Santa Fe

"Dust bowl" country

72oz steak!

Cadillac Ranch

New Mexico!

650 miles is quite a long drive. Being British, of course, somehow mitigates this, and so Val (against her better judgment, but convinced by my arguments to the contrary) and I decided to drive from Irving, Texas to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a long weekend. 

We left early on Friday, through Wichita Falls and Amarillo into southern New Mexico. Somebody at work had told me we’d be passing through “dust bowl” country, and the terrain was certainly proof of this. At Amarillo, we stopped briefly at the Big Texan Steak House (yes, that’s Val’s face in the picture) (http://www.bigtexan.com/history.htm), home of the 72oz steak. If you can eat it, you get it free. Needless to say, we didn’t even try (we only really stopped so that Val could pick up an Amarillo fridge magnet!). 

Just beyond Amarillo, I pulled the car over to get some photographs of “Cadillac Ranch” (http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/TXAMAcadillac.html) – Val stayed in the car because it was pretty breezy out on the plains. Who knows – in a couple of thousand years, this could be the American Stonehenge (nobody said the druids didn’t have a sense of humour). 

From Amarillo, we continued west on I-40 into New Mexico. Something we hadn’t anticipated was crossing from Central time zone into Mountain – we gained an hour! Instead of following the road to Albuquerque and turning right, we took a “short cut” at Tucumcari, over the mountains. Santa Fe isn’t much further north than Dallas, and it had been hot in Dallas, which was why I told Val not to bother taking warm clothes. Bit of a mistake there, because it was snowing as we got close to Santa Fe – not unreasonable, if I’d done my homework, since we were at about 8,000ft. Fortunately, it warmed up a bit as we descended into Santa Fe (but not so much that we didn’t have to buy warm clothes the next day!). 

We stayed at a hotel in the middle of the “old town”, and went out for a meal that evening. The cuisine choice was mostly “south west” or “nouvelle south west”. We stuck with traditional, and (apart from the fact that Val doesn’t like beans, which come with pretty much everything) it was excellent. Maybe the Margaritas helped. 

A bluegrass band

The following (Saturday) morning, we headed to a small café for breakfast (I had “huevos rancheros”, or “ranch-style eggs”, which are my particular weakness). We’d always wondered what happened to all the hippies from the 60’s. Some grew up, of course, and moved into jobs where they had to wear a suit and tie, commute an hour into work, and use company-supplied Luncheon Vouchers to get lunch at “selected” restaurants (not that I’m bitter); the rest, it seems, moved to New Mexico. After exploring the bijou downtown area, we found a farmers’ market which was much more interesting than the trendy shops. There was an “artisan” bread stall, fruit and vegetable stalls, craft stalls of every description, and numerous spontaneous “buskers”. 

An apologetic musician!

One of the musicians I took a photo of demanded a “donation” first. I gave him a bollocking, explaining that I was disappointed that he should say that (remember telling your children that you were “disappointed” with their behaviour – that’s just about the worst thing you can say to a child). Anyway, it seemed to work – I’d always intended to donate anyway – and he was very apologetic and insisted on having his photo taken with Val. 

Tesuque Pueblo flea market

Cowboy?

It is quite stunning to stand in the middle of Santa Fe, and be able to see a mountainous backdrop that almost completely encircles the city.
From Santa Fe, we headed north to Taos, which is a ski resort in the winter. It’s only about 70 miles, but the views, as always, are wonderful, especially while we followed the river valley. It’s fairly sleepy at this time of year, for which we were grateful. Just north of Santa Fe, we found a native flea market in Tesuque Pueblo (this might be a convenient point at which to explain the difference between an “adobe”, which is a native style house – very distinctive, primitive and square-block architecture – and a “pueblo”, which is a native village). It was so hot that I had to relent and buy a “cowboy hat” to protect my face. 

After checking into the hotel, we drove the “Enchanted Circle”, a circular drive around Taos, and saw our first elk and mountain sheep. When we got back, after inevitably getting lost, we found the Adobe Inn for supper and the mandatory Margarita, where there was live music in the form of a classical Spanish guitarist and singer, and a crazy lady who came in and started sketching them. Of course, I had to start up a conversation, and it took us almost half an hour to extricate ourselves. If it’s possible, Taos is even “hippier” than Santa Fe, but, off season, it’s small, quiet (but not too much so) and very pleasant. 

Elk

Mountain sheep

The Adobe Inn

Desert landscape

The Four Winds Dine

New Mexico landscape

In order to return via a different route, we decided (well, Val would say that it was me who decided, and that it probably wasn’t one of my better decisions) to visit Roswell – the site of numerous alien visitations, and where the aliens seem to have integrated very well with the local population. We went south to Albuquerque, then on past the Rio Salado sand dunes to Socorro. At Socorro we turned left onto a desolate Route 380 that went the whole 160 miles to Roswell. Going this way took us through some stupendous New Mexico desert, through numerous small towns (including Carrizozo, which claimed to be “the crossroads to everywhere” – though it’s not what it used to be), and instilled in me the value of never letting the fuel gauge fall below half-full. At Carrizozo, just after passing through the “Valley of Fires” (http://www.geo.utep.edu/loca/Volcanos/VALLEY.HTML) we stopped for lunch at the Four Winds Diner which seemed to have been lifted directly from a Hollywood movie set. The food was exactly as you’d expect – plain but perfectly edible. The attached “gift shop” sold mostly plastic trash that had probably been gathering dust for years (but, who knows – when you’re a few hundred miles from the nearest Walmart, you probably buy whatever you can get). The roads were empty, endless and absolutely fascinating – at least, until it got to the point when darkness descended and I had to break the news to Val that we still had 300 miles to go. To be fair, she was a trooper, and didn’t hit me once. 

But it was still light when we got to Roswell, and we had to visit the Roswell International UFO Museum and Research Center (http://www.iufomrc.org/). Interestingly, there was a large display on crop circles in England. I tend to scoff at this sort of thing, but, in the back of my mind, I wonder if we won’t all look pretty silly when one day they turn out to be right! To be fair to Roswell, it’s not as tacky as I was expecting – true, they’ve cashed in on their notoriety, with street lamps in the shape of alien heads and other such paraphernalia, but it’s not Blackpool. 

Roswell International UFO Museum

Shortly after leaving Roswell, with over 300 miles to go, it began to get dark. Darkness adds a whole new dimension to the drive, because not only is it bleak, it’s dangerous. But not in the way you think. At dusk, there are deer and all sorts of wildlife who wander the roadways indiscriminately. It’s probably a good idea (and not just for the deer) not to hit a deer in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. Towns are few and far between, and, contrary to the popular belief that America is open 24 hours a day, that only applies to the cities. One-horse towns close early, just like anywhere else, and it’s difficult to get food and gas if you’re not on a major highway. 

We were not well-prepared for misadventure this time. Next time, we will be.