The sun comes up and crowns the mountain king.
If by chance you dare to be high up on a mountain
I swear that you can hear the angels sing.”---Merle Haggard
It’s not true that nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning, even though Gina Hawkins has set up her Daybreak Bar & Grill just outside Asheville. Three weeks ago, Captain Travel took you out west to blindingly beautiful Utah and Arizona, where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. This time we move just a snippet east to busy Colorado and enchanting New Mexico, where the elk and the mariachi bands play.
“There are more things in Colorado, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” William Shakespeare said that, or he would have if he’d ever been there. Just outside Grand Junction lies the splendiferous Colorado National Monument, one of the most stunning sheer-walled red rock landscapes in America. Near tiny Montrose is the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, famous for its plunging vertical drops, craggy spires and dark, shadowed walls. In the southwestern part of the state is Mesa Verde National Park, a breathtaking high-desert plateau famous for preserving thousands of Ancestral Puebloan archaeological sites, including over 600 spectacular cliff dwellings. And right smack in the middle of bustling Colorado Springs is the spectacular Garden of the Gods, famous for its towering 300-million-year-old (but who’s counting?) red sandstone formations set against the backdrop of snow-capped Pike’s Peak. And it’s free! But if we have but one short visit to the Centennial State, a mere few days to inspect and be dazzled, we’re first heading straight for this guy:
Rocky Mountain National Park
Located a mere 55 miles from booming Denver, Rocky Mountain N.P. is 415 square miles of sheer glory, filled with 60 mountain peaks over 12,000 feet high, small permanent glaciers, glistening lakes, sprightly waterfalls and assorted wildlife. Unlike other national parks, it even has a trail patrolled by a phantom fisherman named Larry, who appears out of nowhere for brief chats and then disappears into the ethers.
The primary artery through RMNP is the venerable 48-mile Trail Ridge Road (secret identity: U.S. Highway 34), the highest continuously paved highway in the United States, connecting the towns of Estes Park and Grand Lake. Eleven miles of this highway is above the treeline, the elevation near 11,500 feet where the evergreen forests finally tap out. Trail Ridge Road offers thrilling views, plenty of wildlife sightings and spectacular alpine wildflower displays on your way to the Continental Divide,
First time hikers adjusting to the altitude can try the 3.2-mile Emerald Lake via Bear Lake trail with stunning views of Nymph, Dream and Emerald lakes, which offers a lot of bang for your buck. Curiosity seekers looking for Larry can start at the Ouzel Falls Trailhead in the southeast corner of the park. The hike, itself, is a reasonable 5.4 miles out and back, but you’re liable to run into Larry anywhere. A conversational sort, he told us he was from “west of Chicago” and came to Rocky Mountain each year to fish, but he carried no backpack or gear, just a simple fishing rod. In the middle of a chat, Larry is prone to rush off to fish, but then will appear two miles down the road ahead as if by magic, smiling “Howdy, strangers!” All of which might have some rational explanation, even if we can’t figure it out. The kill shot however, is our photographs, which were taken by actual cameras back in the day. When the film was developed, Larry was missing from the prints. The backgrounds were there, and we were there clear as bells, but no Larry. We asked an amiable park ranger about this phenomenon, but he just smiled nervously and said, “There are no answers, only mysteries.”
RMNP’s bedroom community, Estes Park, is as cute a little town as you’re likely to find and home to the infamous Stanley Hotel, world-renowned for its paranormal activity and supposedly Stephen King’s inspiration for his book, The Shining. Visitors frequently report disembodied voices, phantom piano music and doors that open and close of their own volition. Dollars to donuts, Larry has a room on the second floor.
2. Maroon Bells. Seems like every time we picked up one of those outdoorsy magazines featuring The Ten Places You Have To See Before You Vaporize, Maroon Bells was always high on the list, even though we didn’t know a soul who had ever been there. Once, twice, three times a mention is one thing, but it never stopped, so we decided to go take a look.
