Another Santa Fe Adventure

Energized from a good night’s sleep and a mediocre breakfast buffet at an otherwise fairly decent motel (Wingate by Wyndham Pueblo), we grab some Starbucks coffee and a cinnamon roll and take off on a slight detour from our trip to Santa Fe.  Our first destination—the Georgia O’Keeffe visitor’s center in Abiquiu, NM.  

Abiquiu is roughly 50 miles northwest-ish from Santa Fe but is essentially on the way. Our plan was to just have a quick lunch at the visitor’s center before heading to Santa Fe and our Airbnb casita. To our pleasant surprise–this happens occasionally on road trips—just north of Tao, NM, we come across a bridge spanning over a big “crack” in the earth. This “crack” (aka the ‘Rio Grande del Norte National Monument’) reminded us of our visit to the Grand Canyon and indeed, the river that runs at the bottom of the canyon is called the Rio Grande. The area was designated as a national monument in 2013 by President Obama and is characterized by vast plateaus of sage and volcanic remnants. Although we didn’t actually see any, reportedly the area is home to long horned sheep, cougars, bob cats and black bears.  Wikipedia has a good description of the history and geologic makeup of this area. The visitor center is across the bridge on highway 64. It’s a good place to pick up some souvenirs, too!    

The drive from the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument to Abiquiu will take you through some very beautiful and serene parts of New Mexico. Good roads but little in the way of amenities so make sure you’ve filled your tank before leaving Taos. Driving through open range land on narrow blacktop roads isn’t quite as harsh as the early settlers had it but it does give one a sense of how vulnerable we are as “strangers in a strange land”.   

On the journey to the Georgia O’keeffe visitor center we are reminded of her paintings that she painted while living in the area.  Driving through the same landscape that provided O’Keeffe the inspirational source for much of her desert paintings, we see the cliffs, tree lined rivers, distant volcanic peaks and wide expanses of sage brush that with the bright sun create the dramatic contrasts of desert colors that appear in abstraction within her works. 

Now, if you plan a trip to Abiquiu to see O’Keeffe’s home and studio, you should make reservations weeks if not months in advance to avoid disappointment. We did not make reservations ahead of time but luckily were able to book two seats on the bus (that goes out to her studio) for the following day due some extremely good luck. I wouldn’t suggest taking that risk for YOUR visit but we took a chance and were lucky to find an opening. 

So, having successfully booked our visit for tomorrow, we have a bite to eat (FINALLY!) at the visitor center’s café which was a nice finish to a pretty full day in the desert.  Try the trout tacos!!  

Having successfully navigated through the desert, we finally arrive and settle into our small but comfortable casita (aka apartment) and get our bearings for planning our movie going activities which start after one more free day of sightseeing.