"Santa Fe...Do you Swear you Won't Forget Me?"

What? Two posts in one month? Amazing! So, the beginning of this month, I went to Santa Fe, NM to meet up with Christian Bale, AKA "Cowboy! They call him Cowboy!". OK, maybe not Christian Bale, but Newsies is a good movie. I actually went to a Wilderness Medicine conference with some coworkers. We flew into Albuquerque (which, as my friend Sheila can tell you, can be a *little* bumpy flying into and out of. There may have been some profanities (from her mouth, not mine!), and I may have lost some circulation to my fingers a time or two during the descent and ascent to and from the city, but we survived), and then we drove to Santa Fe from there in a stylin' minivan. We stayed at this AWESOME Inn and Spa that Sheila's brother hooked us up with. Some pictures of the place...



Santa Fe is a really awesome town, very artsy and eclectic, with some a-mazing restaurants. We ate extremely well this trip. I had a lot of firsts where food is concerned...I ordered duck for the first time (very good, but I now understand why people say it tastes 'gamey', and it's a little fatty, but overall, pretty amazing food). 

I had ice cream as an appetizer prior to the duck-but not just any ice cream. There were 3 flavors-tomato, basil and bacon. It was interesting and tasty, but I prefer my mint chocolate chip and cookies n' cream. For lunch one day, we had tapas style dining, and I ordered a soup and sandwich. The flavor of the soup? Watermelon and tomato soup. And the sandwich was lamb. It was pretty tasty.

Oh, and the empty plate with the knife on it in the above picture? The most amazing flavors of hummus! Oh, so delish. We ate twice at this great crepe place, once for breakfast and once for lunch. Overall, I sampled at least 4 different kinds of crepes (sugar, jambalaya, blueberry, raspberry, and egg and cheese. I guess I tried 5, then!). Yes, it was that good. We also ate at a carnita stand, and at this great frozen yogurt place. Here's a picture of our group eating at the Inn where I had the duck. It was Sheila's brothers birthday bash, so it was our group of coworkers, some family, and 5 of their closest friends they met at the bar earlier in the day...seriously, haha.

So, for as amazing as the food was, it was a good thing we were able to do some hiking to offset the caloric intake. We went to Bandalier National Park. Some pictures...

Bandalier is made up of Pueblo archeological sites.

Joanna and Andrea.

Andrea, me, Joanna and Anita, 4 of the 5 of us.

One of the Pueblo archeological sites

It was very fun, the weather was perfect, and although there were 4 nurses, not one of us had a bandaid for Andrea's blister that was forming on her heel. Pretty pathetic, considering we were at a *Wilderness Medicine* conference. Good thing we ran into some other hikers that were there for the conference, as well, and came better prepared than we did.

My favorite hike, though, was Tent Rocks, and I plan on going back there to repeat the hike. It was so much fun, and beautiful terrain. I loved it. You'll see why they call it "Tent Rocks".

Me and Joanna.

Sheila, Joanna, Andrea and me :)

I think this is the one picture of all 5 of us: Joanna, me, Sheila, Anita and Andrea.

Beautiful.

See? Don't the rocks look like tents?

The trail was really narrow at parts-if the weather turns, it's actually very susceptible to flash floods. Good thing it was sunny.

OK, now for some pictures of the sightseeing in Santa Fe...

"Downtown" Santa Fe. To the right of this picture, they were filming a movie that's coming out soon. It's based on a book, that I cannot recall the name of right now. Good story, guess you had to be there. Unfortunately, no celebrity sightings.

Mariachi band outside the Loretto Chapel. So cool, they were performing for a wedding, and they were totally awesome!

So, this is the "Miraculous Staircase". There is no support beams for the staircase, which is why it's miraculous. This is also where Sheila bought her vial of holy water and her purple Rosary. And no, she's not Catholic. She just really likes the color purple :)

Route 66!

But don't worry, it wasn't all fun and games. We actually did attend the conference for most of the time there-which was seriously AWESOME!! I loved it, and I would totally go to another one of these-I learned so much. Did you know that honey can be used as an antibiotic ointment? And some people say it even works better than neosporin or bacitracin? Also, to maintain the airway of an unconscious person, you can safety pin their tongue to their lower lip, or to their zipper? And never, I repeat, NEVER go into the wilderness without Duct tape. And no off brand silver tape, either. It HAS to be name brand duct tape. And SAM splints are helpful, too. Which I will be purchasing after I finish this blog post. We learned how to package up trauma patients and learned practical ways to splint and care for specific traumas with minimal supplies. Here is us practicing moving someone with an injury who can't walk...

Dr. Howard Donner was one of the main speakers. You should Google him...he's done some pretty amazing things in his life and is super smart. Seriously. Think Everest and NASA. It was a really fun trip, and we're making plans for our next adventure medical conference. :) Fiji or Mt. Kilamanjaro, anyone?