Digital Nomad Family – Course Update #16 – Musical Dinosaur Bones, Plaza Antics, and Ghost Town Tours

It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in Santa Fe for over 6 weeks now because fairly swiftly after landing I went into full, heads-down prep mode for our launch of The Freedom Evolution. Since this is our first launch for this brand new course, there’s been plenty to do.

However, we’ve also made time for a few good family adventures. The one experience that we knew we’d have even before we arrived was getting a membership to Meow Wolf. This immersive, experiential art installation was the highlight of our original visit to Santa Fe one year ago, and there was never a question that we would visit frequently during our stay here.

If you’ve never been to Meow Wolf, then imagine walking into a large building (which apparently used to be an old bowling alley), and then, after getting your wrist bands, you enter a room designed to look like the front yard and porch of a Victorian house. However, fairly soon after walking up the steps and through the front door you get the sense that this isn’t going to be like any other Victorian house you’ve wandered through before…

The first few rooms appear to be a living room, dining room, kitchen, etc of your Victorian house…

However, people are crawling through the fireplace and disappearing. The refrigerator door opens into a white portal hallway, and inside the washing machine is a starlit slide that feels like you’re Alice falling into wonderland… and that’s just the beginning.

Pink and purple caves with musical dinosaur bones, a neon underwater forest of seaweed, and a psychodelic town square are only a few of the fantasy experiences that unfold as you wander through this labyrinth of mystery. 

And, everything is meant to be touched and interacted with… lights, sounds, and smells are triggered by touching different buttons, walking in front of the abstract dog sculptures, or playing on the laser light harp.

When I say it’s a labyrinth, I’m not kidding… While we’ve been several times now, almost every single time there are new rooms or elements we never seen before. 

Additionally, woven into the experience is a mystery story, which I’ll admit… I haven’t even tried to figure out yet. It requires a bit more time and patience, pausing to read or listen to elements in different rooms than is viable when you’re also monitoring a 2.5 yr old’s joy in zooming through small tunnels that are challenging for grown-ups to navigate.

Brian and I may just have to go for a date some night and see what we can learn when we’re not also tag-teaming our Pumpkin. (Although I will admit that her joy in exploring the place is part of what I enjoy most about our Meow Wolf visits.)

The other major limitation that we’ve experienced so far is the weather, which has been more persistently snowy and cold than we had expected. What many folks may not realize is that Santa Fe is the “high desert” at an elevation of 7200’ above sea-level. That’s even higher than last spring when we lived in South Lake Tahoe at 6200’. So, there’s definitely snow and winter here.

Granted, compared to our many years in New England, the snow barely seems to count because it falls and then is largely gone within a day. However, it’s yet again surprised us how much 1-3 inches can shut down an entire city for the day. Even more than that, it’s snowed rather more frequently than we expected. Already, Pumpkin’s school as has had at least 4 snow days in the past 6 weeks.

We’ve done our best to enjoy them. Pumpkin’s been building snowmen in the front yard, learning to “walk like a penguin” over the icy patches, and there have been many “hygge-filled” days cuddled up by our kiva fireplace. 

Were it not for the added pressure of losing valuable time so close to the course launch, honestly, the snow arrives and is gone so quickly that it’s a great to have a proper “winter” without ever really lifting a snow shovel. (Thank goodness the condo association has plow crews to clear the parking lots and sidewalks.)

With more days staying close to home and the colder weather, our biggest joy so far has been our occasional adventures walking down the hill into town. We love that we’re within walking distance of “The Plaza,” which is the central tourist district of Santa Fe.

We’re staying in a condo that’s on top of the hill above Fort Marcy, and fairly quickly we discovered the excellent pedestrian trail that takes us from our hilltop down into town while affording some stunning views out over the city and toward the mountains in almost every direction.

It’s such an easy walk into town that we’ve probably trekked down a few times each week. On some of the nicer days, it’s been fun to take our Pumpkin down and give her time to just run around in the Plaza and play with the other kids.

There’s a monument in the center and a large, raised bandstand as well as frequent buskers playing everything from rugged, country banjo to Native American drumming and chanting. There are also a group of Native Americans who are licensed to display jewelry and traditional crafts underneath the portico of the Palace of the Governors, and since this is the heart of the tourist area of Santa Fe there’s always plenty of people watching to do.

Primarily, Brian and I are grateful to yet again be someplace where we can just walk out our front door to go to a variety of restaurants, cafes, breweries, and even ice cream places… as well as galleries, museums, and shops too.

