Road trip: First Peoples Fund, Santa Fe, and the Palo Duro Canyon

In April, my mom and I took a road trip. We split the drive into two days, and made an awesome stop for the evening. A two hour sunset drive through the Palo Duro Canyon.

Can't wait to return someday for full exploration by hiking and horseback riding.

After a night's stay in Canyon, Texas, we found what we thought was a little museum there. Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum. It turned out to be quite large! The highlight came when we found the "town" on the bottommost floor. My mom said she felt like she was in Dickens (the fictional 1890s town in my novel, The Executions.)

Then on to Santa Fe we drove. I've been to Santa Fe several times, but only for skiing in the winter. We noted this would be our first time to not see snow there. Wrong. This happened our second day:

But first, we hot tubed at the Hilton Santa Fe Historic Plaza where we were lodged before enjoying day one of the First Peoples Fund training. This was the real reason for our road trip, and it was the highlight. Two days of fun training and meeting fellow Native artists from all over the country (including Hawaii  and Alaska). And we took in some shopping in downtown Santa Fe.

The event took place at the Institute of American Indian Arts, and I want to thank them and the fun FPF staff for facilitating us. Also a thank you to FPF for giving us artists the opportunity to come together, learn, be creative and most of all, for helping to fund our projects. For me, this included the publishing of my first novel, The Executions.

Like any road trip for us, we like to get home straight way. This time, it meant no sightseeing, just a good steak dinner in Amarillo.

Oh, well, we did stop in Dallasfor a little shopping and a media meeting that happened to be that evening.

Our wheels just never stop turning.