I flew into Santa Fe Regional Airport Saturday evening to meet a friend i haven’t seen in years since she moved away. 

The Air BnB we are staying in is beautiful and private,  and the adobe walls give the place a wonderful, snug feeling. 

 It was a bit of a fiasco at first, because the Santa Fe airport is incredibly tiny, and there are no local taxis, having been replaced by Uber. We struggled with the uber app unsuccessfully and eventually had to rent a car. 

We asked if they had any OLD cars, like something without the awful computerized navigation stuff that gives Danica a headache, but we ended up with an ultra modern monstrosity that has a button to start it. We had the windshield wipers get turned on somehow while driving on the highway, and it took 5 minutes to figure out all the over- complicated buttons everywhere and make them stop!

Danica is one of my best friends I’ve ever had, and we both love the same things and are somewhat introverted, so it’s been a lot of drinking tea and catching up, but also  quiet writing and working on art projects or reading, when we weren’t getting lost trying to walk in the wrong direction to Whole Foods.  We did get out to the Pecos National Historic site yesterday. There were many beautiful wildflowers, and i wished i had taken a desert botany guide with me. 

I like to try to guess what the plants are anyway. It’s often not that difficult, as they look like a lot of eastern plants that have been deprived of water for a long time.

Here is a wild pumpkin vine i think. 

And this looks like a desert version of a gooseberry bush!

I haven’t been to the desert in so many years. I love the way it feels to be part of the rolling, thorny, aromatic landscape. And the wonderful dryness! I think it’s been raining for almost a month solid back in Florida, so i am delighting over the lack of humidity.

Adventure awaits!