Santa Fe and Home

On Tuesday morning, we got up and got going early, on the road before 8 AM.   The drive to Santa Fe was uneventful, and we checked into our usual campground, now called Suenos de Santa Fe.   The manager gave us information on the bus, which leaves from in front of the campground.  It worked very well, dropped us a block from the plaza.

The Cathedral was closed for a funeral, so we walked to the Loretto Chapel, with its famous double spiral staircase, with no center support.   This is sometimes called a miraculous staircase, due to its unique design, and the legends associated with its construction.  Cynthia remembers getting to walk up and down it years ago, because her kindergarten teacher, Sister Margaret Ann, was working in the gift shop.   My uncle Bill, a carpenter and a devout catholic, was very impressed with it.   He gave me an 8 by 10 photo of the stair about 50 years ago, and I still have the photo.










We then went into St. Michael's, the oldest church in the US, dating back to 1610, when it was a chapel for the Spanish soldiers.   In places you can see the original adobe walls.  The bell dated to 1356, so was even older than the chapel.

We then proceeded to the New Mexico statehouse, the Roundhouse, in the shape of the Zia symbol.  We found fine artwork on every wall, from 20th century New Mexico artists.  After viewing the top floor, we took a nice lunch break at Los Jalepenos restaurant.   After lunch, we returned to the capitol, to see even more artwork.   At some point, we hit the art overload line, and decided to leave.

We toured the Cathedral on our way home, famous for "La Conquistadora", a statue of Our Lady brought over from Spain, which survived the Pueblo Rebellion of 1680.  It was built in the French style by Archbishop Lamy, made famous by Willa Cather's book, Death Comes for the Archbishop.   The altar screen has images of eight New World saints, and we worked to identify them, including Katherine Drexall, Peter Claver, Rose of Lima,  and Katheri Tekawitha.  It is often a bit of a puzzle as to which saint is depicted in each image, but there are usually enough hints in the image, for a knowledgeable person to figure it out.

On Wednesday, we hit the art galleries.   We started at Nedra Matteucci, one of the older and better known galleries.  The jewelry expert there was able to show us a sample of Tufa casting, in which a piece of Tufa stone is carved as a mold for casting.   This was discussed in the Turquoise museum, but we had asked at other galleries, and no one knew anything about it.

We proceeded down Canyon Road, dropping into a number of galleries.  Some of the galleries did have interesting work.  When we went into a ceramics gallery, the lady turned on the lights, as we were the first visitor.  We chatted with her at some length.  She suggested that we go to the railyard area, which had interesting galleries.  After lunch at a cafe, we decided to go to the railyard.   The railyard galleries have more contemporary art.  Much of it was too minimalistic for our tastes, including a series of white on white paintings, each with a different pattern of rectangles.  The inflated metal sculpture was fabricated out of flat sheets, and then "inflated" with high pressure to form the shape that you see.

Inflated metal

The photo of the trains contrasts the old and the new.  The new is the "Railrunner", which is a commuter train which goes from south of Albuquerque to Santa Fe.   Our campground in Albuquerque was near a Railrunner station.

On Thursday, we got up early to drive home.  The drive north on I-25 was uneventful, sunny, pleasant, with light winds, and few stops.  We got to Cynthia's house at 2 PM, and I got home before 4 PM.  A good trip, but perhaps more desert and minimalist art than Cynthia would prefer.

Las Cruces and Albuquerque

We got underway before 9 AM on the 10th, heading for Las Cruces, NM.  The trip was less than 400 miles, but took almost ten hours.   The slow trip was the result of a combination of factors; we stopped a lot, but also fought a headwind, and rush hour traffic in El Paso.  The scenery was desert, similar to Big Bend, but less varied.

When we arrived at Chris and Gill's house in Las Cruces, we were able to pull into their side yard and plug in, replenishing our batteries, depleted after a week on generator power.   They took us on a small tour of Las Cruces, and then we had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, La Posta, in a historic building in nearby La Mesilla.