One of our favorite parts of living in Salem, MA for all those years was the walk-ability of our lifestyle, and that’s been less true for the various beautiful places we’ve stayed in the last year. Now, that said, you may have noticed that I mentioned we live on a hill overlooking Santa Fe. So, we’ve also had to come to terms with the fact that “what goes down must come back up…” in other words… we get a solid, cardio workout whenever it’s time to go home. 

On a recent weekend, we ventured a bit further afield to check out Madrid, NM, which is a fascinating little town on the Turquoise Trail about 30 minutes south of Santa Fe. A former coal mining town, Madrid had its boom in the early 20th century with a population up to 4000, then went into a serious decline in the second half of that century. In 2010, the population was only 204.

Now, it’s famous as a recovered ghost town and artists’ community. There are dozens of little galleries along the one main road through town, as well as a couple restaurants, and various craft, trinket, and tourist shops.

The sun finally came out to warm things up to a reasonable 50 degrees F. So, we drove up with our Pumpkin for a wander through this eclectic town. The galleries were actually better than I expected, and for all there are no sidewalks and the mud was definitely sticking to my shoes… we all had a great time.

We also stopped for lunch at the Mine Shaft Tavern, and while the food was nothing particularly special, I was entertained to find out that it had been used for many interior shots of the Red Pony Tavern in the show Longmire, which we watched several years ago.

Honestly, my favorite part was discovering the audio tour available for Madrid through the VoiceMap app. Years ago, while still on our honeymoon in Italy, Brian and I were discussing that someone should create an app with audio tours that are GPS enabled allow you to explore a town at your own pace but give you context, history, and background of where you are and what you see there.

Well, someone finally created it!!! And there was a tour available for Madrid, NM, which, in my opinion, was the most amazing audio tour I’ve ever experienced. The guide actually intercut his descriptions and details about the town with interviews with long-time town residents telling you about their life growing up in this coal-mining company town during the Great Depression and beyond.

The app itself is free, then you pay a single fee ($2-6) to download your desired tour. As Brian and I recognized, we frequently were paying at least $10-40 to go on walking tours in various cities we’ve visited. So, this was dramatically less expensive, GPS enabled allowing us to go at our pace and pause to visit or grab snacks, and it included elements like the interviews with locals that made it a far richer experience than any single, expert storytelling guide could provide.

We only made it through about half of the 2-hour tour (since we were only able to download it during lunch while using the Tavern’s wifi,) so I’m really looking forward to going back and finishing our walking tour some time soon. 

Mostly, we’ve been enjoying the simplicity of everyday living here in Santa Fe. Our Pumpkin is getting old enough that we’ve started getting bit more thoughtful about introducing more educational opportunities into her daily life.

I’ve found some great preschool-oriented educational apps for her iPad like ABC Mouse, ABC Animal Adventures, and Homer Reading, which, in addition to her voracious enjoyment of the books we take out from the local library, give her bunches of educational opportunities.

We’ve also been very happy to have enrolled her in a preschool program called HoliTOMoli here in Santa Fe, which has been keeping her very excited, engaged, and making new friends.

While it’s still far too early to worry too much about “doing school” since she’s not yet even 3 years old, we have started doing our research and putting some plans together for how we will ensure she’s getting a truly world-class education while we travel. 

As we continue, I’ll likely start sharing more about our worldschooling strategies too since I know this lifestyle and the idea of “homeschooling” or “education while traveling” is unfamiliar to many people. We are far from the first family educating while traveling, and I’m looking forward to learning even more from others who have already done it by attending some amazing worldschooling events in the next few years.

But, for now, we’ll just keep things simple and enjoy our traveling lifestyle. I have to admit that while we were out walking down the trail and overlooking the city, my heart felt a little thrill when our Pumpkin looked out at the city, then looked up at us and said “It’s Santa Fe, New Mexico! That’s where we live.” 

Yes, my dear, we do… and there are so many more places that I can’t wait to show you too. 

There’s just ONE MORE DAY before doors close on Wednesday, February 26, 2020 for The Freedom Evolution, the signature course I’ve created to help location-independent entrepreneurs stop overworking and create the systems to experience time-freedom and truly enjoy their freedom-loving lifestyle.

You can check out more about the program, by clicking the image below to visit www.ChosenCourse.com/Freedom. I’d love to have you join me!

We’ve still got two more months here in Santa Fe, NM, and next month I look forward to sharing even more stories and photos from our explorations here. After all, there are so many places we have yet to experience! Numerous places like the Georgia O’Keefe museum and the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and as the weather warms up, we hope to enjoy some more hiking in the Santa Fe National Forest and beyond.

So, if you haven’t yet ensured that you’ll receive our travel updates (and all the other awesome productivity insights too through my weekly messages,) then make sure you click the image button below to get those sent directly to your inbox.