New Mexico - Day 5 Ghost Ranch and Georgia O'Keeffe

On our final day Nate and I decided to drive out to Ghost Ranch and see Georgia O'Keeffe's favorite part of New Mexico. We could see immediately why she was drawn to this landscape. O'Keeffe had a small summer house on the Ghost Ranch property and a year-round residence in the nearby town of Abiquiu. She got much of her artistic inspiration from the surrounding landscape.

Now Ghost Ranch is owned by The Presbyterian Church. It's a convention center and camp, and is open to visitors and tourists. We enjoyed the beautiful scenery on the way to the ranch, and when we got there we ate the lunch we had packed in one of the buildings pictured below.

The buildings at Ghost Ranch are nestled amidst fabulously colored plateaus.

Ghost Ranch was cold. We pulled out our coats and hats for the extremely short hike that we took. We were actually kind of glad we had an opportunity to use our coats since we had dragged them all the way to New Mexico. Below I'm bundled up and looking at Chimney Rock.
Ghost Ranch provides a view of the Pedernal, the tall, distant plateau in the pictures below.


Georgia O'Keeffe often painted the Pedernal. Here is one of the her many paintings of the mountain of which she said, "It's my private mountain. God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it."

Like good O'Keeffe fans we had to take a picture of the cow's skull that hangs at Ghost Ranch as well.

Bones were another of O'Keeffe's favorite subjects. Of them she said, "To me, they are strangely more living than the animals walking around — hair, eyes and all, with their tails switching."

Other sights from Ghost Ranch include this grazing burro.

And this old, weather-beaten log cabin.
Here's our rental car looking like its parked in the middle of nowhere.
And this is one of the desert valleys we passed on the way to and from Ghost Ranch.

When we got back to Santa Fe we rounded out our O'Keeffe day by going to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. Their website has several really nice slide shows of the painting in their collection.

After a short trip through the museum it was time to head to Albuquerque and the airport. That day we had breakfast in Santa Fe, lunch at Ghost Ranch, dinner in Albuquerque, and we were home for bedtime.

And that concludes my report on New Mexico.

New Mexico - Day 4 Santa Fe

On our fourth day in New Mexico Nate and I hung out in Santa Fe. We went to the historic Railyard so that I could complete my "journey" along the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. I might not have ridden the rail, but I've now seen the beginning and the end of the line.

The Historic Depot:
Santa Fe was the endpoint for another "journey" for us. In Kansas City we basically live at the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail. See Westport on the map below? That is the oldest part of Kansas City, and it's really close to where Nate works. In Westport a central square features a large map of the Santa Fe Trail. So we had been to the beginning of the Santa Fe Trail and now here's Nate with the plaque that marks its end.

We also toured some of Santa Fe's other historic sites. We went to the Palace of the Governors. Originally constructed in 1610 by the Spanish, the Palace of the Governors served as the seat of government in New Mexico until the late 1800s. In the course of that time, it housed Spanish, Mexican, and American governors. The Palace of Governors is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States and now serves as a museum of New Mexico history.

We also went to the New Mexico Museum of Art where we saw this little tiny door.

Ok, we saw some art too. Like I said in my last post, tons of artists came to paint New Mexico. Even artists that you would never think came to New Mexico came. So, at the museum we got to see more New Mexico-inspired pieces. We saw this piece by George Bellows:

And this one by Robert Henri:

And some works by Georgia O'Keeffe:

And this piece, Interior , New Mexico (1923), by Stuart Davis. We found the Stuart Davis pieces really amusing because Davis, unlike most of the other artists, was not at all a fan of New Mexico, and it's really obvious. He spent most of his time in New Mexico painting interior scenes in black and white.
We also went to see the very unassuming New Mexico State Capital.

We stopped by the San Miguel Chapel in Santa Fe, which was built around 1610 and is said to be the oldest standing church structure in the United States.

We saw the oldest house in the United States, which is right next door to the chapel.

And we also saw the Loretto Chapel and the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis, but the facade of the latter was under construction.

We enjoyed wandering into the shops, talking to the street vendors, and eating gourmet pizza on the roof of the restaurant.

New Mexico - Day 3 Taos

On our third day in New Mexico Nate and I took the scenic high road to Taos. We saw views like this:

And felt like we were in New Mexico, which we were. And this:

And felt like we were in Colorado, which we were not. At some points along the drive we had a lovely New Mexico-like view to the west and a lovely Colorado-like view on the east. What interesting country.

Along the way we stopped in Las Trampas to see the 250 year old San Jose de Gracia Church. The church has been well cared for and is still used as a parish church today.

