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The Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi.

FOR almost 200 years, Santa Fe has been a site of pilgrimage. Every Good Friday since the early 18th century, believers have marched by foot, away from the center of town, with its Romanesque cathedral and rounded stucco buildings the color of roasted corn, toward El Santuario de Chimayo, the Lourdes of the Southwest, in the high-desert hills some 28 miles north. It’s a marathon of the devout, who reach the holy finish line wearing anything from hiking gear to their Sunday best.

When I arrived in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, last summer, however, a different sort of Friday pilgrimage was under way. A remarkably homogeneous set of faithful were ambling up Canyon Road, where 100-plus art galleries had thrown open their doors, as they do every Friday night.

The women were all willowy, with long, pale hair that plumb-lined down the backs of their linen blouses. The men all wore freshly laundered jeans and crisp oxford shirts, their cuffs buttoned to the wrist. Most were in late middle age; many might once have been hippies. All exuded an aura of moneyed confidence.

All, that is, except me and my mother, who had flown in from Connecticut for the weekend. While the people around us were very likely spending hundreds, if not thousands, on Colonial-chic hotels, trendy restaurants and Navajo artifacts, I had a weekend budget of just $500, far from enough to support Mom in the style to which she should really be accustomed. More stressful yet, my mother had been my original tutor in frugality — a coupon-clipping budgetarian capable of transforming humdrum leftovers into Michelin-starred feasts. Now I had to live up to her example.

Yet our stay in this 400-year-old city began auspiciously, with a perfectly inexpensive art walk. Up Canyon Road we followed the pilgrims, popping into Marigold Arts to glance at Kenneth Parker’s vibrant Asian landscape photos (and drink the free ginger iced tea), then wandering down an alley to the Anahita Gallery for a stark behind-the-Iron-Curtain photography show (plus cheese and crackers).

The best show was “Flooded Desert,” Teresa Neptune’s painterly photographs of drenched dunes at White Sands. Not only was the show in El Zaguán, a rickety but quaint 1850s merchant’s home that houses the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, but Ms. Neptune had shot all these gorgeous images on just a few rolls of film. Whence such efficiency? As a poor art student, she said, “I had to learn to be very frugal.”

To beat the crowds, Mom and I departed Canyon Road for the Coyote Cafe, the storied restaurant that elevated Southwestern cuisine way beyond green-chili cheeseburgers. But because its entrees frequently hit the $30 mark, we went up to its more casual (and cheaper), bustling Rooftop Cantina. There, we munched chipotle shrimp, Cuban sandwiches and duck quesadillas and drank crisp, hoppy Santa Fe Pale Ale.

As I paid the bill, which came to $54, I jokingly suggested we celebrate our first trip together in 15 years the traditional Southwestern way — with tequila shots. Five minutes later, we were entering the Matador, a subterranean bar where the punk-ska band Operation Ivy was playing on the sound system and one wall displayed a poster for D.O.A., an early-’80s hard-core group.

This was a real dive bar. Well, a Santa Fe dive — instead of shots, we sipped smooth añejo ($19 with tip) until Mom announced she was tired.

I was beat, too, so we returned to the Camel Suites (just recently sold and renamed the Santa Fe Suites), the least expensive hotel I could find that still claimed to represent Santa Fe’s “rustic charm.” So, rustic charm meant the bedspreads were an indiscriminate medley of pink, purple, copper and turquoise, and the wood furniture was factory-made to look rough-hewn. But the beds were soft, the historic district just minutes way, and the rate was $90.75 a night (including tax). We slept soundly.

The next morning we drove to the Santa Fe Baking Company, a homey, crowded cafe where Mom loaded up on scrambled eggs with scallions and Cheddar cheese, and I ate light: a cinnamon bun, coffee and an imperial pint of fresh orange juice — all for a fair $20.

Then, it was off to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (admission was $8 for me, $7 for my 60-or-older mother). We arrived in time to join a free tour, whose elderly docent sketched the painter’s life, from her discovery by Alfred Stieglitz to her artistic blossoming in New Mexico.

My mother, a part-time docent herself, questioned the way the guide played down O’Keeffe’s sensuality — an approach that, of course, had the opposite effect on us. We could see little else in O’Keeffe’s flowers and landscapes, and couldn’t help speculating on her relationship with Tony Vaccaro, whose intimate photographs of her adorned one gallery.

