From Taos to Albuquerque

It’s a driving day - and glorious, warm autumn weather, The only thing wrong with it is the altitude. I am sad to leave lovely Taos but glad to leave its thin mountain air.

We pack our home-away-from-home, the olive green Rogue, and head for the hills which, of course, are far-distant

all around us.

Even darling Taos has a horror strip of commerce and car yards en route out of town. Its saving grace is, of course, the adobe architecture which softens the look of everything, even the the local Walmart.

There are Clinton signs all over the place. New Mexico is a Democrat stronghold. Of course. It is full of artists, historians, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

Past the People’s Bakery, the Broken Bottle Grill, the Guadelajara Grill and Car Wash, the jewellery and weaving shop, past the humble outlying settlements, and out into the blue-green vista of the high plain.

With bright, high altitude sun behind them, the clouds are casting huge moving shadows across the land.

The vegetation looks like saltbush. We wonder if it is. Perhaps it is tuftier. It goes on for miles and miles interspersed with small juniper bushes. Mountains look low on the horizon. Blue green plains. Soft blue hills. Bright blue sky with powder puffs of light cumulus. It is beautiful. Serene and deeply pleasing.

There have been many such periods in our travels, finding ourselves in a loveliness of space and nature. That, of course, is one of the points of a road trip - to be there on the ground, immersed in the natural phenomena of the land. To see how it changes and, often, how incredibly swiftly it can make such dramatic changes. Microclimates, altitude, soil, precipitation.

This is New Mexico. This is high plateau desert. Beautiful, beautiful.

We can see the Rio Grande gorge cutting across the plain in the distance. A deep, sheer slice straight into the flat landscape. Even from a distance, it seems dramatic. Once again, we will be following the course of that famous river.

A roadside stand is selling jerky and pinion pine nuts.

The road brings us gradually to the mountains. Volcanic vents and cinder cones, says Bruce.

Basalt lava flows.

The road curves into the mountain revealing a valley of golden cottonwoods tracing the river course. Pinion pines and junipers cover the land. as we curl back into the beautiful Rio Grande gorge.

The river is running quite swiftly today.

No photo could convey the prettiness of the gorge in this lovely light. Rocks and earth, reddish brown and grey, with trees brightly lime and yellow, shrubs dark green, rosy pink earth…so many textures and contours.

The eye devours it hungrily.

We drive past the folds and rolls and water-scoured ridges and scarps of the gorge and out to the plain of tatty little Native American dwellings and the courses of glorious golden cottonwoods strung out like a great chain of beads along the river line.

A Ladies’ Thrift Boutique says a lot about life here.

Perhaps it is not as beautiful as the landscape.

There is a lot of mini storage.

Strange, scruffy habitation.

We came on this road en route to Taos but it looks very different today.

Country and western music plonks away on the car radio.

There’s a cemetery with grave diggers hard at work. A vulture circles above them. It is like a storybook picture.

The road is not too busy today. We skim past the Ohkay Casino with its $5 breakfast buffet. Another stand selling fresh pinion nuts.

Among some commercial buildings, a huge crowd is gathered. They seem to be at a sale of BBQs. This must be Espanola. There’s a traffic light. Of course it is red. We wait.

There are the big-town commercial enterprises, Chili’s , CVS, Walgreens.

Another stand selling pinion nuts along with apples and great bunches of chilis.

To my delight, Bruce pulls over. He loves pinion nuts. We are a bit shocked at the exploitationist price the trader charges us. So is he, I suspect. He thrusts some free apples at us to make up for his highway robbery.

They turn out to be the most beautiful apples I’ve ever eaten.

The pinion nuts, on the other hand, are in their shells and have to be cracked open. No idle nibbling on the odd pinion nut. They stay in their bag.

Off again, past the Boomerang Thrift Store and the Dreamcatcher Cinema.

Billboard: Disability Denied? Helen Lopez. Lawyer.

Billboard: Stop driving without seatbelts or we’ll stop you.

The country music station has lifted its act. Rousing cotton pickin’ ballads. The music has us both tapping bits of the car.

Good grief. There goes the Holy Fire Hebraic Centre. What the..?

Bruce is waxing lyrical about the rock formations.

Sedimentary formations to gasp at, fossiliferous, he declares.

With that, we pass Camel Rock - and it looks just like a camel.

And, to complement it, here comes Camel Rock Casino.

More mountains and we are on the outskirts of Santa Fe.

We pull in to a Panera Bread for lunch - autumn squash soup and salad. They are experts. It is divine.

There’s a huge pack of German tourists in there, headed for Taos.

We are headed for Albuquerque.

Off on the big, wide open road towards the most fantastic mountains.

Speed is 75mph so the Rogue skims along. It is another vast desert plateau.

Breaking Bad territory out there, whispers Bruce conspiratorially.

A sign points to a Mormon Battalion Monument. Hmm

Just a few scruffy houses out here on the plain and, good grief, an abandoned theme park. It is crusty colourful and somehow very sad. What possessed anyone to put that way out here?

The desert goes on, low junipers and grasses. Lots of horses grazing out there. Mustangs.

Bloody hell. Here comes another casino. Who goes to these things? There are so many. Perhaps they are the reason for a lot of the poverty.

Now the landscape becomes more extreme. Grand mesas stand proudly. And there’s the trail of cottonwoods in golden autumn hue showing us that the Rio Grande flows just over there.

Civilization again. A bowling alley. A sculpture gallery. An overpass. A power plant.

A little cemetery nested on the side of a mountain, carefully tended with flowers.

A rail line now running parallel with the road becomes evident as a double decker commuter train whizzes past.

The grand, rugged, mountains now seem very close. They gaze over the valley where some of the fields now are cultivated.

A massive complex of handsome multi-storey buildings on the hillside. Wow.

This is Sandia.

They have nuclear weapons research facilities here, an adjunct of Los Alamos, says Bruce. Big cement barriers appear in the centre of the road. Suddenly this is a serious urban highway.

We are on the outskirts of Albuquerque.

Car yards, hotels, restaurant chains, yes Fudruckers is there. We have yet to brave their burgers.

Factories, traffic. Overpasses painted blue and pink. Nice. But the traffic is not. It is now dense and furious. Cars are cutting in and weaving at high speed.

Yep, it’s the big smoke.

Traffic lights. And, oh, the saddest sign of American city living these days, homeless people waving signs at the intersections.

Hello Albuquerque.