Land of Entrapment

We’ve wrapped up our summer sojourn to New Mexico & Colorado with a short stop in Albuquerque.    ABQ, as it is affectionately called, is a favorite stop of ours in our transmigration of the West.  From here it will be two moderate road days and then we will be home.  Our plan was to hide out here through the Labor Day weekend, so as to avoid excess traffic on I-40 to Amarillo and US 287 to Denton.  Hence, we will be leaving here on Tuesday morning.  This six day stop over allows us to see a few things we’ve not seen, visit some favorite haunts, and load up on green chili—Hatch chilies have just been harvested and vendors with roasting machines are everywhere.  It has worked splendidly.



Vendors Roasting Chilies



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our trip started in Taos and while there, we were near the Rio Grande River Gorge.  At Creede, we were parked for a month on a short bluff overlooking the Rio Grande River and hiked around the river’s headwaters.  Now that we are in ABQ, we have once again encountered the Rio Grande River.  I suppose we should have called these series of blogs our Rio Grande Odyssey.

Rio Grande River in ABQ

Thursday found us prowling around in Old Town.  The oldest building (the Catholic Church on the Plaza) there was constructed in 1793, although the area was inhabited long before then.  We go to Old Town for the flavor and for a green chili enchilada fix.  Little Anita’s is our favorite restaurant, but we’ve learned to branch out and sample other places.  We always go to Old Town before the crowds and usually have most of it to ourselves with a few other hearty souls.  We don’t much like the mass of humanity that shows up there around noon, so we are usually finished by then—or at least well hidden in Little Anita’s.  Most of the shops carry junky tourista stuff, but there are a few jewelry traders that carry authentic Native American-made pieces.  Our favorite one has lots of old pawn jewelry; you know that stuff wasn’t stamped out in Taiwan.

San Felipe de Neri Church

 

Jewelry Vendors in Old Town

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sandia Mountains lie to the east of ABQ in much the same way as the mountains are east of Salt Lake City.  For those of us from the front range of Colorado, this arrangement is distinctly disconcerting.  We grew up with the major range of mountains to our west and they served as a marker for direction for decades.  In many ways the adjustment to no mountains is somewhat less troubling than having them on the wrong horizon.  One could liken it to learning to drive on the other side of the road; it takes all of your concentration to get it right.  In all of our visits here we have never actually been in the Sandia Mountains.  We decided to correct that.   ABQ has an aerial tram that goes to the top of the Crest, but we did it the old fashioned way—by driving the twisty 14-mile road to the top.  On Friday, we took the Turquoise Trail (NM 14) up the east side of the Sandias to the Sandia Crest road and then to the top (relatively short at 10,650’, it is the tallest around ABQ).  We were hoping for spectacular views, but some agency was doing a prescribed burn in the area and the skies were full of a smoky haze that seriously limited visibility.  Oh, well, there is always next time.

Smoky downtown ABQ in center or picture

Not to waste the day, we drove 20 odd miles up to the old mining town of Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid) for a look around and lunch  It started as a coal mining town in the late 1800s and continued in that capacity until the 1950s when it became a ghost town.  Recently, the town has been taken over by art galleries, and, presumably, artists.   We love art and were temped, but we’ve used up all of our wall space at home and there is no wall space in our RV, so we just looked.  A few years ago when we last visited Madrid we were talking with one of the gallery owners and she allowed as how she was from New Mexico originally, moved away, and then returned to finally settle down.  She said for her, “New Mexico isn’t the land of enchantment; it’s the land of entrapment.”  Wow, what a powerful sentiment.  We agree with her in many respects…the high desert, the mesas, and the canons all speak to us in countless compelling ways.


Typical Madrid gallery/shop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This will be our last blog for this trip unless we decide to write a summary of the summer.  We will resume our travels in mid-November with a trip to the southeast, including a visit to the Florida Keys.  Feel free to comment on any of our blogs, we would like to hear from you.