Hello Everyone! First and foremost this week, I want to say how much my heart goes out to those affected by the tornadoes yesterday in New Orleans and across Texas. The Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans suffered enough for a lifetime with Hurricane Katrina and I’m heartbroken by the images coming from there today. I wish them well with their recovery. As for me, I’ve spent most of this week traveling across the Llano Estacado or the “Staked Plains” of northeastern New Mexico. This is not an area that sees a lot of tourism, but there is actually quite a bit to see out here and I’ve been enjoying it. The winds, however, have been blowing hard at me all week, which makes it hard to drive and since no matter which way you turn it never seems to be at your back, it doesn’t help with my gas mileage. When I pulled into Clayton an hour ago though, gas was at $3.70/gallon, the cheapest I’ve seen in over a month! It would have seemed expensive 3 months ago, but for today it brought a smile to my face. I’ve spent a lot of the week dodging suicidal tumbleweeds which wait until the last second and then make a beeline for my undercarriage. The beautiful pronghorns I’ve seen out in the grasslands have made up for it, though. I’ve actually been feeling really good this week and have been enjoying seeing this region of the state. Even though towns are few and far between and the wind makes me feel like I’m captaining a boat instead of driving a van, it’s been a really good week out here.
When I left you last week, I was on my way out to take some photos around Santa Fe, but clouds had moved in and it was a bit gloomy. I tucked into a little bar and met the most cantankerous person I’ve met thus far in New Mexico. Since he was the bartender and owner, it seemed like a good sign to call it an early night and get a good jump on my Thursday.
I hit the gym first thing Thursday morning and came out to find it snowing pretty heavily out. Since I couldn’t take my camera out in the snow, I went for an early lunch at a spot called Horseman’s Haven which my friend Estilla had recommended. When I got there, I double checked my phone to make sure I was in the right place because it was a little plain-looking spot tucked into the corner of a gas station parking lot. I’m sure glad I didn’t judge the book by its cover, because it turned out to be a really great restaurant. I had some chicken adovado, a New Mexican dish of chicken marinated and cooked in red chili, and I also got a side of their famous green chili which was as good as I had been promised (Anthony Bourdain apparently said it would “melt your face off”). It may be the best restaurant I’ve been to thus far in the state.
From there I headed back downtown and went to see the New Mexico History Museum and the Palace of Governors. The museum was pretty good and set out to tell the history of the state from the earliest Paleo-Indians to the modern day. I must admit my ignorance on a lot of the details of this region. Even though the names were all familiar from guiding tours here for many years, I didn’t have a good chronological understanding in my head and this museum really helped with that. I also enjoyed their in-depth look at the Harvey Hotels, an early chain of hotels and restaurants that grew up with the railroad, of which Santa Fe’s own La Fonda was one. I’ve been to La Fonda many times, and El Tovar and the Bright Angel Lodge at Grand Canyon, but I’ve always been interested in the brand, which was also one of the first big tourism operations in the Southwest. After early run-ins with locally hired employees, Fred Harvey decided to hire mostly young, single women - lovingly remembered as the Harvey Girls. In doing so, the Harvey brand may have had more responsibility for populating the region than they intended by bringing single, adventurous women to the Southwest. The Palace of Governors, which is attached to the museum, has been on the plaza in Santa Fe since 1600. It’s been occupied by the Spanish, the Pueblo Indians, Mexico, the United States and even, briefly, the Confederacy. The building has been altered, expanded, contracted, and was even given Victorian flourishes at one point. When you learn all of this, it’s amazing that this adobe building has survived for 400 years. Sadly, there isn’t much to it on the inside except a bunch of whitewashed walls and I wish they would furnish it from its many different periods. It was still interesting to see and I’m glad I went.
