“When I first visited Santa Fe in 1973, I wrote a simple guide book for my favorite things for friends,” Hodapp said. “This is an updated, detailed version of that guide with new insights from the one who now lives here.”
She’s referring to her book, “The Complete Bucket List: 100 Things to do in Santa Fe,” and it was just chosen from over 800 entries to win a 2016 New Mexico-Arizona Book Co op Award for First Book NM. It’s also popular on Amazon, where it gives Fodor some tough competition in the category of Southwest travel and a best seller for Rio Grande Press.
“Being the Director of Libraries for Santa Fe, our downtown library hosts many tourists, and I am often asked questions about the City and what to see,” Hodapp explains. “Questions vary from where to find the best ice cream to where to have lunch, to just, ‘Where should we go?"
After serving as Director of Marketing for the Denver Public Library, Hodapp moved to Santa Fe to head up the library system and help create and build the first new branch in the city in 18 years. That branch is now 10 years old and serves thousands of patrons each year.
“In Santa Fe I began writing and won a few awards,” Hodapp said. “When approached by Rio Grande Press of Albuquerque to do the Complete Bucket List of Santa Fe, how could I say no? I quickly realized one of the hardest parts would be to narrow down the items to 100--I could easily do another 100!”
In the back of the book are "near misses" from friends and other Santa Fe fans. It’s also small enough to fit into a backpack or purse. The guide is complete with 100 photos, all taken by Hodapp.
Some of those locations include Indian Market, The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, and the Spanish Market, but other entries will give any tourist insight into the ‘real’ Santa Fe.
“The real Santa Fe dispelled the sometimes held belief that Santa Fe is "plastic," or a Disneyland in the West,” Hodapp says. “Real people shared such things as Sunday night dinner at their grandmother's home with tortillas and red chile, or Josie's tamales, where to find natillas and the best sopaipillas at a festival, Native American dancers, Native American jewelry sellers on the Plaza, or late night pilgrimages to the Cross of the Martyrs.”
“I do call this my love letter to Santa Fe. It is a very special place to live and to visit.”
In her spare time, Hodapp also enjoys painting the New Mexican landscape and coming up with new recipes for freshly baked bread.
The book is available from Amazon, Baker and Taylor, and the publisher, Rio Grande Press.
Share your story at MyWMU.com/MyStory.