Day 7

In Which Daisy Does Some Serious Shopping, And Doesn't Regret It A Bit
Day Seven was Santa Fe, which is a lovely town. In the morning I went to the plaza, the old downtown square with a lot of shops and several museums on it. On one side, in front of one of the museums, there is a covered sidewalk where native americans from all over the region come to sell their wares. According to Melinne, the whole setup in kind of self-regulated, with a lottery for spots and only the people who actually make the things allowed to sell them there, so it seemed like something interesting to check out. I got there pretty early in the morning, at about nine-thirty, when they were still setting up. It was all just blankets on the ground, with the things on them and the sellers behind them- kind of like a more casual Telegraph, with fewer bongs. I decided to be methodical about my shopping; I took one pass where I just looked and asked a few prices, and then I went on and poked my nose in a couple of other stores on the plaza, to see if they had anything interesting. They didn't, so I went back and got down to shopping.
Long story short, I ended up with three necklaces- one made of big, chunky tourquiose beads (expensive), one with a silver disc with a bird embossed on it (not expensive) and one made of kernels of corn dyed red (very much not expensive) as well as a bracelet. The bracelet I had to think about- it was pricey and I had already bought the tourquiose, and since I needed to get more cash anyway, I put it to the walk-away test while I went to the ATM. It passed. It's a very cool bracelet; a silver cuff with a cutout design of local life (a guy on horseback, some sheep, a corral) overlayed (overlain?) on top (also in silver). (This isn't a very good description- I'll post a picture.) Anyway, great stuff, and I felt pretty pleased with myself.
In the afternoon, Melinne and I went driving in the mountains around Santa Fe. We were going to go and see some ruins, but the wind was so bad that we deicided we would be better off just looking at things from the car. We did see some caves that looked like they had been inhabited. Then we came back to town and went to the Georgia O'Keefe and fine art museums. Sasha, Paul and Melinne's dog, accompanied us the whole way.
We had a fine dinner at a local restaurant, where I discovered that 1 fairly strong margarita x approx. 7000 feet in altitute= 1 kind of drunk Daisy.