Post Wedding in Santa Fe

We stuck around for a few days to help clean up and return things from the wedding, like the sound equipment.  On Sunday, Megan hitched a ride with Keri and Elliott to the airport. We planned to stay until Tuesday so we could take Kevin and Cina to the airport for their honeymoon trip to New Zealand.
After helping Megan clean out her condo and get over to Keri's, we had the rest of Sunday to ourselves. We took a trip up to Bandelier National Monument, which is a deserted Native American settlement located in a valley northwest of Santa Fe. It is near Los Alamos.
Bandelier features several cave dwellings carved into the rock walls of the valley plus remains of large settlements on the valley floor.

Cave dwelling. Not real deep.

Foundations from the ancient settlement

The mesa where this settlement is located is built up from ash from a volcanic eruption. The rock is fairly soft which allowed the early americans to carve these dwellings.

Overlook of Rio Grande river

 On the way back from Bandelier, there is an overlook of the Rio Grande river, which starts in the mountains north of Santa Fe.
On Monday, we took Kevin and Cina to the airport. On the way back we stopped at another National Monument called Tent Rocks.

Another cave dwelling at Tent Rocks

These structures are what give Tent Rocks its name.

These are also called hoodoos

Hanging out with the hoodoos

We returned to Santa Fe and toured the miraculous Loretto Chapel. It has a fantastic spiral staircase that takes two full turns to reach the choir loft. The story is that the nuns prayed for a solution and a carpenter appeared and build the stairs with just hand tools and no nails. It has no center supporting column. The nuns believed it was St. Joseph himself who answered their prayers.  The carpenter left and did not ask for payment.  The original stairs did not have a hand rail and the nuns were too scared to use the steps. A local carpenter added a hand rail 10 years later. It is a beautiful work of art and intriguing story.

The miraculous Loretto staircase

 We are planning to leave Santa Fe the next morning (Tuesday) and start our journey back.