It being St. Patrick’s Day, my next stop was Boxcar – a very un-Irish bar, but seemingly the only game in town for the big day. To be fair, they did try and they all worked very hard to make it enjoyable. There was corned beef, Guinness and green beer (blah!) and they brought in some wonderful bagpipe players to entertain the crowd. What I found unfortunate was that it was an entirely seated event, so while I did enjoy a couple of beers and a decent Reuben sandwich, I did it by myself at a table which wasn’t much fun. I think most of the people there were more excited about the New Mexico State – UConn basketball game than St. Paddy’s Day. It was still fun to celebrate, but I decided to call it an early night and headed off pretty early.
I headed to the library first thing on Friday to try and catch up on some work, and then decided I had had enough city-time for the time being. I will be back to both Santa Fe and Albuquerque before I leave the state, so I decided to head on down the highway in the early afternoon. I got on old Route 66 and made my way about a half-hour northeast of Santa Fe to Pecos National Monument, another wonderful New Mexico National Park Site. Pecos was the location of an Indian Pueblo from the early 1300s and the site of a Spanish Mission during Colonial times. This site also interpreted the last Civil War battle in New Mexico which happened at nearby Glorieta Pass. The museum at Pecos was top-notch, with an incredibly well thought-out abbreviated history of the region and some beautiful Pueblo artifacts and dioramas. The Pueblo itself was abandoned in the 1830s and has slowly melted back into the landscape, but you can still walk around and get a feel for what it once was. The ruins of the mission church are there as well, as are two reconstructed kivas which served as ceremonial and communal centers of Pueblo life. It was a very cool place to be and I was there for several hours before hopping on Route 66 and cruising on into Las Vegas. Las Vegas, New Mexico is an awesome little town an hour east of Santa Fe. It has a beautiful, old (but still functional) train station and the remains of Hotel Castaneda which was once a part of Fred Harvey’s empire. I was happy to see a bar and restaurant has opened there and that they are starting some restoration of this previously empty hotel. There are some really cool buildings, signs and murals in downtown Las Vegas as well, and I enjoyed photographing the town as I went (I’m never going to catch up with my photo editing). I also stopped off for a quick drink at the historic Plaza Hotel, which has been featured in several movies filmed in town (most recently No Country for Old Men). It was a busy day, so I was glad to tuck into bed nice and early.
I got up early on Saturday and went straight out to Fort Union National Historic Site which is about a half-hour north of Las Vegas. This fort was built after New Mexico became part of the United States and sits at the main junction of the Santa Fe Trail – the main trade route to the west at the time. It was built to protect settlers making their way west from the local Indians and also served at the biggest supply depot in the west. Three forts have been built on the site, including one which was specifically built to protect their supplies during the Civil War. The Confederates had their eyes on those supplies and what they would mean for their efforts as they set off over Glorieta Pass, only to be pushed back from there all the way to Texas. When the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad made its way west in 1879, it made both Fort Union and the Santa Fe Trail obsolete and the fort would close in 1891. The jail and many of the chimneys are still intact, but most of the adobe buildings are slowly fading back into the landscape. It was a cool place to wander, though, and imagine what life was like in this most busy of western forts. There was also a big group of pronghorn out past the Santa Fe Trail which are just wonderful animals. They are the second fastest land mammal after the cheetah and are most closely related to the giraffe. They wouldn’t let me get too close, but it was really nice to watch them. After lunch, I left the fort and went back to Las Vegas and spent the afternoon catching up on some work and getting some photos edited. Later that afternoon, I headed just a few miles up the road to Montezuma to enjoy a quick soak in the hot springs there. I stopped to take a quick shot of the old Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe’s Montezuma’s Castle Hotel which is now a part of the campus of the United World College. Then I went back downtown and had a delicious prickly pear margarita at the quirky Skillet Restaurant before calling it a night.
I took off early on Sunday as I knew it was going to be quite a busy day. My first stop was in the old Route 66 town of Santa Rosa. I took a few photos of their old nostalgic hotels and restaurants (most of which look as though they’ve seen better days), and then made a beeline for the Blue Hole. The Blue Hole is a wonderful spring-fed pool just outside of town which is a popular tourist attraction, swimming hole and scuba diving site. It is a constant 61° which seemed warm to me (and only me) on a 48° morning. I took a quick and refreshing dip and then got back on the road south and east.
