El Rancho de las Golondrinas — Attraction in Santa Fe

My family and I were road tripping from Chicago Illinois to New Mexico. As a Latin American with indigenous roots, I was excited to visit El Rancho. I saw on the website that pets were not allowed in the museum. My father volunteered to stay back and watch our small and well behaved Dog so my mother and I could enjoy the Museum together. After driving several hours we reached El Rancho and walked to the front of the gift shop to purchase tickets for entry. My father picked a bench outside of the gift shop with some shade and sat with our dog to wait for my mother and I. The moment my mother and I walked in we were met with a rude gift shop attendant who said dogs were not allowed in the museum. We kindly explained our dog wasn’t going inside and my dad was going to wait outside with him while my mom and I went in alone. The gift shop attendee repeated herself and said “no dogs in the museum”. I wasn’t sure if she didn’t understand that we were not bringing him inside, my dad was waiting outside with my dog. So I asked “my dad and dog can’t wait for us outside?”. She proceeded to repeat “no dogs allowed in the museum”.

The area outside of the gift shop is made of gravel and some stone, it was not inside El Rancho. For families who are road tripping with their dog, there are no nearby restaurants, hotels, or rest areas. Although there is some shaded area outside of the gift shop, you won’t be allowed to sit there and wait for your party if you have a dog.

When we were there it was empty with only a couple cars. My recommendation to the owner would be to instruct the staff not to be condescending. A simple “no, I’m sorry but you’re dog isn’t allowed outside of the gift shop, there is a nearby XYZ (shop, hotel etc) that your dad and dog can wait for you by”, would have been much nicer than the attitude my family and I received. Or even a simple “no” to my question instead of repeating that the dog wasn’t allowed in the museum (he was outside of the gift shop not in the museum).

Needless to say, we left. The parking lot did not have shade and was not a safe place for my 68 year old father and my dog to wait (picture included). Wanted to love this place but it left a bad taste in my memory.

As a museum with potential road trippers driving far to visit your establishment, please train your staff to be more hospitable and...

Best museum in New Mexico. Staff here go above and beyond and it shows in your experience. If you are in the area, you should check it out. If you want a tour of any kind, I recommend buying tickets in advance. However, we had the option to join a tour just walking in with our group of 9 people.

They have tour guides to show you around or you can do your own. We chose to do our own with the self tour guide book they gave us. We got a map with all buildings numbered that match with numbers on the buildings. In the self guide book, there was information you could read at every number that matched up with buildings. It was very educational.

Depending on the day, there is staff at every building or most buildings. We went on a week day so less staff as there were less visitors. But the most buildings did have staff and they were so friendly and answered all questions. One staff member at two of the buildings specifically spent 20 min with our group showing us multiple buildings and giving us thorough historical information that was not in the book.

There is a good bit of walking so I recommend wearing good shoes and taking water. There is refillable water stations throughout. It is not paved but it smooth enough to get strollers/wagons/scooters through. There may be issues after strong rains.

The front door offer a very cute gift shop and cafe. I recommend the ice cream sandwiches. They are made of two homemade cookies with ice scream and sprinkles in between that...

This museum is excellent. I visited by myself today and, fortunately for me, it was not very busy and I hardly ran into other visitors. The number of volunteer docents they had present seemed to match that expectation, but for a Wednesday it was just right. I had a good connection with every docent I spoke with (I interacted with seven of them) and was able to learn a lot about the property itself and the history of the state. I could have run out the whole day speaking with each one and it was hard not to, which is what this five star rating is truly for. The people were excellent. The one thing which I’ll concede to the 1 star comment below is that there was little “living” going on, much of what I learned was through verbal interpretation. But otherwise, that other comment sucks! The people running this and taking care of it deserve your patronage just for keeping the historic buildings open on well-kept beautiful land. I enjoyed being in the space for its own sake. Anyway— The buildings are well-equipped with antique items that are accurate for the intended period and it did feel lived in. I was really glad to go and will go back again, especially during the upcoming harvest festival when it’s really supposed to pop off. Thanks to...