Deciding best place to go in August - would love help!

Marolyn,

We are needing to do a cross country drive from Indiana to California related to a move and decided to stop in Santa Fe for two nights in May. We'll have two dogs with us. I have booked us at Hotel Santa Fe, which allows pets and sounds like it is in a pretty good location downtown. We are excited to finally spend some time there!

The trouble is, we're really not allowed to leave the dogs in the hotel room. We're going to probably have to walk or drive around with them to sightsee (I'm not opposed to leaving them in the car for a couple hours at a time if the weather is cool) - do you have suggestions for what we should do with our time there? Probably really only one afternoon/evening plus one full day to sightsee. Any restaurant recommendations? Is it worth the drive into Taos if we just have a day there?

Also, any other hotel suggestions? I'm not locked into Hotel Santa Fe, but need a dog friendly hotel of course, and hopefully not more than $200/night....

Since this thread got pretty far off topic (and off the destination - Africa - where they stuck it), I'll also post this in the US Destination thread.....

I am aware that this is a talk about Africa, but reading the name "Laos" in the message made a bell ringing. That because I stayed in Vientiane (Laos capital) and surrounding places for six months and I had an unforgettable time there. People are so gentle and genuine, the country so beautiful and untouched. I presume Thailand was like this many years ago, before the Thai became so frenetic about making money. You should go to feel the magic of that country before inevitably it will loose its unique charm.