seven nights on a hotel base, four days of open country
A Dog Friendly Santa Fe Vacation Package With Four Open Days and Three City Days
This is a dog friendly Santa Fe vacation package with three whole days your dog does not come on. We put that on the first screen because it is the whole shape of the week, and it is why the figure is the lowest we quote.
Seven nights, from $2,480 per person.
Nothing here counts you and nothing follows you off the page. One word can be stored, and only the word yes, so this slip stops coming back. The whole of what that means.
Santa Fe sits at 7,199 feet. That single number explains most of what this week does and does not do. Mornings in June start near 52 degrees and are pleasant on stone and dirt; by one in the afternoon the plaza flagstones and the downtown sidewalks have been in direct high altitude sun for six hours, and there is no version of that surface a dog should be standing on. So the week is built early, and it is built outward, away from town.
The other thing to say plainly is that a dog friendly Santa Fe vacation package here is not a package where the dog comes everywhere. Three of the seven days are town days: the galleries, the historic churches, the pueblo visits north and west along the Rio Grande. Dogs are not admitted to any of them. That is not a policy we negotiate around and not one we would want to. On those three days the dog is in your room and you are out from about nine until five.
What is left is four days, and those four are genuinely open. Nobody stops you at a trailhead in the Santa Fe National Forest, nobody stops you on a Forest Service road, and nobody stops you in your own car.
- How far the dog comes
- Four full days your dog is beside you on trail and in the car; three days it stays in the room while you are in town.
- What is actually included
- Seven nights in a dog accepting room at a mid range hotel base a short drive from the Santa Fe plaza; the property's own pet charge for one dog for the full stay; a written road book with parking, elevation and surface notes for the four open days; a printed list of which pueblos are open to visitors on which dates of your week; a single point of contact by message from booking until you are home.
- What the dog is shut out of
- Three whole days, roughly eight hours each, about twenty four hours of the week in total. Downtown museum galleries do not admit dogs, the cathedral and the plaza churches do not, and the pueblos that welcome visitors do not admit dogs on their land at all. We call each pueblo governor's office in the month before you travel and confirm the visitor days for your dates, because those days change and are the pueblo's decision to make.
- What it does not include
- Airfare or rail to Albuquerque or Santa Fe; the rental car or the mileage on your own; gas, which runs high on the mountain roads; all meals; museum, historic site and pueblo entry, which is per person and per site; the pueblo photography permit where one is charged; anything for the dog beyond the property pet charge; anything you arrange for the dog on the three closed days, which is yours to arrange and not something this office does.
- Who should not book this
- Anyone who wants their dog with them every day of a week should not book this one; three days it is not. It is also wrong for a dog that cannot settle alone in a hotel room for a working day, and wrong for anyone unwilling to plan the open days around the clock, because the four open days start early and pavement in June and July is hot enough by eleven that we route you off it.
A hotel room you come back to, and ground that starts twenty minutes away
The base is a mid range hotel on the Cerrillos corridor or off St. Francis Drive, three to eight minutes' drive from the plaza depending on which property has the room. These are not the adobe compounds on the plaza itself; those largely do not take dogs, and the ones that do charge in a way that pushes this week past what it is. What you get is a clean two queen or king room, exterior or interior corridor, a grass strip or gravel run on the property, and parking you can reach without crossing a lobby. The pet charge is a flat fee for the stay at most of these, between forty and seventy five dollars, and it is inside the figure above.
The ground is the reason to come. Twenty five minutes northeast on Hyde Park Road takes you from 7,000 feet to 8,500 in eight miles of switchbacks, into ponderosa and then into aspen and spruce. Trails off that road run on packed dirt and pine duff, shaded most of the day, and the water in Big Tesuque Creek runs through the summer in a normal year. Forty minutes the other direction, the Caja del Rio country is open pinyon and juniper with no shade at all and no water, which makes it a March or an October place and a bad July idea.
South and west the surfaces change again. The Galisteo Basin is grass and sand over sandstone, easy underfoot and open sky; the arroyos there run fast and brown for twenty minutes after a hard afternoon rain in August and are dry the rest of the year. We mark all of this in the road book by surface and by hour, not by opinion.
from $2,480per person
- Behind the number
- The least this office has paid to put a party into this week during the past year, not a rate card.
- Counted how
- Per head, two sharing, one dog, and that dog's lodging supplement folded in here instead of appearing at the door.
- Pushes it up
- Taking a whole place rather than a room, bringing a second dog, a holiday week, a property that prices by the size of the animal, and deciding late.
- Goes firm
- The moment a property puts its own name to a written line saying it will take your dog on those exact dates.
You settle up with the property itself, through whatever system it happens to use. None of it routes through this office and no card is ever shown to anybody here.
Good months, and the two that are not
Late September through the third week of October is the best of it: highs in the low seventies, cottonwoods yellow along the river, aspen turning above 9,000 feet, and pavement that is walkable at noon. Late April through mid June is second, with wind as the cost. The monsoon arrives in early July and brings a hard hour of rain most afternoons, which drops the temperature twenty degrees and makes dirt roads greasy for a day.
- Late April to mid June
- Highs 68 to 82, dry, wind gusting 30 mph most afternoons, snowmelt still in the creeks
- July and August
- Highs 85 to 90 in town, daily afternoon storms, forest roads soft for a day after rain, pavement unusable midday
- Late September to mid October
- Highs 68 to 75, first frost above 9,000 feet, best trail conditions of the year
- November to March
- Highs 40 to 50 in town, Hyde Park Road plowed but icy, high trails snow packed and often unbroken
- Any month
- The three city days are unaffected by weather; galleries and pueblo visitor days run regardless
What gets settled before you have a figure
Nothing is held until we know your dates, because the pueblo visitor days and the hotel pet policy both move. The pueblos publish feast days and closed days on their own schedule and sometimes close to visitors at short notice for their own reasons. We ask, we write down what we are told, and we hand you that in writing rather than a promise.
- You writeWe read messages the same working day and ask for dates, party size, one dog or two, and whether you are driving in or flying to Albuquerque
- We checkWe call the hotel properties for current pet terms and room stock and call the pueblo governors' offices for visitor days across your week; a figure comes back in two to four working days
- You confirmYou book the rooms on the terms we hand you, in writing, with the pet charge stated as a line and not a footnote
- We send the road bookFour open days routed by surface, elevation and hour, with parking and turnaround points, sent about two weeks out so weather can be read into it
Lead with whatever you think will be a problem
The one people hesitate over is the three closed days, and it is the right question. Tell us how your dog does alone in a strange room for eight hours and we will tell you honestly whether this week is the wrong one, or whether two city days instead of three makes it the right one. We would rather move you to another trip than sell you this one.