Turquoise Trail to Santa Fe

On May 30, we drove the “Turquoise Trail” (Highway 14 scenic byway) to Santa Fe. It was a 120 mile round trip with great views of the countryside and Sandia Mountains. The route passes art galleries, jewelry shops, old mines and a few small dusty communities that have nearly reached “ghost town” status, but not quite, thanks to rock hounds, artists, jewelry makers and a few old hippies. One of those towns is Madrid (MAD-rid), which was the site of the recent movie “Wild Hogs”. The owner of the Madrid Gift Emporium told us the movie folks built this diner next to his shop as a movie prop.  If you saw the movie you might recognize it.  They gave the building to him after filming. He liked that.

The small town of Cerrillos had been a center of turquoise (and other) mining for many years.  Today it looks pretty shabby and totally worn out. This is the heart of the "business district."

But the proprietor of the Cerrillos Mining Museum and Petting Zoo is still actively mining and making jewelry. His old building is full of rocks of all kinds and he enjoyed telling his customers all the details of each type of rock, where the mines were located, etc. He specialized in a very pretty light green Cerrillos turquoise from his nearby mines and had some very nice jewelry in addition to lots of rough rocks, geodes, ores, etc.

Unfortunately, the Petting Zoo had little to offer. It had a few chickens, a flock of pigeons and, for $2, one could buy a handful of food to feed the resident llama and two goats. It was tempting, but we passed on that one.

Santa Fe is an amazing city and one of the country’s most intense art communities. At an elevation of 7,000 ft., it’s the highest state capital. It’s also the oldest, celebrating its 400th year.

A little bit of Santa Fe's colorful history is worth noting, but we'll keep it brief.  Santa Fe was established in 1610 with the official name of La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asis. The name was eventually shortened and Santa Fe became the capital of Spain’s province of Nuevo Mexico. In 1821, Mexico won independence from Spain and the Santa Fe Trail was opened, linking the Missouri River to Santa Fe. In 1848, following the Mexican-American War, nearly all of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico were ceded to the United States. New Mexico finally became our 47th state in 1912.

Santa Fe recognized that its heritage and architectural style made it unique. Good city planning and strict development requirements help preserve those assets. We took a city tour and our guide pointed out examples of the two basic styles of architecture that are allowed; the Adobe (pueblo) style and the Territorial style. The adobe style is dominant and incorporates design elements of both Pueblo and Spanish adobe into modern buildings, such as the New Mexico Museum of Art below.  It tends to be smooth with rounded edges while Territorial often has brickwork, particularly along rooflines. Both result in a plaster or stucco appearance and, according to the guide, “The City allows any color of paint, as long as it looks like dirt.”

As in Albuquerque, downtown life in Santa Fe revolves around the Historic Plaza.

Directly across the street is the Palace of the Governors and History Museum. Under the covered porch of the block-long building, artisans from many of the state’s 19 remaining pueblos sell their colorful jewelry and other works of art. These artists are screened by the Museum for quality, authenticity, etc., and have to participate in a sort of lottery to get their spot. It’s very competitive and many of them frown on picture-taking, so we didn't.

We wandered throughout the downtown area, in and out of shops and alleyways, until our feet couldn’t take any more and our minds were a blur of colors and confusion. It was too much. We’ve never seen so much jewelry, pottery and artwork in one place. It was fantastic, but we were soon overwhelmed by it all and had to duck into The Burrito Co. Café for some rest and a Mexican lunch.

Our little trolley bus tour of the city took us through neighborhoods of very attractive homes and streets lined with art galleries.  We've never seen so many galleries, full of every kind of art.  We stopped for a break at a small sculpture garden.  Here are a few of our favorites . . .

This one is called "Long Soldier"

At the end of San Francisco Street is the impressive Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Asissi. It was built in 1887.

The Loretto Chapel is considered the first Gothic style structure built west of the Mississippi.

Even more interesting is Loretto's “miraculous staircase”, a 33 ft. high spiral stairway built by a mysterious carpenter with two 360 degree turns.  As we understood the story, the church didn't have room for a full staircase to its upper level, so they prayed for a solution.  One day, an unknown carpenter showed up, built the stairway and disappeared.  Since nobody knew the guy, they figured it must be a saint who performed that miracle.  The stairway is free-standing, built with wooden pegs and no nails or screws or other traditional means of support.  Pretty amazing, considering it was built 130+ years ago without power tools.

