Westward American Road Diary: The High Road to Taos, New Mexico

After breakfast quesadillas, it was off to take the "High Road to Taos," stopping along little villages before reaching the Taos Pueblo.

El Santuario de Nuestro Senor de Esquipulas (the Shrine of Our Lord Esquipulas), known as "El Santuario de Chimayo." Thousands of pilgrims have come here since its construction between 1814-1816. The earth in the anteroom beside the alter is said to have healing powers, and for $2, a small container is yours. Crutches line the exit, and stories of people who have been healed. Believe what you will about the soil, one wonders about the role the mind has over body in healing and the power of prayer.

A cross of pinecone in the courtyard.

The three cultures statue.

A friendly horse. See the crosses along the fence?

I couldn't help be saddened by the fact our country was founded on principles of freedom of religion which our pilgrims sailed across an ocean for, yet a faith was imposed upon others. Just like other basic principles we consider now universal rights (voting and land ownership), it was freedom of religion - for some.

Lunch at Rancho de Chimayo Restaurante, highly recommended in Frommer's. A little touristy but good. The vegetarian plate with a soy cheese enchilada and black bean taco, with sopapillas (recipe here) with honey, and a frozen prickly pear lemonade.

Natillas, a vanilla milk custard pudding with whipped cream and cinnamon. Think rice pudding without the rice.

Admiring the weaving Chimayo is known for. Here a stunning image of the Tree of Life.

The landscape here had a hushed feeling.

Horses enjoying a moment we humans know too little of - peace and quiet.

The small village of Cordova is famed for its wood carvings. We stopped in a little shop of Sabinita Lopez Ortiz admiring these wood carvings. These larger pieces were more than I could afford, so I left with some very small individual birds.

We spent so much time enjoying our leisurely pace, we were short for time and rain soaked at the Taos Pueblo, a community with no electricity or running water. Admission was $10 and I paid the $8 fee to take photos. Some, maybe even most, would consider life here primitive, but there's a beauty too.













Hardly a soul was about, and I'll never forget a woman who waved me and Steve into her home inviting us to take off our rain-drenched coats and warm ourselves by her fire. I could have just about stayed by that cozy fire forever. We saw the kitchen and her living room and it was small but just as fine as a home as I'd ever been in. I think of most American homes (and I include my own in this) and how much stuff we have and how lost we all are without electricity for a few days.

Off to cross the border for more American exploration. Colorado, here we come.

Westward American Road Diary: Santa Fe

The courtyard shines bright at the Museum of New Mexico.

There are just some places you know in your heart you will love even before you laid eyes on it. Santa Fe was one of these for me. I would go back anytime. I loved the earthy scents, the food, the people, the landscape and the artist community whose work celebrate the natural world as a spiritual being. The sacred is everywhere around us.

In the Museum of New Mexico's courtyard, Will Shuster's The Voice of Water mural. Signs in hotels throughout the trip reminded us often of water conservation in modern life, and the awareness of preserving water in the West seems much more in the forefront than here in the East. Shuster, who came to New Mexico in 1920 to seek relief after getting tuberculosis during a gas attack in World War 1, painted other murals here portraying the earth, sky and emergence from the underworld (sipapu), and of daily life of winnowing wheat and pottery making. Honoring Pueblo Indian traditions when these were painted during the Great Depression, I think of what is most sacred during our own hard economic times, and how we should not betray the Earth with bad policy decisions in the false name of economic expansion. Clean water, air, soil and land - these are basic human rights.

The cowgirl room at the Casa Cuma Bed and Breakfast. At $169 plus tax a night (we stayed for two), this was a "splurge" place. We stayed at plenty of $60 a night cornflake breakfast roadside motels on this trip.

What were the lives of these cowgirls like?

Almond-encrusted French Toast in a warm peach sauce. My daily breakfast routine is so rushed, it was nice to savor a delicious start to the day in a beautiful setting with good conversation.

Breakfast quesadillas. Yum!

Prickly pear margarita, $7.50, and cheese enchiladas, Christmas style (half green, half red sauce), made with blue corn tortillas (common in New Mexio), $10.95, at The Shed.

Lemon souffle with raspberry sauce and whipped cream, $4.25, at The Shed. Steve and I went here based on a recommendation of our B&B host, but I recalled as soon as I saw the soufflé that Rachel Ray went here on her $40 a Day show. I love that show and its emphasis on eating great food on a budget.

