Back to New Mexico

Art, The El Rey, and the Lady Lobos

March 23-31, 2003

OK, so maybe you've noticed that our route through and around the southwest has been a little strange--Texas into southern New Mexico, west to southern Arizona, up to the top of Arizona (the Grand Canyon), up further to Colorado, then back down into New Mexico (again), over to Arizona (again), and then up into Utah. On the map, it's a big spiral--and it makes perfect sense, if you watch the Weather Channel.

        Basically, except for the skiing at Telluride, we were trying to stay where it was warm, so we did southern Arizona and New Mexico first in order to give Santa Fe and the canyon country in Arizona and Utah a chance to warm up. And except for a one-day snowstorm in Santa Fe (hey, no plan is perfect), it worked.
    We had a long drive south and east from Durango to Taos, the last eighty miles or so on narrow mountain roads in the dark. But Taos was worth it--a stunning landscape, great architecture, and probably the best art per capita in America.

    Like Santa Fe, Taos is a place that blends three cultures--Native American, Spanish, and Anglo--and all three show up in everything from the art to the food.

    Here, Ben is standing in the passageway between two courtyards in the Martinez Hacienda, a beautifully preserved adobe farmhouse built in 1804 by a wealthy Spanish merchant.




The hacienda dining room; notice how spare everything is--nothing on the walls, simple furniture, and  not much light. Metal was so rare in these days that Senor Martinez' will specified the location and disposition or every nail in the place.

I like the corner fireplace.




  Mary fell in love with the adobe style; a friend in Maine suggested that it would be perfect for Brunswick, particularly in March. Finally, a commercial use for Mud Season.


 Taos had an art gallery every 25 feet, and the art was surprisingly good (and not surprisingly expensive); our favorite find, however, was this open-air antiques dealer which featured doors. Church doors, castle doors, palace doors from India, mansion doors, huge gates; it was a treasure trove of ancient, rough, and often beautiful doors. I couldn't help but wonder at the story each might have told--of monks and knights, dark princes and cold castle afternoons.

Ben really wanted an enormous set of wooden gates which looked like something out of Young Frankenstein. We finally convinced him that they would be a little much on Potter Street.

On the way from Taos to Santa Fe is an amazing place called Bandelier National Monument. A friend in Maine had told us it was a "don't miss" in New Mexico, and he was right. Bandelier lies in a protected valley between huge rock formations which look almost exactly like swiss cheese. About twelve hundred years ago, the holes in the cheese became the homes of a mysterious group of people called the Anasazi ("the ancient ones" in the Navajo language) who populated the valleys and canyons of the southwest until they abruptly disappeared about 1300 AD.

  
    The settlement consists of these rock rooms reachable by ladders, adobe style buildings built up against the cliffs (below), and what can only be called an apartment complex on the valley floor.


Here again, as at Mesa Verde, we were allowed to actually climb into some of the rooms--and you could still see the smoke marks on the roofs. Mary and I both had the feeling that some day in the not too distant future, this extraordinary access will no longer be allowed.








    After about a two mile hike along the foot of the south facing cliff (cliff dwellings were almost always built on the north cliff--to get the winter sun), we came to Alcove House--a giant cliff house built into a natural alcove some 140 feet above the valley floor.

     Here's Molly on one of the series of ladders which got us up the sheer cliff face. All I could think of was how the original residents decided who got to carry the water up each day.











In Santa Fe, Mary's guidebook research paid off again in the form of a wonderful place called the El Rey Motel. The El Rey was built in the Thirties and has been thoughtfully expanded and beautifully maintained ever since and is as good an example of the charms of "commercial adobe" as we have seen. Take a look--

The office and (free) breakfast room. Counting the value of the breakfast for four, the rates were about the best we had found, which means the charm was free.


 
A simple gate into the courtyard; there was an award for maintenance in the El Rey trophy case--see why?











The nicest hot tub I've ever run across. With the stars out, the fireplace lit, and the water hot, this is pretty nice place to end a day. Hey, who said this had to be all work?

     A somewhat rare moment of familial affection. Some have accused me of sugarcoating the domestic situation on the trip--that the kids are always smiling and we always seem to be getting along swimingly. Well, it ain't so.
     Ben and Molly are perfectly normal 12 and 9 year old siblings--in other words, constantly at each other and often driving their parents to the edge (and sometimes over the edge) of distraction.

Having said that, we have gotten along amazingly well; the kids have grumbled (trolley tours and hikes aren't big favorites, for example), but have generally gone along with our plans more willingly than I would have thought possible. We even catch them being nice to each other every now and then, especially when they don't think we're watching. We may be getting to the limit of their canyon tolerance right about now, but tough, they'll forget all about it by the time we hit San Diego.

