Here’s Our Best & Worst Things From New Mexico

Shae and I spent February, March and the first week of April 2021 in New Mexico. We’d spent a few weeks in Albuquerque, NM at the start of the pandemic last year, but didn’t get to see much due to everything being shut down.

I’d been looking forward to returning because we had a lot of places on our list of things to do in New Mexico that looked like they’d be interesting. Despite looking forward to it, New Mexico exceeded my already high expectations. I absolutely loved it there and was sad to leave as I could’ve happily spent several more months there visiting everything we hadn’t had a chance to explore.

New Mexico is now easily within my top three states we’ve visited so far and it might even be my favorite. Here’s a list of our best and worst things from New Mexico where we share just some of the reasons why we loved the Land of Enchantment. It was a hard one to put together though because there were so many things we’d like to list as our favorites.

Favorite Accommodation We Stayed At

Stephen – Even picking our favorite accommodation is hard. When we first arrived in New Mexico we self-quarantined for two weeks as that’s what the state required at the time due to COVID (they’ve since relaxed those rules). We therefore booked three weeks at a lovely Airbnb in Bloomfield and that was great. The TownePlace Suites Carlsbad was lovely and we enjoyed the Hampton Inn Deming too.

Of these three, I think I’ll have to pick the Airbnb as my favorite seeing as we had so much space.

Shae – Yeah, as much as the TownePlace Suites was beautiful and new with a lovely park nearby, the Airbnb is my favorite. We had great space and a lovely host, but best of all? Horses and chickens right on site!

Favorite Meal

Stephen – This is another hard one as we had a lot of tasty food with red and green chile. My most enjoyable meal though was at La Posta de Mesilla in Mesilla (near Las Cruces). Delicious food, a cute courtyard and great company (Shae!) meant it was a lovely and relaxing meal.

Shae – Oh man – how on earth can I pick!? The cocktail and food at La Posta was amazing! But I really enjoyed our first foray into sopaipillas at The Sopaipilla Factory near Santa Fe. Especially the dessert ones – they were HUGE and delicious!

Most Disappointing Meal

Stephen – I don’t think I had a disappointing meal in New Mexico. On a similar theme though, what was a little disappointing was the Hatch red chile wine we tried. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised because why would you expect chile wine to be good?!

Shae – I really wasn’t a fan of Blake’s Lotaburger. It’s a New Mexico burger chain and has chiles between the patties but it just didn’t do it for me.

Favorite Free Activity

Stephen – This is another tricky one because it also depends on what you class as “free”. We have a National Parks annual pass which costs $80 per year but gets us free entry into National Parks, National Monuments, National Historical Parks, etc. Seeing as we have to pay for that pass though, I don’t think we can really class visits to those places as free.

I was therefore going to list my hike on the Domingo Baca Trail in Albuquerque as my favorite until I remembered that had a $2 parking fee and so, strictly speaking, wasn’t free either.

As a result, I’d say my favorite free activities we did were the two hikes we did in Santa Fe with Hershey and his mom. It was great getting to know Monica (and Jay for the second hike) and both places we hiked had lovely views.

Shae – I’d have to agree that the hike with the 4 of us was probably one of my favorite free activities – not because the first hike wasn’t awesome, but it was really fun watching Truffles be off leash with Hershey!

Favorite Paid Activity

Stephen – There were a lot of activities I loved in New Mexico that had a fee of some kind, whether they fell under the National Parks Pass, a small entrance fee or a parking fee. I’m going to have to pick two places for this one – Chaco Culture National Historical Park and Bandelier National Monument. Both places were beautiful sites with a lot of fascinating history about the Ancestral Puebloans.

Shae – Oh man…. How can I pick!? I’d say White Sands National Park. The weather was beautiful, the park was incredible and it was a day full of memory making!

Favorite Pet-Friendly Activity

Stephen – One of the many hikes we went on.

Shae – There were a lot of great options for this one but my most favorite was Elephant Butte State Park. Truffles just lived her very best life that day, playing in the water and running along the sand. It also resulted in one of the cutest photos of her ever captured – and that is saying something!

Least Favorite Activity

Stephen – The Harrell Bug Museum in Santa Fe. It was thankfully cheap as we bought our tickets on Groupon, but it wasn’t what we were expecting and the live animal exhibits had some disappointingly small habitats.

Shae – Easy. The Bug Museum. After begging to go for my students we turned up and it was just the worst. It was in a mall (like literally a mall), the enclosures were small and there wasn’t enough actual information.