We visited the Museum of Art and the Museum of Nature and Science, next door to each other.  Perhaps the most interesting exhibit was Permian Trackways, with animal and insect tracks from pre-dinosaur times, about 280 million years ago.

Chris cooked us a nice dinner, and we said goodbye, knowing that we would leave early on Sunday.

At 7:30 AM Sunday, we pulled out and headed for Our Lady of Health Catholic Church, to attend the 8 AM Spanish Language mass, on the feast of the baptism of Jesus.   I found it comfortable to be there, kind of like going to church in Mexico.  After mass, I chatted with the lady doing the readings, who explained that some of the people at mass were from Mexico, but many of them were local.  Cynthia thought that many of the people seemed very devout.

After mass, we started our drive north.  Unlike our drive from Big Bend, we started with a full tank of gas, and only stopped once along the way, so we made good time to Albuquerque, arriving at the Isleta Pueblo Casino campground before 2 PM.  We headed over to the Casino to watch the Bronco game, and were pleased that the Broncos won.

On Monday we headed for downtown Albuquerque.  The telephone museum was inexplicably closed, but we wandered around Old Town, visiting shops, and then had a good lunch as the Church St. Cafe, green chili with chicken.   

We had signed up for a 1 PM tour of the Turquoise Museum.  It turned out that we were the only people on the tour.  Our guide was a member of a family with five generations in the turquoise business.  We learned about mines in the US and around the world, types of turquoise, and how turquoise is processed.   We also learned about natural, enhanced, chemically stabilized, and blocked turquoise.  The natural is the best and most expensive.  We thought that our tour was excellent (fabulous, says Cynthia).   The tour was supposed to last 90 minutes, but we asked a lot of questions, so it lasted two hours.  Very enjoyable and educational.  Unfortunately, photos were not allowed.

After the Turquoise Museum, we visited the historic Philip Neri church, on the plaza, stopped by the supermarket, and headed home to the campground.   Tuesday we drive to Santa Fe.

Big Bend National Park

On January 6th, we left Big Bend Ranch State Park, and headed for Rio Grande Village, in Big Bend National Park.   The campground in Rio Grande Village was somewhat confusing, being divided into four zones, with and without generators, and with and without reservations.   After consulting with the campground host, we picked a site where generators were allowed, and it was first come first served.   It was bitterly cold, with a strong wind, so once we got set up we went into the camper and stayed there!  

That night,  Cynthia woke me up to say that the camper was cold;  I had forgotten to open the valve on the spare propane tank.   However, even after the valve was opened, the heater was not producing full output.   In the morning, after some head-scratching, I reset the propane system, by closing and reopening the valve slowly, and got things working normally.   I read somewhere that RVs have everything that a house has, plus everything that a car has, plus things that neither has.   All in all, campers are complex systems, and involve care, feeding, and repairs.

On the 7th, the weather was nicer, and we decided to take a short hike to the Hot Springs.   This was a commercial hot springs in the 1930s, and there were several buildings left from that time.  One can still soak in the 105F water.   The birding was interesting, including a Northern Cardinal, a Black Vulture, a Golden-Fronted Woodpecker, and the spectacular  Vermillion Flycatcher.   I chatted with some of the neighbors in the campground, including some traveling musicians, who had put on an impromptu concert.  We had to run the generator to keep up the battery, due to the cold weather.

Adobe bricks drying in the sun, Boquillas

On the 8th, we headed for Boquillas, Coahuila, Mexico.   Until 9/11, this was a popular day trip, no paperwork needed.  The border was closed until April 2013, when it was reopened, using a remote passport check station.  We hired someone to row us across the river, and also a guide, Martinez.   The town had depended on tourism from the park, so when the border closed, many residents left to find work elsewhere.    Now that the border had reopened, many buildings had fresh paint and new solar systems.   There was also a new health center and kindergarten.   Curiously, there were power lines in Boquillas that led nowhere; we were told that there were at one time plans to provide power to the town from the USA.   We chatted at some length with the friendly owner of the restaurant, who was fixing up the restaurant that his wife's father had built many years before.  