One of the highlights of our time in Santa Fe was a visit with Governor Bill Richardson. We had a great chat, and guess what? In his campaign, he had proposed giving laptop computers to New Mexico's 7th graders. Now where do you suppose he got a whacky idea like that? I found him warm and smart; if the economy picks up and gives him half a chance, I predict he'll do great things for New Mexico, laptops or no. (No picture; I completely forgot).
    Santa Fe, of course, is a major art center with galleries and museums on every corner. The galleries are generally very high-end (some looked more like museums than commercial establishments) and we sure didn't find any bargains. I liked the museums where you could just rent the good stuff--for sixteen bucks, for example, we had the run of a fabulous Georgia O'Keefe collection for a couple of hours--we just couldn't take it home with us.

Ben couldn't get over the porcelain urinal turned on its side ("Fountain") or the snow shovel on the wall (by Marcel Duchamp) in the O'Keefe; "this isn't art" quoth he, and of course, he was right.
Here's Molly in the Santa Fe Childrens Museum; if you look closely, you will see that she is standing inside a circle of soapy water, pulling on a rope attached to a hula hoop which was dipped in the water. The result? A huge bubble surrounding her, curving in in the middle. Neat.





On a trip like this, you pick up tips from all kinds of sources. I've already mentioned Mary's penchant for guidebooks, which has come in handy more than once, but we also are always on the alert for ideas from fellow travelers (unfortunate phrase), especially those with kids. This stop, between Santa Fe and Albuquerque (one of my accomplishments of this trip is that I can now spell Albuquerque without looking it up or asking Mary), is at a new National Monument called Tent Rocks we heard about from a family we met at Bandelier.

The neatest thing about this place was a narrow winding canyon which looked like something out of Indiana Jones--800 foot cliffs ten feet apart at the bottom.

 
Mom and Molly thread their way through the canyon; below, a shot straight up a natural groove. Ben wanted to climb it. Dad, the spoilsport, said no.





















And here's Mom taking a picture of Dad taking a picture of Mom taking a picture of Dad. Got it?



Albuquerque had been an important destination for us from the very beginning of the trip. For one thing, Mary has three cousins living there, one of whom she grew up with in Milwaukee. Secondly, one of those cousins was the designated southwest mail drop for assorted Correspondence and Important Papers. (You may have wondered how we handle this practical problem of prolonged travel--a friend in Brunswick sorts the mail and sends on what can't be taken care of by e-mail or a call, as well as a smattering of magazines).

Here are two of the cousins, Dan Cosper and Kathy Salzstein. They explained the relationship to me, but the closest I could come to understanding it is that they have a common great grandfather. Nice people.



Yes, that is snow, but don't panic, we went to the top of Sandia Mountain by aerial tram (below--view from the tram back toward Albuquerque); the temperature in the valley was a comfortable 65.



    The ride is a little pricey ($15 for a round trip), but it's the best view I've found that doesn't involve a lot of climbing. Albuquerque has gone from 85,000 people in about 1960 to 600,000 today, which is pretty typical of the southwest. The problems are traffic and water, with the latter looming as a mega-problem for the whole region.

Saturday night in Albuquerque--one of the games of the women's Sweet Sixteen, the Lady Lobos of New Mexico against the Red Raiders of Texas Tech. Dick Mann, an old friend of Mary's from Milwaukee (not a cousin), had tickets and we all got to enjoy the spectacle. Alas the hometown Lobos lost (they got blown out), but it was still fun to see some really good college basketball. I miss Cindy Blodgett.

This is a bootleg picture, sort of; NCAA rules prohibit flash photography in the arena, so this is no flash, taken while the bouncer ("Event Staff"--have you ever noticed how big those guys are?) was looking the other way. I guess it was OK, but I still felt like James Bond photographing the files with the tiny camera.




And what do you do if you're nine and find yourself in a motel room with twin double beds? Jump from bed to bed, of course.










The next morning, we went to the excellent New Mexico Museum of Natural History. Lot's of neat displays on dinosaurs, geology, and astronomy. Here, Mary caught Molly and I are trying to figure out a computer animation of the planets' orbits.

Cool stuff, as you can see by Molly's expression.
And now, as I mentioned, we're headed back into Arizona, this time to the northeast corner and one of the most extraordinary places in the country, Canyon De Chelly. Don't forget to ask me about the horses.

And by the way, Darell Royall is the legendary former football coach of the University of Texas Longhorns. How legendary? The stadium is now named after him. Two points to Dave Wilby.