Maroon Bells is a piddling 10 miles from Aspen, home of the rich and famous, but if you’re poor and unknown there’s always the inexpensive town of Basalt, just 28 miles away. The Bells consist of two iconic adjacent peaks upwards of 14,000 feet, which get their color from iron-rich hematite in the mudstone. The mountains overlook a pristine glacial lake which on a calm morning creates a flawless, mirror-like reflection of the peaks. In Summer, the surrounding valley fills up with lush green meadows, spruce forests and bright bursts of wildflowers. It’s one of those rare places where you can remain in the moment, tear up the afternoon agenda and keep finding more reasons to stay. There is an easy one-mile trail which wraps around the lake and a more challenging 3.6 mile round-trip trail to Crater Lake, which gets you nearer to the rugged twin peaks. Sorry, no phantoms.
Got another day or two? Slide over to Great Sand Dunes National Park, a geological wonderland near Alamosa, famous for the tallest sand dunes in North America, spanning over 30 square miles. The massive, wind-carved dunes soar up to 750 feet against the rugged 14,000-foot peaks of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. You can climb the dunes or rent a specialized sled or board from nearby outfitters and roar down the massive ridges. Siobhan, having neglected to pack her board wax, said she rather not.
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| The basket ride to Sandia Peak. "May I please be excused?" asks nervous passenger. |
Do You Know The Way To Santa Fe?
Maybe you’d like to start in Albuquerque and head north, especially if you can make it for The Big A's annual Mariachi Spectacular in July or the International Balloon Festival in October. For the former, every mariachi that ever there was will gather there for certain because that’s the day the Mexicans have their picnic. It’s worth it just to see the hundreds of mariachi bands in brilliant full regalia playing El Rancho Grande or Cielito Lindo fifty or sixty times. Besides, you can buy Michoacan Brown in the parking lot.
There is also an exciting tramway at the edge of town that will carry you to the top of 10,678-foot Sandia Peak if you are not Siobhan. “I eschew the tramway on the grounds that it is very high and scary,” said she. “And what if the cars bump into one another?” We talked her into it by telling her to close her eyes til the ride was over. At the top, we bought our first oxygen canister ever so we could breathe easy.
Santa Fe, which oozes history, charm and big money is a gem set in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains at an elevation of 7000 feet. “The City Different” is globally renowned for its distinctive Pueblo-style adobe architecture, vibrant arts culture and rich Native American and Hispanic heritage. The state capital boasts over 250 art galleries and major institutions like the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the terrific Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. You might want to visit in early July for the annual International Folk Art Market, a three-day festival which celebrates folk artists and heritage art from around the world. This year’s fandango features 153 master folk artists from 53 countries, so you don’t have to skip over trinket booths, grandma’s jam emporium and all those ladies with the $20 bars of homemade soap.
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| Georgia's place. |
If Georgia’s on your mind, her Ghost Ranch, where she lived for many years is a mere hour’s drive from Santa Fe in Abiquiu, which translates to “wild chokeberry place.” Arthur Peck, one-time editor of Nature magazine, told O’Keeffe in no uncertain terms the setting for the ranch was “the best place in the world” and he’d seen plenty.
The ranch is now a retreat and education center owned by the Presbyterian Church and open to the public for a small fee. Georgia O’Keeffe’s little cottage exists intact, along with her tiny farm and a garden that is still tended. A camera in the garden maintains a 24-hour vigil and the live feed is relayed back to the museum in Santa Fe, so watch the canoodling.
Muddying The Waters
“Are you sure this is the right road. We’re in the middle of nowhere?”---S. Ellison, who asked three times.
A few miles south of Vallecitos, New Mexico, you have a choice. You can head straight for Taos or meander on south to the famed springs of faraway Ojo Caliente, where you’ll never be again. Only a fool wouldn’t turn. As always, the best of hot springs pop up in the most unlikely places and often the hardest to reach. The Hot Eye, which calls itself “this secluded oasis,” is no exception.
Ojo’s legendary waters have been soothing and replenishing body, mind and spirit for thousands of years, the place being one of the oldest health resorts in the United States and the only one with four different sulfur-free healing mineral waters. The accompanying hotel and full-service spa offer a barrage of restorative treatments, daily yoga classes and 11 acres of hiking and biking trails to tickle your fancy. They’ve also got mud. That’s right, mud, but this stuff has “healing properties” and absorbs impurities, exfoliating dead skin cells as it dries. The mud is immersed in Ojo’s magic waters, which are uniquely rich in Arsenic, Lithia, Soda and Iron.
