We departed Sky Mountain RV Resort after a relaxing night
of visiting with our camping neighbors from Albuquerque.
A picturesque lake set among the tall pines of
northern New Mexico. It is part of Heron Lake State Park. The lake has been
designated a “quiet lake” where boats operate at no-wake speeds, making it an
excellent location for all types of paddle craft. Lake Heron is a fisherman's
paradise with record-size trout and kokanee salmon. Actually, Heron Lake is a
reservoir.
Written accounts of the town of Tierra Amarilla are
from the Spanish friars in 1776. They described it as suitable for pastoral and
agricultural use. The route taken by the friars from Santa Fe to California
became the Spanish Trail. During the Californian Gold Rush the area became a
staging point for westward fortune seekers. The Tierra Amarilla Grant was
created in 1832 by the Mexican government for Manuel Martinez and settlers from
Abiquiu. The land grant encompassed a more general area than the contemporary
community known as Tierra Amarilla. The grant holders were unable to maintain a
permanent settlement due to "raids by Utes, Navajos and Jicarilla
Apaches" until early in the 1860s.
When Americans took to the road, many states devised
ways to attract motorists off the highway, explore, and invest some time and
money learning about local cultures and landmarks. In 1935, New Mexico—no
stranger to promoting tourism with its history—began installing those signature
big, brown, log-hewn signs to inform travelers about the landscapes and the
people who inhabited them. Official Scenic Historic Markers explain land
formations, public archaeological sites, important buildings, historic travel
routes, places, and events. They mark locations of geologic, cultural,
economic, political, scientific, and artistic significance to New Mexico, the
Southwest, and the nation.
Over the past few decades, as cellphone networks have
grown, thousands of antenna towers designed to look vaguely like trees have
been built across the United States. Although these towers are intended to
camouflage a tower's aesthetic impact on the landscape, they typically do the
opposite. When we drove this road in 2016, there was only one “tree” here now
there is two. Progress!
After the unique cell phone tower trees, look at these
beautiful vistas!
There are several Mauri Andretti curves on this road!
The town of Cebolla was created by a farmer named Carlos
Santistevan. Acting for himself and on behalf of five others, he appealed to
Governor Manuel Armijo in December of 1845, soliciting a grant covering a tract
of vacant agricultural land located between the Town of San Antonio del Rio
Colorado and San Cristoval. Santistevan stated that he and the others were all
poor and landless residents of the Town of Arroyo Hondo and needed the premises
to support their families. The Governor granted them the land and the town of
Cebolla was born.
The Carson National Forest is one of five National
Forests in New Mexico. This National Forest contains some of the finest
mountain scenery in the Southwest. It covers over 1.5 million acres. Elevations
rise from 6,000 feet to 13,161 feet at Wheeler Peak, the highest in New Mexico.
I love the natural beauty that these National Forests provide!
My folks had hundreds of these in their house, when my
brother and I had to clean it out … I never gave any thought to the fact, that
they might still be in use. They used to be atop all electric poles to protect
junctions. When new, the glass was clear, but turned blue with age. But here we
are, driving on US 84 and 64 and bam, we see mile after mile of insulators on poles
and wires. It’s one of those things that makes you go, hmmmm.
We continued to descend, on our drive to Santa Fe.
I love the look of the sandstone cliffs and the dark
green vegetation.
Located among the sandstone cliffs of New Mexico, the
Echo Amphitheater is now known for its unique echoing auditory properties, but
also supposedly carries the stains of Wild West killings. According to legend
the curved stone cliff wall now known as Echo Amphitheater was the site where a
group of Navajo executed a family of settlers. As the story goes, the victims
were brought to the top of the cliff and killed, their blood running down the
cliff wall and permanently staining it. Possibly in response to this legend
another story says that years later a number of Navajo were in turn murdered in
the same spot, once again staining the cliff wall with their draining blood.
Now the natural echoing caused by the site’s geography is often ascribed to the
voices of the unquiet dead.
There seems to be little truth to the tales, but the
colorful sandstone itself may have inspired the myths. Running in red vertical
stripes down the otherwise horizontally stratified cliff wall are streaks of
mineral varnish that resemble blood. This colorful geological feature combined
with its unusual auditory properties no doubt fed the myth associated with the
Echo Amphitheater. Regardless of the legend, the Echo Amphitheater sees a
steady stream of visitors coming to throw their voices off the cliff wall to listen
to them bounce and fade like the voices of the long forgotten dead.
It is here that I found my flower and rock picture,
just for Nancy Ragland!
Have I told you how much I like the sandstone cliffs
and flowers!
Dinosaurs once
walked the soggy wetlands that became the arid high desert of Ghost Ranch.
Millions of years later Navajos and various other tribes roamed the valley. The
Spaniards settled here and then came the cattle rustlers, the wranglers and the
dudes. When the cattle rustlers were hiding their stolen goods in the box
canyon alongside Kitchen Mesa, they discouraged their neighbors from looking
around by spreading the rumor that the land was haunted by evil spirits.