On our way into Taos we stopped in Ranchos de Taos to see their famous church, San Francisco de Asis. Work on the church began in 1771 and was completed in 1815.

The church is one of the most oft depicted structures in the United States. Artists like Georgia O'Keeffe and Paul Strand painted and photographed the building multiple times.

With images like these among some of the most famous depictions of the church, (Nate and I actually had no idea what the front of the church even looked like until we got there) Nate and I really had to wonder why on earth the back of the church now looks like this:


Note the power lines crisscrossing the structure, and the gas meter, and apparently you can now park your vehicles right behind the church. Frankly, I think these photographs are a real testament to the power of this structure because it still looks dang awesome despite all these modern-day annoyances. (Also, it helps that the power lines aren't nearly as obvious in the photographs as they were in person.) Still, seeing the church at Ranchos de Taos was probably the highlight of the day.

A little about Taos and American art: In 1898 artists Bert Greer Phillips and Ernest L. Blumenschein were on their way to Mexico for a painting trip when their wagon wheel broke 20 miles north of Taos. While waiting for their wheel to be repaired in Taos the two artists became so impressed with the scenery that they decided not to continue on to Mexico and instead they stayed and painted in Taos. Phillips remained permanently in Taos and Blumenschein eventually moved there. The two artists convinced their friends to come visit New Mexico, and Taos became an artistic destination for several generations of artists.

The artists who journeyed to Taos admired the landscape and the Taos Pueblo, portrayed below in Joseph Henry Sharp's Sunset Dance--Ceremony to the Evening Sun (1924).

A visit to the Taos Pueblo, a structure that has been continuously inhabited for over 1000 years, was also one of our main objectives for this day trip. We even called from Kansas to make sure that it would be open for our visit, but, when we arrived at the Taos Visitor's Center, we learned that the opening of the Pueblo had been delayed a week. Needless to say we were disappointed, and suddenly we didn't really know what to do with ourselves in Taos. So we went to a museum, visited a couple art galleries, sat on the plaza eating icecream, ate dinner at a little gallery/ restaurant, and wandered around admiring the architecture.

Well, at least we didn't become crazy, gawking tourists like the ones pictured below in John Sloan's engraving.

Our day ended with a pretty spectacular site. We went to see the bridge that spans the Rio Grande Gorge. As we were driving toward the bridge we couldn't help wondering if we had made a mistake because the land seemed flat in every direction, and then suddenly we were there. This aerial shot will help you understand the shock value of the Rio Grande Gorge. It's basically an enormous fissure in the flat landscape.
We found the Rio Grande Gorge and the magnificent cantilever bridge pretty amazing. Here are some of the pictures that we took:


We drove back to Santa Fe on the equally scenic low road, which follows the Rio Grande for miles.

New Mexico - Day 2 Jemez Springs and Bandelier

The next day we left for Santa Fe, but we didn't take the direct route we took the scenic route through Jemez Springs. (Nate and I were very into scenic routes on this trip.) Along the way we stopped at several really interesting sites.

Our first stop was at the Jemez State Monument where we saw the ruins of both the San José de los Jemez church and the surrounding Indian village of Giusewa. Below are a couple of pictures of the old church which was built in 1610, 10 years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts. The extremely thick stone walls are pretty impressive.

We drove by Soda Dam, Battleship Rock, and Valle Grande, which was formed by the collapse of volcanic domes after two massive eruptions about 1.6 and 1.2 million years ago.


Our next stop was Bandelier National Monument. We took a walk through Frijoles Canyon where we saw the ruins of the 13th century Tyuonyi pueblo. Below you can see the dwellings built on the canyon floor. The cliffs surrounding the pueblo have a lot of natural voids, called tuffs, that the people who lived here enlarged. The really cool thing about Bandelier is that they let you climb up and get a closer view of these cliff dwellings.



I'm sure that Nate would want to me post a picture of the bat cave. As we were walking through the monument I commented about the cliff walls and how they seemed to be the perfect home for huge colonies of bats. Right after I made this comment we ran into this sign and the picture below is of the bats' home, Long House Cave.


Nate and I then took a side trail to the see the Alcove House, a cliff dwelling in a very high cave that visitors can reach by ladder. Actually, several ladders.

I'm starting the long climb to the top, and below Nate is crouched in one of the many natural crevices in the cliff face. I think it's pretty cool that they let visitors climb all the way up there. Don't worry we were careful. And everything was so close together that the whole round trip was only about 2 miles.


From Bandelier Nate and I drove to Santa Fe where we ate dinner and checked into our hotel. We had a full day.