Southwest Spring 2016-2: Georgia O'Keeffe Country

    Phase one of our trip was over. From time with family and friends in Florida, Marilyn flew to Denver to rendezvous with Doug, who had turned the 1,139-mile drive from home into 2,638 miles, seeking always the meandering blue highways. 

Between Abiquiú & Ghost Ranch.

    We spent four days in Longmont—two extra due to snow—in with Marilyn's niece and husband and their three wonderful children. 

    Now we were in Georgia O'Keeffe Country: Santa Fe, Abiquiú, and Ghost Ranch. Arriving at Santa Fe in late afternoon, we did a brief walking tour to orient ourselves,  particularly to the location of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.     

    First stop the next morning was the museum. Sadly, only a few of O'Keeffe's paintings were on display in one small room. The other eight rooms were being prepared for a new exhibit. The consolation was a free Research Center tour, normally $25, which we opted not to do. I'd visited the museum twenty years ago, but Doug has never been.

Statue in courtyard of Contemporary Indian Art Museum looking across the street to the Spanish contribution, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

    Thoroughly disappointed, we wandered about the town in sunny, though chilly, weather. I walked among the gorgeous fabric art of Lloyd Kiva New, a Cherokee, at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

Fabric art of Lloyd Kiva New.

Fabric art of Lloyd Kiva New.

Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

    Doug bought me several pair of earrings from the First People vendors in the arcade along the plaza.

Marilyn buying earrings.

    One thing we've learned during our trek through the Southwest is that there is much discussion over the proper term for the First Peoples of our country. Preferences are regional between Native American and American Indian, but there seems to be some consensus for preferring First People or individual tribe names above all.
    At the back of Rainbow Man's courtyard Doug just stood and read the plaque that commemorates the Santa Fe office of the Manhattan Project over and over, in awe. It was the closest he had been to one of his heroes, theoretical physicist Richard Feynman. 

Feynman thought outside the box. He jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in Physics in 1965 and correctly pointed to the O ring as the cause of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He  popularized physics through his lectures and books.
    We'd planned a couple of days in Santa Fe, but with no O'Keeffe art to ponder, we were off to Taos, where, against a stiff, cold wind, we managed to get from the car to the office of Taos Valley RV Park . They had a tent site that would hopefully protect us from the wind that night. With the solar panel that GTRV of Sebastopol installed on our roof and our existing water tank, we don't need hook-ups and can usually fit in the less expensive tent sites.

Taos Valley RV Park.

Doug at sheltered campground picnic table.

    We drove around Taos then walked around the plaza, finding one art gallery open. The artist signed a note card of his painting that we purchased. Then we walked down historic LeDoux Street, famous for its art galleries, all of which were closed, as it was already evening.

Along LeDoux Street, Taos.

    LeDoux Street began with the accidental arrival of sketchers Ernest Blumenschein and his friend Bert Phillips in 1898. Blumenschein's home is now a museum.

Gallery on LeDoux Street, Taos.

    The wind had calmed by evening and we enjoyed a glorious sunset.

Sunset, Ranchos de Taos.

    We woke to ice on the windshield the next morning. Warmed by showers and coffee, we drove the short distance to San Francisco de Asis Church, which Ansel Adams photographed and Georgia O'Keeffe painted.

Front of San Francisco de Asis church.

Side of the adobe church.

Back of church, the side artists prefer to paint. 

There were several dilapidated adobe structures on the other side of a low adobe wall from the church.

I loved the turquoise door & corner painting of another nearby adobe.

    The adobe church inspired us to visit O'Keeffe's Abiquiú and Ghost Ranch homes in the Chama River Valley. Heading to Abiquiú, we stopped at the Rio Grande Gorge and walked across the bridge, with its dizzying view of the river 650 feet below. Doug bought me yet more earrings from one of the roadside vendors by the bridge. Did I mention that I'm pampered?
    

Doug on Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.

The Rio Grande is a dizzying 650 feet below the bridge.

Rio Grande River.

    Not far from the Rio Grande Gorge is the Earthship Biotecture autonomous home community and Earthship Academy.

Buildings in Earthship Biotecture community.

Earthship Biotecture buildings.

    In tiny Abiquiú, we found Georgia O'Keeffe's compound in and took a couple of pictures through the gate. There was to be a tour in a short while, but it was already full and was the last of the day.

Georgia O'Keeffe's home, Abiquiú.

    Just up the winding dirt road from the O'Keeffe home is a small church, Penitente Morada.

Penitente Morada in Abiquiú.

Chama Valley were Abiquiú & Ghost Ranch are located.

    From Abiquiú, we drove to nearby Ghost Ranch. We could well see what drew O'Keeffe to the area. We are desert lovers ourselves, and the high desert of northern New Mexico with its vistas, colors, and geologic formations is stunning.

    In the mid-1950s, the owners of Ghost Ranch donated it to the Presbyterian church, which turned it into a retreat. This initially irked O'Keeffe, who had rented the Rancho de los Burros home on the ranch for 20 years and considered it hers—when she arrived unexpectedly one spring and found the house occupied, she demanded to know why someone was in "her" house and demanded the owner sell it to her. He did, along with a few acres. O'Keeffe commented that the acreage was good for sewage but not for a horse. There are no tours of the home.

Chimney Rock on right.

    For their part, the Presbyterians respected their already famous neighbor. She eventually warmed up to them and made sizable donations to the organization.

Ghost Ranch.

    We hiked up to Chimney Rock and from there spotted two home sites that we thought might have been Rancho de los Burros.

Chimney Rock.

Doug photographing tree, trying to capture the sense of O'Keeffe's paintings.

View of Ghost Ranch compound from Chimney Rock trail.

    On our next trip to Santa Fe, we'll not only visit the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum but also take the Landscape Tour at Ghost Ranch. Visitors are taken by bus to the locations where she painted her landscapes, compare what they see to the paintings, and hear stories of O'Keeffe's 50 years at Ghost Ranch.

Pedernal, a butte O'Keeffe painted over and over. 

    It is said that Georgia O'Keeffe commented that God told her if she painted Pedernal often enough it would be hers.

    After our visit to Ghost Ranch, we settled in for the night at the Army Corps of Engineers Riana Campground on Abiquiú Lake. As the campground had just recently opened for the season, we had it nearly to ourselves—for only $6. Again it was a campsite without electricity or water, but the Traverse has all the amenities of home.

View of Abiquiú Lake out back of van.

    From the lake we had a splendid view of nearby Pedernal.

Pedernal at dusk.

    The next morning, we were off to another amazing Southwest adventure: Chaco Canyon.