Baskets, Turquoise and Silver, Blankets, Rugs, Pots – For Sale………
I can’t believe it, we’ve been in Santa Fe for a week – Guess it’s time to move on!
Albuquerque, 70 miles south is 1,000 feet lower in elevation than Santa Fe and decidedly hotter. It’s still cool in the evening and morning though. A proprietor in a jewellery shop in Old Town Albuquerque told us that the weather is a month ahead of itself – unseasonably hot.
I was really surprised to see a lot of flowering trees around Albuquerque – there must be an abundance of water. The muddy Rio Grande flows right through the 
middle of town and with the snow melt from the north, there was plenty of water flowing. A small city with not much of a city skyline, it’s nevertheless full of cars and the resultant smog. Hugging the western border of town is Petroglyph National Park. There are so many prehistoric rock engravings on the large volcanic stones. I find it amazing that this 1,000 year old graffiti is still visible but also wonder why their artistic skills were so childlike. I guess there were no DaVinci’s or Michaelangelo’s in the tribes. The area of the park we visited is so accessible bordering suburban tracts that some of today’s youth have added their etchings, and some of them have just taken guns and shot at them, damaging these pieces of history.
We walked miles and miles and miles along the Rio Grande on the quest for geocaches. We started early when it was cool but by noon it was getting exceedingly sweaty. We met some people walking their dogs along the Rio Grande Bosque Park trail and stopped to chat. “This weather is one month ahead of itself” said one, wiping the sweat from his brow. . I thought it was awfully hot – turned out it was in the middle 80’s. They were fascinated when we told them we came from Canada because I don’t think that anyone other than locals ever walks these trails..
Georgia on my Mind….
Ghost Ranch was the part time home of Georgia when she moved to New Mexico in her later years after her husband, Alfred Steigletz died. Fifteen miles down the road is the tiny town of Abiquiu where she had her other home, an adobe pueblo-style house high on the ridge overlooking the valley.
But Ghost Ranch was where she got most of her inspiration. 
Today it’s a conference centre and resort. An old log cabin sits near the front of the large property - I wonder who lived in it. Georgia’s house was set further back near the mountains, but perhaps she sometimes stayed in the cabin. I was mesmerized by the sight of Pedernal, the mountain that she painted in several of her pictures. I had a real sense of ‘déjà vu’ when I saw what she had seen all those years ago.
Compare the actual photos taken by me in March, 2007 to the Georgia O'keefe paintings.
Northern New Mexico is still native Indian territory and many of the reservations still have traditional pueblos that they open up to visitors at certain times. The Taos Pueblo was closed to the public while we were there, but the San Idelfonso Pueblo on the road to Abiquiu welcomed us in ------- for a fee of $5. They wanted another $10 if we wanted to take photos – not likely. Many of the pueblo women were selling pots from their homes – another source of tourist income. Things don’t seem to have changed all that much from the old days – if we took away automobiles and booze anyway.
Bandolier National Park has opened up ancient remains of pueblo Indians from 1,000 years ago, adobe brick foundation walls and amazingly intact cliff dwellings. 
In a beautiful long and narrow verdant valley, water running through it and huge trees creating shade, the Pueblo Indians once resided with a population of 1,000’s. The steep limestone cliffs were full of holes like Swiss cheese and the Indians fashioned rooms by shaping and enlarging the caves to room size. Some of the rooms / caves were accessed by ladder and it was rather like a high-rise condominium building.
We hadn’t forgotten the restaurant recommended to us by Jorden, the art consultant at Shidoni – Rancho Chimayo in the little town of Chimayo and we looked forward to some authentic New Mexican cuisine. It was in a large remodelled ranch house and it was filled with genuine artefacts. Our room looked out onto the patio where more tables were set for lunch. The food was Mexican, as we know it with a twist. I had shrimp in blue tortillas with black beans and Pico de Gallo while Fernie had a tower of tortillas, cheese, chicken, beans, lettuce, tomato, guacamole, sour cream, etc. All was extremely delicious and Fernie discovered Santa Fe pale ale, a beautiful sweetish tasting amber beer.
The pueblo of Chimayo is famous for the sighting of the Virgin Mary by a farmer many years ago. He saw a light in a field and a church was built there, the Santuario Chimayo. People go there from far away to be cured and in a small room beside the church, the wall is lined with cast-off crutches and pictures and stories of those that have been restored to health.
'Taos' means 'red willow' in the Tiwa language.
