A Day in Taos

 Today we decided to drive from Santa Fe up to Taos. Taos is known as the home and burial place of Kit Carson but these days is more noted as an artist colony.  Artists began to gather here around 1900 and their successors form the economy of the community today.  The population is only about 5,000.

Right where we parked the car on the plaza there was an amazing rock and mineral shop.  We were both drawn immediately inside.  While their business is to sell things, the shop is almost a museum in the beauty of the rock and mineral specimens and the ways in which they are displayed.

On the other side of the plaza was the drum shop.  There were drums of every size in large numbers.  Again, though they were there to sell, the shop was like a museum itself.

About a mile above the center of town is Taos Pueblo.  This huge Pueblo settlement has been continuously occupied for nearly a thousand.  Unfortunately for us, their closed day is Monday, so, our visit there was cut short. 

Another Santa Fe Day

 Yesterday we spent another beautiful day walking around Santa Fe.  There were two places here where we spent very memorable time.

One was the Georgia O’Keefe Museum.  After her husband, Alfred Stieglitz died, she made New Mexico her permanent home and spent the rest of her life here dying when she was nearly ninety-nine.  The museum here has an abundance of her work beginning when she was a teenage art student through her final Southwestern themed work that grew from her life here.  

Both Trish and I agreed that we like the bold colors of her earlier work more than the almost faded pastels of her later work.

We also had a second visit to the Cathedral of Saint Francis which is located just diagonally across from our hotel.  Besides being quite beautiful the Cathedral is one of the anchor settings of Willa Cather’s Death Comes For The Archbishop, perhaps my favorite of all Cather’s books.  It is the kind of place that is food for the imagination.

We have one more day here and we shall spend it on a little trip outside of town.

In Santa Fe

 Yesterday afternoon we arrived in Santa Fe.  It was a beautiful day, so, after we were checked in to our hotel, La Fonda On The Plaza, (one of my favorite hotels anywhere) Trish and I started out walking.

Our first destination, right behind the hotel, was the Sisters of Loretta Chapel to see the miraculous stairs.  When the chapel was built, starting in 1783, no one seemed to notice one thing missing from the architectural plans until the building was near completion.  The plans failed to include a way to get from the main floor to the choir balcony thirty feet or so up in the rear of the building. The only way the Sisters could get there was by ladder.

They prayed to Saint Joseph for a solution, and, a gray haired man arrived on a donkey volunteering to help.  His only tools were a saw, a square, and a hammer.  From mysteriously obtained wood he built a circular set of 33 stairs which ascended to the choir with no nails and no visible support.  He then disappeared and his identity remains unknown.

The stairs were scary to the Sisters, so, the stair rails seen today were added.  The construction is as mysterious as the carpenter himself.  Many of the Sisters believed it was built by Saint Joseph himself.

Museum of Natural History

 On our last day in Albuquerque, we decided to walk over to the Museum of Natural History.

The museum is laid out as a walk through geological time from the big band to the present.  Since New Mexico is such a treasure trove of archaeological discoveries, the possibilities here are endless.

We loved walking through a volcano from its birthplace far beneath the earth’s surface up to its eruption zone.  There were multitudes of displays ending with a beautiful collection of sea shells.  We don’t have these on Ocracoke!

Sandia Peak Tramway

 Today Trish and I had a great adventure.  We took the Sandia Peak Tramway to the top of 10,300 foot Sandia Peak high above Albuquerque.

Our tram car.  We had about two dozen people on board.

The tram was built in Lucern, Switzerland, and is the longest tramway in the United States.  We traveled more than a vertical mile  in fifteen minutes with spectacular views out over all of Albuquerque and far beyond.

All of Albuquerque spreads out below.

Once at the top, we could also see off the east side as we were right on the crest of a long ridge.  We looked and looked and then had our lunch in the restaurant at the top.

It was 65 degrees at the top, but, as we came back down the temperature rose to 95.  We had a great time doing this.

Old Town Albuquerque

 We are staying is a little casita in Old Town Albuquerque for a few days.  We are just a few steps from the plaza and the center of Old Town.

Our restaurant last night was a work of art in itself.

It is easy to walk everywhere from here.  The old church was founded in 1706.  The present building was built in 1792 and has Adobe walls that are five feet thick.  

Church of San Felipe de Neri

When we went over to the bakery this morning, the children from the Catholic school were all out parading on some sort of little trip.  It was so sweet to watch them and see the care which their teachers accorded them.

School day.

We asked to be able to see inside the church and a lady got the key and opened it up so we could visit.  It is so loved and beautifully cared for.  It was a privilege to visit and know of the long history being here.

The lovely altar area of the church.

National Cowboy Museum

 One of the reasons I wanted to stop in Oklahoma City was to take Trish to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.  This is a huge and marvelous museum on the outskirts of the city that contains everything from paintings to sculpture to dioramas to guns to saddles…and much more.

Ready to go inside.

We could have spent several days with the artwork.  Perhaps our favorite was a Bierstadt painting of a German settlers wagon train.  The light seems to originate from within the painting itself and it seemed that if we stayed around, the sun would actually set.

How did he do that?

We loved the Remington sculpture bronze castings and marveled at the tiny details that still come out through the lost wax casting process.  These were filled with life and motion.

It’s called Cowboys Come to Town for Christmas.

There were saddles that changed from utility to artwork with the exquisite leather tooling and dioramas of full size life on the frontier.  Since my last visit here, there is much more about cowgirls and native peoples in a very appropriate way.

A work of art in leather.

We loved the entire visit and will surely stop here again.