Post-museum, we window-shopped in the central plaza. (“Well!” Mom exclaimed. “It looks just like Taormina!”) At jewelry stores, Indian storyteller figures — ceramic characters on whose shoulders sit a rapt audience of children — were selling for $1,500, and at Shiprock Trading, antique Navajo rugs cost 10 times that.

We did find one bargain, though not really at a boutique: the Frito pie, $4.15 at the Five and Dime General Store on the tourist-flooded plaza. Back behind the aisles of shampoos and Hallmark cards lay the lunch counter where this delicacy — a small bag of chips sliced open and drenched with chili — was allegedly invented in 1962, when this was still a Woolworth’s. The pie is a satisfying snack. In fact, it weighed a ton — something like three pounds of meaty, beany, salty, corny goodness.

It necessitated a trip to the countryside to work off that weight. For Santa Fe is not simply its historic center but also the wild hills that lead into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We drove past adobe-style gated housing developments, then around tight switchbacks, the forests of pine and aspen growing ever thicker.

At last, we reached 10,350 feet and Ski Santa Fe. The lifts that are now serving skiers were not open, so we ascended the unused trails on foot. Mom, alas, made it only partway before calling it quits — but she insisted that I soldier on, and I soon learned how steep even bunny slopes can be when there’s no high-speed quad to whisk you uphill.

Thirty minutes later, I arrived at a peak and saw what I’d been hoping for: sunbeams breaking through clouds; the hills, so red up close, now infinite shades of blue and gray; and Santa Fe itself, reduced to a little pueblo. It was a vista Mom would have loved. Then I rushed back down; we were due at the opera.

Now, I prefer Hollywood musicals to Mozart and Puccini, but at $14 a ticket, the open-air Santa Fe Opera, a few miles outside the city, was too good to pass up — especially since the opera-going culture there includes a unique aspect: gourmet tailgating. As Mom and I walked through the parking lot, we encountered a dozen parties, some in formal dress, seated at fold-out tables and finishing off bottles of wine.

This was serious feasting, and we actually began to feel a little ashamed of our takeout meal from Dave’s Not Here ($18.56). Mom had ordered her favorite, chiles rellenos, and I a green chili stew — delicious, but so sloppy that I wished I’d chosen Dave’s famous green-chili cheeseburger.

The opera? It was Strauss’s “Daphne,” and apart from the chic production design and the presence of live sheep onstage, its turgid plotting and lack of catchy hooks failed to convert this philistine. I’ll take “Gold Diggers of 1933” any day.

One mission remained for Sunday: the International Folk Art Market, the annual gathering of artisans from Nigeria, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador, Laos and everywhere in between. On Saturday, admission had been $15; on Sunday, it was $5. But as we waited for the free shuttle to the fairgrounds, outside the Museum of International Folk Art, an official called out, “Anyone from Connecticut?” Mom answered his call, and he gave us free tickets, just for being from far away.

The fair itself was overwhelming. Crafts makers in traditional costumes demonstrated their techniques, live bands from Japan and West Africa performed on a stage, and thousands of shoppers pawed at jewelry, toys, textiles, masks and trinkets galore.

As afternoon approached, prices dropped. A $300 Mexican indigo rug was half off; a Kyrgyz felt rug went for $100. Mom picked a lovely, bright woodcut of an orange by the Brazilian artist Abraão Batista Bezerra (just $30!) while I went for one by his countryman José Francisco Borges ($20!).

We celebrated with a $5 cup of organic lavender ice cream from Tara’s booth — sublime.

With about $40 left before we hit our weekend limit, Mom and I decided to visit Ten Thousand Waves, a Japanese-style spa in the hills. But when I went online to double-check prices — $19 for an all-day soak in the communal hot tub — I discovered it was clothing optional. Now, my family’s fairly progressive, but some things, thankfully, remain off limits. I went alone, which was a smart decision: There was a single bathrobed woman lounging in a chair, but the communal tub was full of naked men. Mom would not have loved this vista.

Among the bamboo walls and the needly pine trees, I alternated between hot tub, cold plunge and sauna, drank tea and finally relaxed. All weekend, I realized, I’d been stressing, worried that, on this meager budget, my mother would be miserable. But she’d eaten gloriously, shopped thriftily and gotten a hefty dose of Santa Fe culture — and so had I.

Total: $493.30 (including taxes, parking fees and a mind-blowing $53 brunch — smoked trout hash, red chili with fried egg — at Café Pasqual’s on our final morning).