“Rancho de los Brujos” it was called, “Ranch of the Witches,” which naturally
evolved into Ghost Ranch. The turn-off to Ghost Ranch was marked by an animal
skull long before Arthur Pack bought the ranch in 1936. When Georgia O’Keeffe
came looking for the Ranch she was told to watch for the skull on a fence post.
O’Keeffe made a drawing of an ox skull and gave it to Arthur Pack; he promptly
adopted the artwork as the logo for Ghost Ranch.
When Pack gave the Ranch to the Presbyterian Church
they used a sketch of Chimney Rock as a logo. By 1971, partly as a result of
O’Keeffe’s encouragement, the familiar skull design was firmly established as
the official Ghost Ranch logo. For more than fifty-five years Ghost Ranch has
been a national education and retreat center owned by the Presbyterian Church.
At one time in history it had the largest number of employees in Rio Arriba
County. From the beginning Ghost Ranch has been deeply involved in support of
the surrounding communities and committed to the preservation and protection of
the environment. Over 200 classes are offered each year in subjects ranging
from Memoir Writing, Adobe Building and Paleontology to Plein Air Painting and
Yoga. Groups reserve rooms and meeting spaces for their meetings; individuals
and families come for the day or the week to hike, kayak or just to relax. All
people of all ages, races, religions and cultural traditions are welcomed to
Ghost Ranch.
Abiquiu Lake (pronounced Ab-Ba-Que), is the US Army
Corps of Engineers northern most flood control reservoir in the state of New
Mexico. Abiquiu Lake sits peacefully between the rugged Sangre de Cristo and
San Juan Mountain ranges. At an elevation of 6,400 feet, the project rests
comfortably within the Piñon Pine/Juniper life zone, and is possibly the
highest reservoir in the Corps of Engineers. The 2,860 acre project is fed a
diet of cold, clear, mountain water which is diverted from the San Juan
Mountains in south-central Colorado, and piped under the continental divide
into the Rio Chama approximately forty-seven pristine miles upstream from the
project.
Here is the Chama River heading into the valley.
Nothing beats an American Flag flying … I’ll post a
picture of that every blog!
Santa Rosa de Lima was an early 18th-century Spanish
settlement in the Rio Chama valley, near the present-day town of Abiquiu, New
Mexico. By the 1730s Spanish settlers were moving into the Chama River valley,
and by 1744 at least 20 families were living in the present-day Abiquiú area,
where they founded the Plaza de Santa Rosa de Lima. The church was built around
1744, and was in use until the 1930s. Repeated raids by Utes and Comanches
caused the settlement to be abandoned in 1747. In 1750, the Spanish founded a
new settlement at the present site of Abiquiú, about a mile from Santa Rosa de
Lima. Today the site of Santa Rosa de Lima is a ghost town, with substantial
adobe ruins of the church, and mounds where the settlers' adobe houses stood.
The site is private property, belonging to the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
We have noticed that everything around here has the
southwest architectural style … including Family Dollar
We crossed the Rio Grande, known as the Río
Bravo. The river is the fourth longest river system in the United States, at 1,885
miles long. Since 1848, the river has marked the boundary between Mexico and
the United States. Rio del Norte was the most common name for the upper Rio
Grande , the use of the modern English name Rio Grande began with the early
American settlers in south Texas. By the late 19th century, the name Rio Grande
for the entire river, from Colorado to the sea, had become standard in the US. The
Rio Grande was designated as one of the American Heritage Rivers in 1997.
It is
formed by the joining of several streams, just east of the continental divide.
From there, it flows through the San Luis Valley, then south into New Mexico. The
geology that created the 1,800-mile long Rio Grande River, was a
millions-of-years-ago rift, or crack, between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and
the ranges to the west. Volcanic activity filled the crack with lava. About 3
million years ago, water draining from the San Juan Mountains of Colorado began
carving the river that dissects New Mexico and, eventually, the west and
southwest boundary of Texas and the Texas-Mexico border, before emptying into
the Gulf of Mexico.
North of Santa Fe, Route 84&285 travel through the
foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and a string of Eight Northern
Indian Pueblos. Approaching the Tesuque Pueblo, one of New Mexico’s smallest
pueblos, you will do a double-take. Seeing the distinctive Camel Rock, you'll
find yourself turning around to get a closer look. Yep, this roadside oddity
near Pojoaque is a natural attention getter. Pojoaque is the closest town to
several Native America reservations in the area. To describe the Camel Rock … it's
basically a rock that looks like a camel sitting down. There is a giant lower
rock and a large rock which shoots upward forming a neck, which is crowned by a
rock on top, the head.
We skirted around Santa Fe to arrive at Santa Fe Skies
RV Resort, our home for the next 6 nights. I think this is the longest, we have
stayed in one place since we started our Two Lane Adventure in mid-June. Wow,
that says a lot!
We were here in 2016 and I do remember that the sunsets are spectacular.
I remembered correctly!