Taos, 63 miles north of Santa Fe has a totally different vibe. While it’s still an artist’s colony, it’s also a ski destination and it sits beside the famous 1,000-year-old Taos Pueblo. The residents are younger, rougher and it has a bit of a ‘hippie’ environment. It’s about 1.000 feet higher than Santa Fe at 7,900 feet elevation, so it gets more snow and is much colder in the winter. This day that we visited – March 13/07 – the snow had disappeared from town but the mountains ringing the town were still cloaked in white. As in Santa Fe, all buildings are constructed in adobe, Pueblo-style by city ordinance. So the city hall, convention centre, hotels … don’t stand out – the style remains consistent.
The author of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, DH Lawrence made Taos his home. Dennis Hopper bought a property in Taos after making “Easy Rider” some of which was shot here. He doesn’t live here any more but I can imagine while he was here, it was party central. Julia Roberts also made her home here for a while.
After 
we rambled through the obligatory “Historic Old Town Walk”, we took the 87 mile ‘Enchanted Circle’ drive, north out of Taos, up and through the high mountains and alpine meadows, past ski resorts where skiers shushed down the slopes in shirt sleeves – it was over 70 degrees F.
Dreams come true; Yes, they do; In Santa Fe….
Being Vancouverites, it’s not often that we find a place that we would live other than our own beautiful environs but we immediately fell in love with Santa Fe. I can easily envision living in the beautiful capital of New Mexico. Its population is small – only about 65,000 but it’s a sophisticated, educated and artistic community. It has more than three hundred days of sunshine a year and the temperature in summer rarely goes over 90 degrees F. After an overnight where the temperature dipped to freezing, we were delighted to be greeted by clear blue sky and a day that soared to 80 degrees F.
We needed to do that tedious task of laundry and I found mention of a geocache called the ‘Laundromat Cache’. How fortuitous! It turned out to be a neat and clean facility so we tossed in our dirty stuff and headed off on a search for the cache, a quarter mile away. We found it easily and were back to transfer the clothes to the dryer in plenty of time. This cache turned out to be a four-fold find. As we strolled back, we passed a pet food store that sold holistic food – just what we needed for Caesar with his allergy problems.
Now I normally avoid Laundromats as Fernie has elected to take on the laundry duty but this day I didn’t need to hunt for wifi so I went in to help. As I was heading into the Laundromat, a 40ish, tall, light-skinned black man was on his way out with two huge baskets of clean clothes. I held the door open for him – obviously to his surprise, as he thanked me profusely.
“Well, That’s the highlight of my day” he said.
“It can only get better then.” I retorted as the door closed behind him. After he deposited his laundry in the car, he came back in, gave me a squeeze and a leer (good gawd, I’m 64) and said something about ‘never forgetting me’. Sometimes it doesn’t take much to please another human being. But when I think of all the times that I’ve held doors for people who’ve barged through as if it’s their right-of-way with nary a smile or a thank you……………..
A very fat woman sat by the window with tree trunk like legs sprawled widely and a tiny infant spread across her voluminous bosom. She had short-cropped steel grey hair and sitting beside her was a young and pretty (maybe 16 or 17) though plump and headed towards her mother’s shape in future years, dark haired and dark skinned girl. They were Navajo, I found out.
“Now, that baby is not very old” I said, noting his tiny legs and feet sticking out below a thick blue blanket. The Grandma looked at me with hostility ???????? But her daughter beamed with pride “He’s three weeks old and he’s already smiling and he sleeps all night and ……….” She babbled on and on.
“His name is Aquii – it’s a Navajo name and it means ‘boy’ in English”.
Strange connotation, I thought but of course didn’t verbalize it. A young longish-haired, white man with an English accent interjected “Oh that’s a wonderful name” and proceeded to ask more questions about the baby as I slid away. Babies don’t hold my attention like animals do. Funny thing though, Grandma broke into smiles and chattered away to the young man. Go figure.
While Fernie watched the tumbling laundry, he got to know the young man – a disk jockey whose radio station had been sold to a big conglomerate and he was out of work and happily moving to Los Angeles in another week. His roots were Welsh though brought up in England. Aren’t Laundromats amazing places – I’ll have to start frequenting them more often just for the social interaction.