Favorite Hike

Stephen – The Domingo Baca Trail which takes you to the wreckage of TWA flight 260 which crashed in the Sandia Mountains in 1955. It’s obviously a sad culmination to the hike, but the hike itself was beautiful and challenging, with the plane wreckage being an interesting feature that you don’t get on other trails.

Shae – I enjoy hiking but not as much as Stephen does. My favorite was the same as my favorite free activities – hikes with Hershey and his family.

Favorite Quirky Thing We Did

Stephen – Does visiting a city called Truth or Consequences count? If so, we had a lovely afternoon at Elephant Butte Lake State Park there. (Ugh, after seeing Shae’s answer I can’t believe I forgot about the quirky thing she mentions!)

Shae – PistachioLand was the quirkiest thing we did I think. Where else can you try all kinds of flavored pistachios, pistachio oil-infused wine AND take your picture with the World’s Largest Pistachio (Sculpture)?

Favorite Memory

Stephen – Our entire time in New Mexico. I know that might sound like a cop out, but seriously – the entire 2 months was just one long great memory.

Shae – It was really wonderful. My favorite memories include all the new people we met like Amy, Rod and Myles from Go Pet Friendly,  Hershey, Jay and Monica and the fellow travelers at D.H. Lescombes Winery.

Funniest Moment

Stephen – When we met up with Hershey, he was sometimes attracted to other dogs including Truffles. He was very respectful of them though and so rather than trying to mount them like some dogs do, he’d just stand there humping the air next to them!

Shae – Trying to sled down the dunes at White Sands. I’d get about half way down and just start turning over. I don’t think I made it to the bottom of any dune upright.

Thing We Most Regretted

Stephen – Not seeing as much as we would’ve liked. We missed out on several attractions due to either weather or COVID, but in one case we simply didn’t buy tickets in time. Meow Wolf in Santa Fe reopened just before we left Albuquerque, but with limited capacity still due to COVID, we didn’t buy our tickets in time and so it was sold out for the rest of our time there.

Shae – I most regret our drive back to Santa Fe for the Harrell Bug Museum. It was redeemed with ice cream afterwards, but I felt really bad about begging to go.

Something We Missed And Want To See

Stephen – Meow Wolf (see above).

Shae – We haven’t missed it yet, but we will be going back in October for the International Balloon Fiesta and I’m excited about seeing that.

I’d also like to go back and see the Trinity Site where the nuclear bomb was tested and check out Roswell a little more than the one night stop we had there. Besides the quirky alien stuff, there’s a miniature furniture museum that I think sounds weird and funny!

Our Biggest Surprise

Stephen – How amazing New Mexico is. The weather was great, it’s absolutely beautiful, has a ton of great hiking, delicious food, friendly people, loads of interesting and historical attractions and so much more.

Shae – How expensive and empty Carlsbad was. It’s undergoing revitalization but I was really surprised that with Carlsbad Caverns there – which I’ve heard about my whole life – that it hasn’t been built up sooner. For how much “revitalizing” I’d say is needed, the accommodation prices are outrageous.

My New Mexico Drinking Game Would Be…

Stephen – Take a drink every time you see the sun symbol from New Mexico’s state flag. But it wouldn’t involve drinking Hatch chile wine 😉

Shae – Take a drink whenever you see something with chiles in it. They add it to everything – wine, burgers, pistachios, etc.

Summary Of New Mexico In 10 Words Or Less

Stephen – Do yourself a favor and visit New Mexico.

Shae – It was indeed the Land of Enchantment as promised.

New Mexico Cities We Visited In Order From Favorite To Least Favorite

Stephen – Argh, this is another difficult one as most of the cities were almost equally fantastic. Even though we didn’t actually stay in Santa Fe, I’m going to include it here seeing as we visited there a few times while staying in Los Alamos and Albuquerque.

Los Alamos, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Deming, Bloomfield, Carlsbad.

Bloomfield and Deming could easily be reversed and the first five weren’t all that far from each other in terms of how much I enjoyed each one. Putting Carlsbad in last place was the only easy decision, but it’s still worth an overnight stop to visit the caverns.

Shae – Deming (primarily because of D.H. Lescombes Winery and its proximity to Las Cruces for La Posta, White Sands and Elephant Butte), Los Alamos, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Bloomfield and Carlsbad is waaaay at the bottom of this list.