An hour down the road, I pulled into old Fort Sumner to visit the Bosque Redondo Memorial site. The Bosque Redondo was a million acre reservation established in the 1860s for the relocation of the Navajo and Mescalero Apache people. The intention was to move them to this site and teach them to build permanent houses and farming techniques so that they would live more like the Pueblo people and give up their nomadic ways. The results were tragic though, and cost many lives for both tribes. The river there is alkaline and was no good for drinking, even for the animals, nor was it good for farming. The Mescalero Apache left in the middle of the night after a year there, fleeing in all four directions to give them the best chance of escape. The Navajo stayed for several years, eventually negotiating a treaty which would give them the largest reservation in the country. When they left, Fort Sumner, which was built to oversee this failed experiment, was shuttered. The buildings were sold and a small town grew up where the fort had stood. The Commanding Officer’s Quarters were converted into a private home by Pete Maxwell and it was in that home that Billy the Kid was gunned down by Pat Garrett in 1881. He is buried in a nearby cemetery. At some point later, New Mexico established an historic site which told the story of the fort and of the killing of Billy the Kid. In 1990, a group of Navajo high school students visited Fort Sumner and were justifiably upset that there was no mention of the horrors of the time their people had spent at the Bosque Redondo. They wrote a letter which was well received and the state began working with the Navajo and the Mescalero Apache to better interpret all that had happened there in the 1860s. The result is the small but wonderful museum and memorial which is there today that allows both groups to tell their own stories in their own words (and often in their own languages). It is a place to learn and to heal and I appreciated the honesty of it. While I, personally, would stop short of calling the Bosque Redondo a “concentration camp”, I understand the reference. It is an important chapter of our history and one which I’m happy is getting told in a more honest interpretation than it was before 1990.
The Bosque Redondo Memorial
I had a quick lunch in the parking lot there and then got back on the road to the small town of Portalis which is home to Eastern New Mexico University and the wonderful Blackwater Draw Museum. I got there a little over an hour before it closed and was thrilled to get a guided tour by John, a student at the University who was working there. The Blackwater Draw is an important archaeological site for the study of Paleo-Indians in North America. Back in 1929, archaeologists were brought in to examine spearheads (called “Clovis Points” after the nearby town of Clovis, New Mexico) which were found intermixed with bones from Late-Pleistocene mammals like mammoths and dire wolves. This find changed the whole understanding of how long people had been in the new world since those mammals went extinct soon after the last Ice Age. And I’m not talking about a few dozen years, but thousands of years before what previous understandings suggested. It was cool to see some of these Clovis Points and to learn more about those who are called the Clovis People. John helped me get a better understanding of all of this with his tour and I really appreciated it. I was really happy I had made it to all three sites in a day, since the last two are closed on Monday-Wednesday. From there I headed on up to Clovis and stopped into Kelly’s for a beer. I pulled up a seat at the bar and ended up having a long and very enjoyable conversation with Beau and Cathy who were seated next to me. They had just moved to Clovis from their ranch and were going to try out “town-life” for a while. We talked about ranching and music and life on the road and we must have chatted for a good two hours before I decided to head on down the road.
Bad weather in the forecast made me decide to hang out for an extra day in Clovis. I started my day at the Norman and Vi Petty Museum in the basement at the Chamber of Commerce downtown. Norman Petty was a Clovis native who seemed to have a special ear for music from an early age. He and his wife Vi, who was also a talented musician, were two thirds of The Norman Petty Trio which had a few hits in the early 1950s. They brought in enough money for the couple to set up the Norman Petty Recording Studio in Clovis and they recorded songs for several local musicians. Their first big hit came with Buddy Knox’s song Party Doll, but it was really a different Buddy, Buddy Holly, who would bring the “Clovis Sound” to the world. Petty also recorded Bobby Vee, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison and others, but none could match Buddy Holly at the time. I really enjoyed this little museum and it was apparent how much time and effort the town has put into creating and maintaining it. I would have loved to have seen the recording studio as well (which is painstakingly recreated in the museum), but you need to reserve a tour 2 weeks in advance. I did pop out there for a quick peak though and then spent the rest of the afternoon dodging raindrops and editing photos in the library. It was nice to have an afternoon to catch my breath a little bit.
