn to them.

 Next up was this really cool gallery, which I am embarrassed to say that I do not remember the name of. *sigh* The outside had these cool angel and mermaid sculptures. There was a couple standing outside looking at the mermaid and the wife said to her husband, "I know, I know, you wish you were married to her." He didn't deny it! HAHA! There were also some very cool wolf and nature paintings inside...too bad they were all a little out of my price range.

 Just a few photos from some of the art galleries below as we walked down the street.

 I also love almost any kind of flower against adobe walls.

 I always love the shadows of the trees on adobe walls too.

 Turquoise is a very popular color on Canyon Road!

 I absolutely loved this mix of colors and textures at the gallery pictured in the photograph below. The red windows, the blue fuzzy flowers and the reflections in the window look almost like a Monet painting. Beautiful.

 White picket fence shot.

 More turquoise doors and windows...

 Wind art sculpture

 Yep, more turquoise.

 Santa Fe has a lot of Blue Spruces, which I love.

 Some sort of cool tree with red berries and pink flowers...maybe a Pigeon Berry Tree?

 I absolutely loved this scene with the bright lapis blue door and the yellow flower. Too bad there was some rather ugly electrical boxes there too. However, the more I look at this shot, the more I like it. Maybe those "ugly" boxes make the image more interesting?

 A BEE!

A pretty pink flower that was almost reaching out to the sidewalk.

 A place for silent worship.

 More turquoise against adobe. I just love that you can see the other side of the street reflected in the window.

 As we were driving back to the condo, we past a government building that had a huge patch of sunflowers. My friend let me out of the car and I took a few dozen photos and then walked home :).

 Reaching for the heavens...

Well, that was it for my last afternoon in Santa Fe. It was time to go clean up for dinner. We had reservations at Restaurant Martin, where chef Martin Rios from Iron Chef fame, was waiting to prepare us an excellent meal!

Santa Fe Plaza Wanderings

On my last full day in Santa Fe, I got up in the morning and walked over towards the main Santa Fe Plaza to shop and wander about. My first stop was at El Santuario de Guadalupe, which was built in 1781! It is not a church any longer, but an art and history museum. It sure is a pretty, old building.

 Next, I strolled down to the St. Francis Cathedral and milled about trying desperately to get a photo of the church without people everywhere. Apparently you have to get up at the crack of dawn to accomplish this feat. Anyway, still pretty, even with strangers in the photos :). I did realize my desperate need for a wide-angle lens though when trying to photograph both the insides and outsides of these churches. 

 Another try at artsy.

 One of the bell towers with the blue iron fence.

 My next goal was to walk over to the Loretto Chapel and try to photograph the "miraculous" spiral staircase. On the way, I ran into a few sunflowers. I am coming to realize that I have a thing for sunflowers.

 Oh look! I'm on Route 66!

 Arrival at the Loretto Chapel, which was built in 1873.

 Here we go into the church...

 More people in my shot, darn it. I even waited about 30 minutes, but they just kept coming :). Anyway, this is The Miraculous Staircase. Legend has it that it was constructed or inspired by St. Joseph the Carpenter and was supposedly built sometime between 1877 and 1881. It took at least 6 months to build and has two 360 turns with no visible means of support.

 There! I cut them out :)

After visiting the Loretto Chapel for awhile, I headed out to do some shopping. Santa Fe is full of wild clothes and beautiful jewelry. As I was emerging from an underground shop, this beautiful pot was right in front of me. Besides visiting a few shops (Santa Fe School of Cooking and Spirit), I also spent some time admiring all the beautiful Native-American handmade jewelry at The Palace of the Governors. I found the artist that I bought a couple of necklaces from in 2006, and I bought one to replace the one I lost, which was my all time favorite necklace! That was pretty exciting!

 Around noon, it was time to start heading back to the condo. My friend and I had lunch reservations at El Farol on Canyon Road at 1 PM, and then we were walking the galleries. As I was just about to cross the street, I heard a lot of commotion going on in this tree. This raven was making all kinds of noise. It was hoping around from branch to branch making some interesting noises. It was not the noise a crow makes, so I am pretty sure it was a raven. Anyway, we stared at each other for awhile, and he/she actually seemed calmer with me there. Not sure what that was about.

 Next and final Santa Fe post will be from Canyon Road. Cheers!