After we got back to the US, we washed our clothes and caught up with email.   There is no cell service here, but there is WIFI at the store.

On the 9th, we took a modest hike to a Rio Grande overlook.  We lounged around the rest of the day.   One amusing thing was the scene outside the store, where people at picnic tables made phone calls using WIFI, in a kind of open-air phone bank.  Cell service was not available in that area.  You learned everyone's business.  We struggled some to find a phone number for Cynthia's cousing Chris, but we finally reached Gill at his work.   We will head for Las Cruces to visit Chris and Gill on Friday the 10th.

Terlingua and Contrabando

On Saturday, we drove South.  We stopped in the Terlingua ghost town, where modest occupied houses are surrounded by stone ruins. The cemetery was quite interesting, a lot like a Mexican cemetary.

After stopping at the Big Bend Ranch State Park visitor center, we got on the river road.  The road parallels the river for fifty miles or so, all the way to Presidio.  It is a twisty up-and-down road, 40 mph or so.  We camped next to the river. It felt a little spooky to be camped with no other campers around, with Mexico just across the river.  A couple of vehicles stopped to look at the river, but that was it.    We were staying in the Grassy Banks campground.  No, there were not really Grassy Banks, mostly Tamarisk.

There was a rapid near our camp, creating a dull roar.  We heard the neighing of horses; we saw the horses on the Mexican side  the morning we left.

On Sunday, we went to Contrabando Creek for a hike.  First, we wandered through the old movie set, used in "The Streets of Laredo" and other movies.  Then we went for a hike along Contrabando Creek.   Contrabando Creek was used by smugglers to move contraband, including liquor and wax, from Mexico to the USA.

Contrabando movie set

The weather and our hike were pleasant; however, we saw no birds, lizards, or animals.  The terrain was rocky and rugged, with fewer different colors than in O'Keefe's New Mexico.  We did see some old mining equipment, and a gate to nowhere, with no fencing on either side.  We went out about two miles and then turned around.

Marfa, Art, Astronomy, and History

Marfa is a curious mix of East Coast Minimalist art and West Texas poverty.   As we were driving to Marfa on January 2nd, we saw a private jet land at the Marfa airport.

Marfa Courthouse

We were going to Marfa to take the Chinati Foundation tour of the installation art on the old army base.   The base was established in 1911 as a cavalry fort, and served as an army base until 1945.  It was also a German prisoner of war camp.    The army base, Fort Russell, was bought by the Dia Foundation, as a place for permanent exhibitions of Minimalist installation art.

Our tour was an all day tour, with a break for lunch.  Unfortunately, photos were not permitted.  We started with Judd's 100 aluminum boxes, spread over two buildings.  Judd's art was considered to be minimalism; I tend to describe it as rectangular.   The next stop was an installation in which a Russian artist portrayed abandoned Lenin-era schoolhouse,number 6.   Then we went to the arena, where the art was primarily the building itself.  Finally we went to town to see crushed car bodies.   Our last stop before lunch was a temporary exhibit, in which an entire building became like a camera body.  There was a lens in the south wall, and the view outside was projected, upside down, on the north wall.

We went to lunch as the very popular Future Shark restaurant, a spinoff of the Food  Shark food truck.    The wait was long, but the food was pretty good.   All steam table food, nothing cooked to order.   We kept seeing old cars around town with Food Shark written on the side.   We were unsuccessful in finding a coffee shop, even after being told by two different people where it was.  We found the street signage in Marfa lacking.

After lunch, we rejoined our tour.   The first part was of a series of buildings, all considered one installation, containing diagonal fluorescent tubes in various colors and arrangements.  We also saw Judd woodcuts, rectangular with lines.   Perhaps the most bizarre exhibit was a room with many small pencil drawings, which looked like various slightly smudged pieces of paper;   Cynthia envisioned the artist laughing at us.   There was also a room of poems, generally involving a lot of repetition, but which I thought were somewhat interesting.  We did not go over for a close look of the kilometer of groupings of concrete boxes....

