The storm was a day late. We awoke to snow on the ground and coming down fast. Weather report said no letup till tomorrow (a big exaggeration), and roads had accidents and closures. No Santa Fe today, so we went in to Albuquerque, (here's a picture of us driving into town):

We visited the natural history museum (Very cool) and tried to go up the Sandia tram (it was closed). Turns out that everything closes early at the first snowflake--the museum closed at 3pm, despite the last snow falling at like 11am. "oh, the roads will be icy, so we are closing early." I got nervous--maybe we should head back up the hill to the RV? Turned out the driving was fine. they just wanted a snow day I think. Since we were pretty low now on propane, we chose to heat only the back of the RV that night, where we'd all be sleeping (with our ski hats on) and let the front end stay cold. Once more, we bedded down with dreams of Santa Fe.

So that night, the temperature dropped down to 17 degrees in Albuquerque; we were higher and more remote, so it was probably even colder for us. We were cozy in the back of the RV, but in the front, we froze the pipes that drain out our grey and black water (so no using the potty or running the fawcet). Also the water pump stopped working. what does a water pump cost and how long does it take to replace, I wondered. well, there was one thing more important to take care of today: it was our last day of medical insurance and Katie's cough was refusing to budge, so in the morning (before we realized the damage we'd suffered in the cold) I had called around and found a hospital in Santa Fe that would take our insurance.

We decided to drive the hour up to Santa Fe to take Katie to the doctor, leaving the RV in Albuquerque ("the town we could not leave"). but there was no time to sight-see after that was done, so we drove back, then did the same thing the next day (left the RV but drove up to sightsee for the day). We had a great time sightseeing (it was yesterday): we drove up through the old mining towns, including one called Madrid that looks like a ghost town, except that it seems to be populated entirely by artists. Every home is a studio (and all of them were closed for the winter). I absolutely loved it though; I'd never seen a place quite like it--there wasn't the money there to seem to support so many artists. Must be a story behind it. Here's a picture:

Santa Fe was charming, if expensive. We wandered through town, ate at a cute burrito place, and shopped a little (the prices were roughly comparable to Beverly Hills). On the way out, we stopped at the Children's Museum and spent 2 hours there (we were literally the last to leave): it was great. My favorite station was the domino table, which had wooden blocks with steps on them so you could climb the dominos up and set them up to do all sorts of tricks. Mark's favorite part was the super-strong magnets. He made towers almost as tall as himself. Katie got to make a turtle from a rock and make bubbles taller than herself, and she really loved the seats you could sit in and (using different pulley systems) pull yourself up toward the ceiling. It was $12 well spent, that's for sure.

Here are some pictures of us in the beautiful old part of Santa Fe: