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SANTA FE - There are some ski trips that are all about the steepest slopes and the roaring fireplace back at the fancy lodge, and then there is laid back Santa Fe.

From Ski Santa Fe’s 10,350 base elevation to its peaks above 12,000 feet, there’s a family vibe, top-of-the-world views and nary a ski snob in sight.

It’s no resort, but that also means no resort crowds in Santa Fe National Forest’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Our group planned a last-minute holiday trip. Before we left, there was much confusion about where, exactly, we were going.

“Oh, you’re skiing Taos,” people who ski all the time kept telling me.

“No,” I would say. “Santa Fe.”

“Angel Fire?”

I grew more uncertain by the fourth or fifth exchange like this. Where exactly would we ski? I started to picture some grueling pre-dawn trek that would take hours as we crossed all of New Mexico to find a ski mountain.

Happily, though, the skiing in Santa Fe is really right there, just 16 miles from downtown. It took maybe 30 minutes to get from our hotel to the parking lot.

There is no ski-in-and-out hotel on the mountain. You do not emerge from your condo and coast to the lift line. No hot tubs. No spas.

It suited our group just fine. (OK, one friend said it was a little more “rough” than he expected, but he was the person who had to load an SUV everyday with all of our gear).

At Ski Santa Fe, everyone drives up the mountain in the morning, and back down the mountain in the late afternoon. If driving seems daunting, an alternative is a $5 bus ride from downtown. You can use your bus ticket to get a $5 discount on lift tickets or other items, though, so the ride is free.

What we wished we had known: If you have a multi-day ski rental, Ski Santa Fe will send your gear home with you in the evening. Had we not had two large vehicles on this trip, that would have come as an unpleasant surprise.

(Kids attending ski school, however, do not have to take their gear home for the evening, and thank goodness for that, because it’s hard enough just to keep track of gloves, hats and the children themselves).

The kids in our group spent the day at Chipmunk Corner, an excellent all-day ski school. (Cost $145 per day, including ski rentals, lunch and snacks). They loved the lessons and the instructors. We loved watching them ride up the conveyer lift, called the magic carpet, and come back down the gentle hill).

The kids needed to be at ski school by 8 a.m., so we had an early morning wake-up call and a zippy breakfast on the way out of the hotel. There was one great advantage. Ours were among the first few cars in the parking lot.

The secret to the trip was the early arrival, and the fact that everyone else had to drive up that mountain, too, hopefully after you’re already sitting on the ski lift.

If you go

Meow Wolf House of Eternal Return: 1352 Rufina Circle, Santa Fe, N.M. 05-395-6369. meowwolf.com. Price for out-of-state visitors: Adults $18, kids 12 and under $12, seniors age 65 and up $16.

Santa Fe info: visitsantafe.com

The lifts started running at 9 a.m., though it seemed like they were allowing people on them a little bit before that.

Around lunchtime, as the lift line at the base of the mountain grew longer, we simply started skiing mid-mountain and higher. Up to the top, zip to one of the mid-mountain lifts, and back up we went. A fellow traveler at the hotel had given us that tip, and it worked without a hitch.

I’m not picky about skiing - anywhere with snow works for me. A few of my fellow travelers fell into the ski snob category, but even they were charmed by the accessibility and ease of Ski Santa Fe.

“We’ve never actually skied this much when we went skiing,” a friend kept saying.

Up and down, up and down, over and over. We skied so much, we could barely move each night.

We took short breaks to spy on the kids at Chipmunk Corner and for lunch at Totemoff Bar and Grill, a casual mid-mountain eatery with picnic tables perfect for enjoying a sunny afternoon. (Bring cash - the line moves much faster than the one for credit cards).

We skied a few days and spent the evenings exploring downtown Santa Fe, with its historic square, beautiful architecture, and plentiful restaurants, art galleries and jewelry stores.

Every time we chatted with someone from New Mexico, they thanked us for choosing to come there. Is New Mexico ever excited about the holiday invasion by Texans? I doubt it, but they were nice anyway.

A happy day was passed at Meow Wolf, interactive art installation in an industrial area that defies any attempt to explain it. It’s not what springs to mind when you think of the famous Santa Fe art scene.

Meow Wolf’s “House of Eternal Return” is a mashup of a Victorian home, jungle gym, the Twilight Zone, Alice in Wonderland and some of the stranger nightclubs I went to back in the day.

A collective of more than 100 artists created Meow Wolf in the shell of an old bowling alley, and George R.R. Martin of “Game of Thrones” fame funded it. It’s worth the crowds and claustrophobia to try to wrap your mind around it. You can touch everything, too.

There is a lot going on - some sort of space-time, alternative dimension thing is happening. My friend and I tried to figure it out, but mostly we tried not to lose our children, who kept doing things like going into refrigerators that were actually doors to other rooms, or disappearing into fireplaces that led to other worlds.

More than an hour into the house, though, the five-year-old declared it creepy and said, “It’s going to give me nightmares.” That was it for us. I hustled her out of there like the place was on fire.

We found our happy place in a different part of Meow Wolf - an enormous arts-and-crafts studio run by the nonprofit Chimera. For $5, she was able to do eight craft projects, including sewing, painting, clay modeling and decorative tin art.

In another part of Meow Wolf, my little girl was gifted a small red cat printed from a 3-D printer. My friend’s son got a key chain that was laser-etched with his name and the Death Star. It was a successful afternoon - so engrossing that we forgot to eat lunch.

The entire trip to Santa Fe was like that - filled with unexpected discoveries that made us feel a world away from the daily grind.

jhiller@express-news.net

Twitter: @Jennifer_Hiller

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