While the Great Sand Dunes are a bizarre natural phenomenon, Bishop Castle is an artificial one. The castle is gorgeous and a masterpiece of time and energy in the truest for of the word. It’s the life work of Jim Bishop and those who help him, but there’s more to it than that. The first and …
We drove through Taos after Tent Rocks and were so enraptured by the Pueblo tour there that we hardly took any photos. Oops. Suffice to say, it’s an extremely interesting tour and well worth the stop. Taos the town itself is pretty neat, too, but we didn’t do anything but tour the pueblo. It’s still …
After imagining ourselves living in ancient public housing blocks, it was time to recoup, do laundry, and talk to a mechanic about a small coolant leak in the Westy, so we reserved an AirBnb South of Sante Fe for a couple of days. It also gave us a chance to check out a city beloved …
After taking in arguably the ancient world’s most important central hub, our journey took us East, into the Valles Caldera on our way to Santa Fe. We planned our route through the city of Jemez Springs to have us pass by a wonderful looking hot springs, only to find all the picnic spots and everything …
Thoroughly impressed by what the ancient Pueblo Indians created, we headed towards the more well-known ancestral cultural home, Chaco Canyon. This was high on our list of places to visit, but boy was the road out there ever wretched. Not as bad as Hole-in-the-rock road, but it’s miles and miles of road that slowly deteriorates. …
After the immersive and engaging Mersa Verde, it was time for us to revisit New Mexico, as we still had Santa Fe and Taos marked on the map. Our path South brought us to a small ruins I had never heard of, but proved to be an exceptional stop. Another ancient home of the Pueblo …
Thoroughly stunned by the ship, our next stop took us further Northeast into Colorado and the town of Cortez. The town is so popular as a base of operations that it was rather hard to find a place to stay, but that might have been compounded by the wildfires in the region that were causing …
With one of the regions oldest Navajo dwellings fresh in our minds, we headed Northeast towards the Four Corners. I had been to the Four Corners monument as a kid and it’s cartographically neat, but the more we talked about it, the more it was just lines on paper, when what we wanted to see …
A long-time home for the Navajo, Canyon de Chelly still houses several Navajo people. Oddly enough, Chelly means “canyon”, so Canyon de Chelly translates to something like Canyon of a canyon. But it’s an odd place, seeing as how the US government operates this land inside the Navajo nation, which itself is inside the US, …
After possibly one of my favorite nights camping under the stars, we continued South towards Monument Valley. The road took us through a town called Mexican Hat, which we both found amusing, until we passed through town and saw exactly what they meant. The roads in the area are straight and the land flat enough …