I took a stroll around the shopping centre and right next door to the Laundromat was a computer repair shop. Our laptop had been crashing constantly – more and more often, so I wandered in and asked if they serviced laptops and the answer was ‘Sure’. I explained the problem and said I didn’t think it was software related but probably from overheating. I expected a fan needed maintenance or replacement. He said laptops with heavy use tend to plug up with dirt and grime in the airways. Anywayz! I dropped it off to them the next morning and they said barring the unforeseen they’d have it done in 24 hours. Good service! A beautiful thick-coated dog laid across the doorway as I left and his owner, one of the resident geeks (a bearded clone of the first guy I talked to) got up to rouse him. The pooch was obviously getting on in years (turned out he was 12) but he was good-natured and licked my hand. He looked a bit like a chow but the face was too pointy. “What breed is he?” I asked.
“Chow mixed with keeshond – he’s better natured than a chow but still has the purple tongue” He was obviously proud of his pet. He went on to give us advice on a remedy for stiff joints when we told him our dog was a creaky old senior citizen too and told us where to buy it.
A new vegetarian restaurant had just opened a few doors away from the laundry – the Annapurna – seems most cities have an Annapurna. We had a superb lunch there before we headed downtown to traipse around doing the tourist thing.
Georgia O’Keefe, an artist whose work I’ve admired for many years, spent her later years in northern New Mexico on a ranch surrounded by the colourful mountains and mesas that she translated to canvas. She died here at 98 years old in 1986, painting almost to the very end. I would dearly love to emulate her in my old age 
but sadly I don’t have the artistic ability or innate talent. I don’t think I’ll let that stop me though – I’ll just try to develop my own style. There’s a superb museum / gallery of Georgia’s works in the old town of Santa Fe and it was scintillating to see her evolving works and learn more about her life. I would like to have known her.
Just outside the city is a small village, Tesuque where strangely the famous Santa Fe Opera House resides, high on a hill overlooking the wonders of nature. Aren’t they usually in the centre of town? The theatre is an open-air structure rather like a semi-covered stadium and the opera season runs from June to August – it must be beautiful up there in the hot summer evenings.
We chanced upon ‘Shidoni’ (a geocache destination), a gallery full of diverse and beautiful artworks with eight outdoor 
acres of bronze and steel statues and structures, scattered around. At the back of the property seeral artisans were at work on their bronzes and we engaged in conversation with one of the gallery art consultants, a charming, immaculately dressed, well-spoken, handsome, grey-haired Adonis (obviously gay). Sitting across from him on a finely crafted and designed one-of-a-kind mahogany dining chair was Nelson, a rotund tabby cat who purred like a well-tuned engine and rolled over legs in air, when I tickled his tummy.
Jorden had retired from the US government (obviously at a young age) in Washington, DC and moved to Santa Fe. He’d been studying and collecting art all his life and owns hundreds of pieces. He recommended a visit to Chimayo, an artistic village, not too far out of town and a restaurant there “Ranch Chimayo”.
“It’s such good local New Mexico cuisine and it’s ‘cheap’ - well, not cheap but you know….not expensive” We’ll definitely try it. He then regaled us with stories of film stars who’d visited the gallery.
“Just before Xmas, sitting right there in that chair – Nelson’s chair – was an unkempt and unshaven Russell Crowe. He had two tough-looking henchmen with him but he’s a family man now and he was buying miniatures, like these over there…… for his children for Xmas.” He was in town shooting a remake of “310 to Yuma” and rented a ranch for $12,000 a month.
Santa Fe is home to many aging film stars. Gene Hackman owns a ranch just out of town. Jane Fonda and Shirley MacLaine reside here too.
“Shirley routinely goes into my friend’s gallery in town and just talks and talks for hours” said Jorden. Val Kilmer doesn’t belong to the geriatric set but his home is also in Santa Fe.
Adjacent to Shidoni was the Tesuque Glassworks and we were so lucky that the glass blower was just beginning to create a colourful set of tumblers. 
It’s quite a craft – back and forth into the oven, between blowing and dipping and stretching.
“How long does it take to learn the craft?” I asked him.
“Well, I’ve been at it for 35 years and I’m still an apprentice” he said
We were dead tired after a day of schmoozing with artists and art consultants and traipsing around various galleries around town.
Billy the Kid territory….
We climbed up from 3,500 feet at Roswell to 6,900 feet at Ruidoso on Highway 70, AKA Billy the Kid Scenic Byway. Remnants of snow still lay in hard sheets on the shaded side of the highway – winter wasn’t over yet in this ski resort area. Some sort of evergreen grew in profusion over the mountains. They are a round and not-too-tall tree and they give the mountains a polka-dotted appearance. At the top, more familiar tall pine trees grew. Billy the Kid’s country is horse territory; the highway is lined with upmarket horse ranches sporting sleek stallions, paddocks, boarding stables and exercise rings. The route culminated in the racetrack at Ruidoso Downs.