Loretto Chapel’s eight stained glass windows date to the 1870s.

One of the oldest structures in the country is the “Oldest House” in Santa Fe’s original neighborhood, the Barrio de Analco. It was built around 1612.  The original house is on the left side of the photo.  The part with the white paint was added later.

A portion of the exterior plaster wall has been removed to show the underlying adobe construction of the building . . . still in reasonably good shape.

Across the alley from the Oldest House is the Oldest Church. San Miguel Mission was also part of an old Pueblo that dated back to 1100. Pretty interesting.

On our way out of town, we stopped at the Santa Fe Depot, which serves the Rail-Runner train between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. It was interesting to learn that the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad never actually served the city of Santa Fe. It bypassed the city about 17 miles to the south.

Santa Fe is an excellent tourist destination and, although a bit pricey, it seems like a good place to live full time as well. Such notables as Opra Winfrey, Carol Burnett and Ted Danson have homes there and Robert Redford is creating a new Sundance school for film making. It’s a magnet for artists and I’m pretty sure there are more galleries per capita than anywhere else on Earth. It’s much more than we expected and we were glad we took the side trip to spend a day in Santa Fe.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

May 28 was going to be a hot Friday leading into the Memorial Day weekend. We got an early start from Durango and headed south on Hwy. 550 toward Albuquerque.

This was a terrific highway . . . four lanes divided, not much traffic and lots of rocky buttes and scenic mesas to look at. It was nice to see lower gas prices. After gassing up in Utah for as much as $3.20/gal., we were finding prices as low as $2.53/gal. in the Albuquerque area.


We passed through the heart of Albuquerque and continued east for about 15 miles to Hidden Valley RV Resort in Tijeras where we checked in for six nights. Tijeras is a very small town (pop. 474) and we never did find a downtown. At the recommendation of our campground hostess, we went to nearby Cedar Crest for dinner at Ribs BBQ. It was excellent. The dinners were large so we split a combo plate of pulled pork, brisket, ribs, hot links, baked beans and salad. It was very filling . . . no room for dessert.


We drove into Albuquerque on Saturday morning. It’s a fairly low-profile sprawling high desert city of about 450,000 people. The Rio Grande runs through the center and the 10,600 ft. Sandia Mountains provide a scenic backdrop. Looking east are the mountains and there’s nothing but flat desert and an occasional mesa to the west.

We spent half the day in Old Town. It’s obviously the historic center of town and geared for tourism. We soon found that a visit to Old Town involved lots of walking. We wanted to see and admire the old adobe buildings and the brick pathways to small courtyards and alleyways. It also involved browsing through shop after shop filled with Indian pottery, blankets, rugs, silver, turquoise and beautiful jewelry of all kinds. Most of it was very impressive.

Bonnie looked for something to remind her of our visit to Albuquerque and found it in a very nice turquoise and silver pendant.

Pottery came in all sizes, colors, shapes and prices. It came from many of the area’s tribes, pueblos and other local artisans. There was so much to see that it boggled our minds and everything began looking the same. Ron found a nice vase. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t fit in the car and we had to pass it by.

We stopped for lunch and a rest break at the Church Street Café, located behind the San Felipe de Neri Church. Services have been held continuously in this church since it was built in 1706. The original adobe walls are still intact.

The historic plaza is the center and focal point of Old Town. That’s where people gather to talk, relax, watch other people and listen to mariachi music. For us, the large shade trees were a welcome relief from the blazing New Mexico sun.

Albuquerque’s big event is the October International Balloon Fiesta. More than 600 hot air balloons lift off in a spectacular display of color. We couldn’t experience the festival so, after a great breakfast at the Cracker Barrel (our favorite restaurant), we stopped by the International Balloon Museum.  It's pretty spectacular in itself.

The museum has lots of balloon history, photographs, memorabilia and some of the actual vehicles that made lighter-than-air history. Ron was particularly fascinated by the history of blimps and big zeppelins, some of which were nearly three football fields in length. Very interesting museum!