Siobhan deigned to try the mud, which the management called “a special pore-purifying mineral-rich clay.” Bathers slathered the clay to their bodies and often their faces, then sat or lay on rocks and benches until the mud began to crack in the desert sun, before rinsing off in the warm mud pool or an outdoor shower. Fellow bathers told us tales of remarkable, life-changing skin replenishment and occasional religious conversion. One enthusiastic Filipino lady spoke of a ritual in Nueva Ecija where the believers gather before dawn, completely coat their bodies in mud from local rice fields and make masks out of dried banana leaves, which sounds suspiciously like a Georgia Bulldog pep rally to us,
A few males, all non-partakers, cruised the basking benches, eyeballing their muddy prey. One grandpa, overwhelmed by clay fumes, told a grandma she looked hot. Siobhan raised an eyebrow and looked at me. I assured her she looked hot, too, but all things considered I could wait until she hit the mud relief pool. Sometimes I look back and regret my hasty decision.
The Place Of Red Willows
….or so the Tewa people called Taos. Their descendants are still there, many of them living in one of six northeastern New Mexico pueblos, including the most famous one about a mile north of Taos which is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the oldest inhabited communities in the United States. Taos Pueblo offers a fascinating, uncommercialized glimpse into Native American heritage. Residents still live there without running water or electricity in order to preserve their ancient traditions. Visitors who are enured to theme parks should understand they are walking through an active residential neighborhood, not an amusement village, and taking photographs of people or approaching private homes might earn a flaming arrow through your hat, or at least a frown. Guided tours are not only available but highly recommended. Tip: Don’t ask about Tonto. He was a Potawatomi, anyway.
Taos is a legendary arts colony and mountain town with a youthful vibe. Skiers congregate there in Winter and the city is a thriving hub for artists, galleries and museums, while being more affordable than Santa Fe. Just outside Taos to the west sits the famous Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, the fifth-highest suspension bridge in the country, spanning 650 feet over the Rio Grande Rift. The gorge below is an 800 foot deep canyon cut through ancient basalt lava flows and rift sediments. There is a convenient direct-dial phone to the Suicide Hotline on the walkway in the center of the bridge in case you get any ideas.
West of the bridge further out on the mesa is the largest off-grid neighborhood in the world, Earthship Taos, featuring self-sustaining homes designed to completely disconnect from municipal infrastructure. The homes there come in all shapes and sizes, built with recycled materials like dirt-packed tires, cans and glass bottles. Thick earthen walls provide natural heating and cooling, maintaining a steady, comfortable temperature year-round. Energy is exclusively generated via independent solar and wind power. All household water is harvested from rain and snowmelt, filtered and reused in indoor botanical gardens before being treated and utilized in outdoor landscaping.
Again, this is a neighborhood the residents of which are not particularly thrilled to see gawkers marching through their begonias. You can, however, book an overnight stay in an eco-friendly Earthship or arrange a guided tour through the Earthship Biotecture Visitor Center in Taos. It’s definitely worth a visit and fascinating to see a number of homes in the process of being built. If you ever wondered where old tires go to die and be reincarnated, this is definitely the place.
Earthship Taos currently spans 630 acres of high-desert mesa. Over half the land is communal, including a 347-acre greenbelt that will never be built upon. Platted for 130 homes, it currently contains about 90, with a population of roughly 150 residents. Standard family homes commonly range from 1200 to 1500 square feet, but there are luxury models that exceed 5000 square feet. Anyone building there must adhere to strict covenants, zoning and architectural guidelines, but you’d never know it from the riot of shapes, sizes and colors. Many of the buildings look like they were created by ten-year-olds set loose with new-age erector sets.
Tired of sky-high electric bills? Eyes glazing over from passing the same chainstores and urban blight every day? Always wanted a place in the high desert of New Mexico with pristine air and interesting neighbors? Have we got a deal for you!
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| Earthship model home. |
That’s all, folks….