Right in the midst of the ski and horse tourist mecca is Casino Apache, a fairly small facility nestled in a green valley. But there was no poker (awwwwww……) and they didn’t allow overnight RV parking. It was only 10:30am so we were ‘outa there’ and forged our way to Santa Fe.
Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Roswell, New Mexico’s claim to fame is the supposed crash-landing of an alien spaceship in 1947. The site of the ‘crash’ is actually about 50 miles northwest of the town, but the young man that discovered the strange materials and the crash site reported his discovery back in Roswell.
While we explored the town and the hokey ‘UFO Museum’, we couldn’t help but think of our brother-in-law, Gaby (now deceased) who was a UFO enthusiast and read everything he could get his hands on about the subject. It is such a shame that he never had the chance of visiting Roswell.
Roswell was a surprise to us – it’s a lovely agricultural town with a population of 50,000 and a stately military academy in the core. Several hundred years ago, the Spanish discovered that there was lots of water in the land –
surprising because the Chihuahuan Desert is just south. The businesses have taken advantage of the ‘Alien’ encounter and you can see little green men in just about every shop window. Even Walmart has decorated with pictures of spaceships and extraterrestrials.
With an afternoon looming ahead of us, what else would we do but tour the town and its surroundings by Geocaching.
In a Cavern……
To reach Carlsbad from Las Cruces (both in New Mexico) we had to travel south through the Texas panhandle. We had to drive right through the city centre of El Paso, a border town across from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. I had visited the area in the 1970’s but it hadn’t left an impression on me so I wasn’t prepared for the dismal industrial zone, which channelled us into the urban centre. We were please to eventually leave the city behind.
After miles of grazing grasslands, we headed back north through the Guadalupe Mountains back into New Mexico and settled for the next two nights in the small town of Carlsbad – in another Walmart. The famous Carlsbad Caverns, a National Park is twenty miles out of town. After already visiting the Colossal Cave and Kartchner Caverns around Tucson, we didn’t expect much more than what we’d seen. We were amazed. We elected to take the two self-guided tours and skipped the guided ones where you needed kneepads and headlights. I just can’t imagine crawling through an eighteen-inch-high hole deep below the earth without having a panic attack.
We entered through the massive ‘natural cave entrance’ with swallows swooping around our heads. The bats won’t be returning from their winter 
migration until next month but they wouldn’t have been swarming in the daylight anyway. We walked down and down and down and down …….. on the well-constructed pathways into the doom below. The cavern was enormous all the way down and the artificial lighting was discreet and minimalist. The strenuous steep downhill trek made me oh so glad that there was an elevator to take us back up to the top. 
It was over a mile until we got to the bottom, 800 feet below the surface and words can’t describe the wonder. You have to experience it. We were exultant! The entrance route interconnected with the ‘Big Room’, which is so huge, it’s a mile around and it took almost another hour to navigate it. Colossal stalagmites and stalactites dwarfed us as we strolled it in awe.
I guess the immensity 
of the caves and the lengthy tours created the necessity of restrooms, which they’ve constructed at the 800-foot below surface level. Apparently, once a day a huge vacuum sucks out the contents to the surface – a big yuck, but isn’t technology wonderful.
We completed our day with a couple of geocache hunts, which gave us an overview of the little town of Carlsbad at the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert.
I was really surprised to see a lot of flowering trees around Albuquerque – there must be an abundance of water. The muddy Rio Grande flows right through the 
middle of town and with the snow melt from the north, there was plenty of water flowing. A small city with not much of a city skyline, it’s nevertheless full of cars and the resultant smog. Hugging the western border of town is Petroglyph National Park. There are so many prehistoric rock engravings on the large volcanic stones. I find it amazing that this 1,000 year old graffiti is still visible but also wonder why their artistic skills were so childlike. I guess there were no DaVinci’s or Michaelangelo’s in the tribes. The area of the park we visited is so accessible bordering suburban tracts that some of today’s youth have added their etchings, and some of them have just taken guns and shot at them, damaging these pieces of history.
We walked miles and miles and miles along the Rio Grande on the quest for geocaches. We started early when it was cool but by noon it was getting exceedingly sweaty. We met some people walking their dogs along the Rio Grande Bosque Park trail and stopped to chat. “This weather is one month ahead of itself” said one, wiping the sweat from his brow. . I thought it was awfully hot – turned out it was in the middle 80’s. They were fascinated when we told them we came from Canada because I don’t think that anyone other than locals ever walks these trails..
