Meow Wolf | Santa Fe, New Mexico

With all the cold weather we’re having in Dallas this weekend, I keep reminiscing of memories of visiting the desert – somewhere warm! Our trip to Taos, New Mexico a few years ago did not disappoint. We hit up some really interesting places like Ojo Caliente and the El Santuario De Chimayo. Some of our friends from Dallas joined us on the trip, and one of the days we drove into Santa Fe to scout around.

Donovan and his friend Jesse had been talking about this place called Meow Wolf all day, so the girls caved and we all decided to go check it out. The best way to describe Meow Wolf is that it’s an immersive art exhibit. I don’t want to give it all a way in this post (because you definitely need to check it out), but it was like nothing I had ever dreamed of expecting!

We arrived at Meow Wolf in mid-afternoon and pulled into the parking lot of what appeared to be an old grocery store. The parking lot seemed pretty unassuming except for the gigantic spider. Still not really sure of what I was getting myself into, I reluctantly got in line with the others. By the way, the line was literally wrapped around the building to get in. We bought tickets online and then proceeded to wait about 45 minutes for our turn.

Once they let us in, we had to check in at a desk, sign some waivers, and get our wristbands. If you have purses or bags, you can also check them if you don’t want to deal with them.

Apparently there is a story that goes along with the exhibit, but I don’t think I was smart enough to figure it out. Ha. When you enter, there’s literally a small house that you can walk through and explore, and there are all sorts of really cool hidden items. I think my favorite was the laundry room where you could open the dryer and enter the “portal” (aka: a slide) to enter another “dimension” (aka: exhibit).

Once you left the house, there were even more cool exhibits to explore. It sounds really weird to say this, but as much as the exhibits were so disjointed, they all seemed to flow well together too. I promise, I wasn’t on drugs! You just have to check it out for yourself!

One area made you feel like you were in the belly of a dinosaur or very large animal. You could pick up a mallet and bang on the ribs and bones of the animals, and each bang created music like a xylophone. It was so cool!

There were a ton of cool passageways, secret rooms, and some things that literally just didn’t make sense (at least to me).

I think my favorite exhibit of all was a particular room that was completely dark – no lights whatsoever except for several red laser lights that were shooting into the ceiling from the ground. It was really creepy to walk into at first, and we had no clue what the purpose of the room was. Our friends’ daughter (who was 2 at the time), ran right up to the lasers and ran her hands through them. Naturally…I was right behind her doing the same thing. When you touched the red lasers, the room made noise like you were playing a harp. It was so cool! The sounds were in sync with your movements, whether you touched one laser, all of them, ran your hands through them, etc. It was so weird, but awesome at the same time!

I think we ended up spending like 3 or 4 hours inside of Meow Wolf. I could see how other people might even spend all day in there! At the exit, there is a little cafe and gift shop, including a bar. Meow Wolf did a really great job in creating (and appreciating) all forms of art.

Meow Wolf’s website shows there are 2 new locations coming soon – Las Vegas and Denver. I can’t imagine how visiting such an interactive art exhibit may be impacted by COVID restrictions, because you literally touch everything, however, we are definitely interested in visiting both of them. If we were to visit the Santa Fe location again, I’d probably want to do the audio tour or use the app more to get more information as to what I should be looking at. Overall, we’ll definitely be back!