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.

Taking the high road, Santa Fe to Taos.

Adobe is the kindest thing man can do to the environment. What pleasant harmony. What generosity of human spirit, to meet the aesthetic of the landscape and not try to dominate it.

New Mexico is a revelation.

We admire this architectural intelligence over and over as we

drive out of Santa Fe. Elegant adobe housing developments stretch on through the outskirts.

Even the nasty old cement overpass on the highway has been decorated in designs and hues to soften its presence.

And on we roll, out into a big calm outback vista of low hills which roll into the distance towards a horizon of further rolls of faraway blue hills. There’s not a lot of traffic.

Communities are discreetly tucked into folds and valleys. Desert junipers dot the land.

The landscape becomes more dramatic as we drive northeast.

Sharp-edge cliffs arise, so acutely illuminated in the autumn sun that they are almost super-focused.

There goes a pueblo. It is the Pojoaque Valley with a convenience store and, suddenly, traffic lights and a wee congestion of traffic. There’s mini storage. An American community, however small, can’t live without that. There’s a little township of low adobe office buildings and shops.

There’s a sharp arete beside the town, and an advertisement for Kokoman beer. And a farmer’s market with horse trailers and horses. Heavens, a sign reveals they are Mustangs For Adoption.

Past a bowling centre, a little winery and distillery, a casino, a psychic’s room - and back into the New Mexico landscape.

Pinkish cliffs. Yellow cottonwoods.

Oh, there’s a failed winery. A sad sight with a field of little contorted stalks and a shabby abandoned buildings - the pathos of the desert.

And a rusty little settlement. Humble signs advertising businesses from home - permanent hair removal. Abandoned cars, Rusting junk.

We’re on the Yogi Bhajan Memorial Highway, it seems. The guru of compassion and wisdom. That is nice, albeit unexpected out here.

Especially now we sight a casino billboard. But, ah, look, it is next to a Healing Centre sign.

I love those mad juxtapositions.

Here come the chain businesses - Motel 6, Sonic Burger, Lowes, Taco Bell, Wendy’s, Walmart, Dollar Deals - it’s a long ugly strip of commerce. Porky’s Pool Hall! Sheesh.

The only good thing in sight is the chains and bunches of chilies for sale.

Here’s the Ohkay Casino. It’s a tent-like structure. And prefab buildings and trailers are around the place. Boats for sale and sheds.

What a contrast from the aesthetics we left behind in Santa Fe.

When the road opens back into countryside, we are relieved.

Glorious golden cottonwoods beam up from along the river course.

There’s smoke rising from the distance. We try to perceive smoke signals. Weren’t they a thing once?

Hoarding: Dr Richard Padburg - We treat Everything But Pottymouth.

We swing into a broad valley to find another little community of prefab and portable homes straggling along on side of the road. Plus mini storage, of course. Its nightspot, Club Luna, looks dingy and grotty. Maybe it sparkles by night.

There’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. She is much revered in New Mexico.

This valley goes on and on along the path of the river - and with it, the community of humble homes.

And the cottonwoods just shine and glow in the centre of it all, marking the water course. Ah, it’s called Velarde.

A roadside fruit and vegetable stand, beautifully bedecked with chili bunches is just postcard beautiful. I would love to stop. But we move on and get our first sight of the famous Rio Grande, the river around which all this life has been centred.

It runs green and slow.

But, oh, how the cottonwoods blaze and dazzle in their autumn glory.

Another defunct winery. Oh, that is the most pitiful vineyard I ever saw. Little, shrivelled, stalky dry things trying to cling to guide wire.

Oh, a brewery.

We hum along, along, along.

New Wave Rafting is advertised. The poor Rio Grande doesn't look up to it right now. Rinconada comes along, a crude settlement which offers stone carving classes and windscreen replacement.

Suddenly, the most fantastical cliff formations appear. Sandstone. Spectacular. Big angular rocks.

Damn, we are stuck behind a caravan with a growing daisy chain of cars.

The little Rio Grand trickles along beside us and we cross a rustic little bridge. Rough shacks. But, oh, such imposing vertical cliffs.

The Rio Grande now is on shallow gravel bed with rocks it can rush around on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. It is still not very grand.

But the Rio Grande Gorge is. We descend into it on a sleek winding road. There’s a little river beach and people actually fishing from it. What could they catch in that shallow water? There’s a folksy store at the bottom of the valley offering adventure rafting and coffee. A few shacks and sheer-edge mountains rising around us.

Look at the caps of basalt at the top, says Bruce, the result of relatively recent volcanism. The road leads out into pleasant valley lands where hawks soar, horses graze and horse rides are advertised.

And then the road climbs and winds into more mountain. We are caught in a frenzy of overtaking.

Out the other side and there is a vast flat valley, cut through by this huge gorge. A plateau. Altitude 7000ft, reports Bruce.

Mighty mountains in the distance all around.

Pinion pines look pretty. Not so, the Teepee Factory Outlet.

Here come all the usual signs of habitation. How many times have we passed them.

Mini storage, I chant. This one is actually micro mini.

Gourmet burgers, beer and wine, raft trips, scrub lands and little adobe houses.

Hah. That is more like it. Adobe.

Traffic lights and a rough little town. This is now Route 68, which used to be Route 66.

Sign advertising ski rentals. Buzzard circling above.

The State Police Hospital? A hospital for police?

And a small shopping mall - a Walmart, a flock of pigeons.

We cross the Rio Fernando. Grand name, but it is a dry gutter.

I open the window and hear bird song.

Busy small commerce and lots of adobe now surrounds us and, oh heavens above, a string of the most astonishing political signs I have seen in this great, politically divided country.

These people do not like Donald Trump. One after another hand-painted sign screams from the roadside. Bedecked by balloons no less.

Trump Focus Fear Hate Lies Sex

Trump Godless Religious Phony Hypocrite

Chomsky Immoral To Not Vote for Hillary

This is the high mountain township of Taos. I like it already.