On Tuesday, after the gym, I stopped in at the Foxy Drive-In, a genuine drive-in restaurant which has been in Clovis since 1956 and served Buddy Holly and all of the other musicians who passed through town. The folks working there were friendly and I enjoyed a breakfast burrito and two of their famous taquitas. I took a few more photos around town and then headed off into the wind and made my way to Tucumcari. During the heyday of Route 66, signs for many miles urged travelers to make it to “Tucumcari Tonight”, promising plentiful hotels and restaurants. This is still what you will find there today, some of which is in beautiful repair and some of which has definitely seen better days. Downtown Tucumcari has definitely seen better days, as there is barely an open business to be found. I wandered around for a while and then found myself at the town’s historical museum in the old schoolhouse. The museum contained a wide assortment of bric-a-brac donated by local residents, but it was painstakingly and lovingly arranged and displayed. There were several outbuildings as well, and I found an amazing old Wurlitzer jukebox unlike any I had seen before in one of them. I started chatting with the nice lady who was working there that day who originally hailed from the Scranton, PA area, and we ended up talking for over two hours. It was really a nice conversation, but by the time we wound it up it was getting to be too late to move on. I went out and took some fun pictures along Route 66 and then drove out to the convention center where I spent a quiet and uneventful night.
I was up early this morning so that I could put some miles behind me before the wind woke up. I was reasonably successful in this endeavor and it was nice to be driving without fighting the wind for a change. I popped into Ute Lake State Park for a shower and to fill up my water jugs and then scooted on down the road to the town of Nara Visa. Nara Visa is all but a ghost town and I found it a beautiful and remarkable place to take photos. Started when the railroad came through, it was probably still doing okay in my lifetime. I find it fascinating to wander through towns like that and imagine the happier times when these businesses were just opening and people were smiling up at the newly painted signs and the freshly polished windows. There were some nice churches in town and a few houses and trailers that looked like some people still lived there, but probably not for too much longer. From there, I turned off onto NM402 and made my way north to the town of Amistad which won the Women’s State Basketball Tournament in 1974 and probably hasn’t done much since. It must’ve been quite a party though. There is a beautiful little country church there and a school which dated back to the 1930s. From there I came on into Clayton and into the snow which was unexpected. It’s not going to accumulate, but it was interesting to see. Clayton is a nice little town and I’m looking forward to seeing more of it when I finish up with this newsletter. I’m also going to go out to the state park and check out one of the larger sets of dinosaur footprints in the country. It should be a nice afternoon.
The wind is supposed to die down for a few days as well, which will certainly make traveling a lot easier. Tomorrow I hope to get out to see Capulin Volcano National Monument and the Folsom Site, which is along a similar vein to the Clovis Site, and then head on to Raton. I definitely plan on stopping in Cimarron which was where I first came to New Mexico as a Boy Scout at the Philmont Scout Ranch in the early 1990s. There are a few museums there and an old hotel I want to see and hopefully I can get some hiking in as well. From there, I will head back into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and on into Taos by the weekend. I have lots to see in the region between Taos and Santa Fe, and I expect it to be a fascinating and busy week. I hope you’ll come back next week and see what I get into. If you aren’t already a subscriber, hit the subscribe button so you get my weekly newsletter right to your inbox and never miss out on my adventures. I hear spring is in the air back at home in D.C. and I imagine it is getting close in most of the country. Spring is a great season to get out and travel so find a nice state park, historic site or scenic byway near you and make some plans to get outside. Let me know what you get into and I will do the same in return. Have an amazing week out there and I will see you back here, same time next week. Thanks, as always, for reading.
-Mike
Ira’s Bar in Nara Visa