Overall, we liked the Judd boxes and the Russian schoolhouse.   We were not impressed by our "docent" (tour guide), a young woman who did not tell us very much, mostly leaving us to wander and absorb the installation.  The tour was relatively small, 11 people; the visitors were mostly pretty quiet, perhaps at a loss for anything to say.   Cynthia would not recommend a visit to Marfa unless you are in the area, or a fan of Minimalist art.

After the end of the tour, we headed back to our camper, in Davis Mountains State Park.  I went up to look for birds at the bird feeders, but there were no birds feeding.

On January 3rd, we headed to McDonald Observatory for the guided tour.   We had considered the star watching party, but decided that it would be too cold.  The altitude of the Observatory is 7000 feet.   Our guide was Marc, whose enthusiasm for astronomy engaged young and old.   The focus of the talk in the auditorium was the sun, and he projected live images of the sun, including sunspots and solar prominences.   After the auditorium talk, we drove up to the 107 inch telescope, where we went inside the dome, and he moved the telescope and the dome, to demonstrate the mechanism.   He spent quite a bit of time explaining how the telescope works, and even how the scientists apply for telescope time.   After that we drove over to the new 10 meter telescope, which has about 100 small mirrors, and operates in a completely different manner than the traditional telescope.  Our group enjoyed the tour and our guide very much, and gave him a round of applause at the end.

In the afternoon, we drove to Fort Davis National Park, the best preserved frontier fort.   Many of the buildings have been preserved, and some have been refurbished and equipped with authentic antiques.  The infirmary was especially interesting, including a collection of 1800s medical tools.  Both black and white soldiers were stationed at the fort; the introductory video was narrated by Kareem Abdul-Jabar.     The fort was deactivated in 1891.  A nice touch for visitors was the recorded bugle calls; the park provided a schedule showing what each call meant.  We found the fort interesting and informative.   The entire day was a great success.

Off to the great state of Texas

Off to the great state of Texas

On the 29th of December, Cynthia and I and the two cats headed south in the RV.   Destination, Big Bend, Texas.  Our first night we stayed south of Raton, NM, in the NRA Whittington center.  The campground had a 360 degree view, and visiting deer.

 On the 30th we continued south to Carlsbad New Mexico, and parked in front of my cousin Gemma's house.  We went out to dinner at a local barbeque place.  We enjoyed chatting with her.  She is the only one of her siblings still living in Carlsbad; her mother resides in an assisted living facility.

On the 31st, we ran errands in the morning.  One amusing thing was that the lady selling me propane asked me if I was kin to the family of the same name living in Carlsbad.  When I said that I was, she explained that she was a distant relative.  A small town.  In a surprising coincidence, Gemma's two sisters, Rosemary and Sue, were also in town, so we met for lunch at the Trinity restaurant.  This included their mother Madeline, and her brother Herb.   I had not seen any of them in some years, so it was good to see them.  

After lunch we headed south, to Davis Mountains State Park, where we set up camp as it was getting dark.    I had researched the mass schedule, and learned that there would be mass that evening in nearby Fort Davis.   The church was in excellent condition, after a recent restoration, and was more than 100 years old.    The priest was lively, and from the Philippines.  To our surprise, everyone was invited to a New Years Eve party in the church hall.  We went, and enjoyed a long and informative conversation with Angela and her husband Glen.  We learned that Fort Davis was a don't miss site, and that we should go to both the daytime and the nighttime tours at the McDonald Observatory.   We did not make it to midnight.

On the 1st, we went on a guided hike in the state park, walking the old CCC road to the scenic overlook.  There were about forty people on the hike.   We celebrated the new year at the top, where our ranger provided us with sparkling cider.  The elevation of the park is about 5000 feet.  

In the afternoon, we toured the Indian Lodge, also built by the CCC, and recently restored.  It was quite beautiful, in the Southwest style.