Bishop’s Lodge Ranch Resort & Spa is all that its name encompasses, just three miles from Santa Fe’s historic plaza.
The bishop of Bishop’s Lodge was Jean-Baptiste Lamy, the first archbishop of Santa Fe, who built the little chapel on the hill, which is still open for visits and weddings. (Lamy was immortalized in Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop.)
Bishop’s Lodge Ranch Resort & Spa
Bishop’s Lodge spa resort in Santa Fe offers a kid-friendly stable of horses for mountain trail rides.
The bishop built the Central Lodge as a carriage house in 1915. Shortly thereafter, the Pulitzer family bought the property and built the North and South lodges. They sold it to another family, and the East Lodge was built in the 1920s – and so on.
Today, Bishop’s Lodge has 111 rooms and suites in 15 adobe lodges scattered over 450 wooded acres at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
But your kids don’t really care about all that because Bishop’s Lodge also has a swimming pool, and isn’t that what really matters? Kids can put up with all kinds of shopping and gallery hopping if they know that later in the day they will be able to hurl themselves into a pool.
Also kid-friendly: a stable full of trail-hardy horses and properly laconic wranglers for mountain trail rides. Kids must be 8 or older for trail rides, but the stable also offers daily rides in the ring for younger children. Camp Appaloosa for ages 5 through 11 offers activities all day every day and some evenings.
Men’s and teens’ facials are on the menu at the ShaNah Spa, which also offers daily yoga, Pilates, meditation and tai chi classes in a pleasant studio by the pool that is reserved for laps every morning and evening.
Bishop’s Lodge is centrally located for Santa Fe’s world-class restaurants, but the resort’s Las Fuentes Restaurant & Bar can provide a pleasant night in. And breakfast al fresco is an appealing option.
Doubles from about $219; massage, $120; horseback rides, $55 per person. Contact: 1-800-419-0492;
