Santa Fe

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Woke up, had breakfast outside, and went swimming. Sense that this will probably be the pattern of our trip, so long as we can find campgrounds that have pools. The pool here was beautiful. Would like to say the sky was turquoise, given the neighbourhood, but it was more of a lapis lazuli really. Spent the day exploring Santa Fe. Found a fine pizza place for lunch (Upper Crust Pizza, next to the old San Miguel Mission). After lunch, we strolled around the San Miguel Mission, USA's oldest church, and the nearby 'USA's Oldest House', and then I headed off to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum while Midge and Will hunted down the best ice-cream parlour around the plaza. I rushed around the museum while they leisurely scoffed their ice creams. In the middle of the plaza was a man making balloon animals and hats. Whenever we walked diagonally across the plaza, which we did several times. the man would shout out to Will 'Hey dude, where's your balloon', or 'Where's your balloon bro', or 'Man, you need a balloon'. Now, on our travels, all I need to say to Will to get him to screw up his face is 'Hey dude, where's your balloon'. Loved the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. Alongside here paintings were Ansel Adams photographs of the same areas. Have every intention of visiting the Church of San Francisco de Assisi in Taos, painted by O'Keefe and photographed by Adams. Bookshop was selling a volume of correspondence between Georgia O'Keefe and Maria Chabot, Dana's wife of limited duration. Her obituary in the New York Times quoted her as saying ''We were much better as friends than as husband and wife, Maria Chabot's New York Times Obituary Didn't buy the book - couldn't face lugging it across the States. Spent some time at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, which turned out to be contemporary art rather than anthropology, but was interesting for reasons other than those that caused us to walk through the door initially.