A path in Bandolier National Monument, about 45 minutes outside of Santa Fe.

I pondered the lives of those who climbed stairs to mysterious dwellings...

...to the Loretto Chapel Staircase, built by a mysterious carpenter after prayer by the nuns. The carpenter left after it was finished and asked for no compensation. Read about the story here.

You'll see sign markers at the end of the Santa Fe Trail, which according to Wikipedia, "was a 19th-century transportation route through central North America that connected Missouri with Santa Fe...Pioneered in 1822 by William Becknell, it served as a vital commercial and military highway until the introduction of the railroad to Santa Fe in 1880. At first an international trade route between the United States and Mexico, it was the 1846 U.S. invasion route of New Mexico during the Mexican–American War."

Jewelry merchants in the main square.

Artwork by the fireplace at the Casa Cuma. I admire people who have the gift of painting.

A postcard from the Georgia O'Keeffe museum (no photos were allowed in the museum, which I like). It's not hard to understand her intense attraction to New Mexico.

Ornaments in a storefront celebrate New Mexico's famous balloons.

On the road to Taos, we spotted a full rainbow.

Westward American Road Diary: Roswell and Carlsbad, New Mexico

Some women are football widows. I am a History Channel Ancient Aliens widow, which is how I came to find myself in Roswell, New Mexico, at the Roswell UFO Museum Research Center. I went along with my true believer for moral support, just like my carnivore other half attends vegan "Thanksliving" dinners and politely eats all the Tofurkey on his plate.

A little history care of the UFO Museum website:

In the summer of 1947, New Mexico rancher W.W. "Mack" Brazel was checking on his sheep after a thunderstorm and came upon a debris field. His neighbors the Proctors told him he might have UFO wreckage or that of a government project, and Bazel reported the incident to Sheriff George Wilcox, who alerted Intelligence Officer, Major Jesse Marcel of the 509 Bomb Group. Days after, the debris site was closed while the wreckage was cleared.

An initial press release stated that the wreckage of a crashed disk had been recovered, to be followed by a second press release claiming that the 509th Bomb Group had mistakenly identified a weather balloon as wreckage of a flying saucer.

In Roswell, Glenn Dennis, a mortician at the Ballard Funeral Home, received calls from the morgue at the air field. The Mortuary Officer needed "small hermetically sealed coffins,and wanted information about how to preserve bodies that had been exposed to the elements for a few days, without contaminating the tissue.

Dennis drove out to the base hospital later that evening where he saw large pieces of wreckage with strange engravings on one of the pieces sticking out of the back of a military ambulance. Upon entering the hospital he started to visit with a nurse he knew, when suddenly he was threatened by military police and forced to leave.

The next day, Dennis met with the nurse. She told him about the bodies and drew pictures of them on a prescription pad. Within a few days she was transferred to England, her whereabouts remain unknown." Read more here.



Are you a believer in alien life? Will the government admit to this life? I believe it may well exist. Could society handle the truth?


Looking at this solar system poster, I considered I hadn't thought much about the solar system at all since grade school, and then it was just to memorize the planets.

Note the UFO street lamps.

Even the Roswell McDonald's is in the spirit. The thing I enjoy about McDonald's when traveling: the restrooms. Sorry McDonald's! If you add a veggie burger, I'll come get one.



Off to the Carlsbad Caverns after lodging at a $60 a night Super 8 with a just-okay continental breakfast.

It was eerie and awe-inspiring walking through here. It just felt otherworldly.

The Hall of Giants.


Ansel Adams photographed the caverns, but was frustrated by the lighting.

The Antiquities Act protected these very caverns.

I kept seeing signs for iced cold cherry cider on the road to the caverns, and had some here. Good...very sweet.

There was bat show at the caverns at dusk, but we were off to our next adventure. After a veggie burger and Carrizozo raspberry cider in the cavern cafeteria, back on the road, stopping at a truck stop for a slice of pecan pie and a cup of joe.

Next stop: dreamy Santa Fe.

Westward American Road Diary: Albuquerque, New Mexico

"Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see the shadow." - Helen Keller

Albuquerque, New Mexico, had a relaxed tone right away. We arrived Saturday evening, and even the Southwestern-decorated airport was inviting. Everyone was just so friendly (even the pets!) Maybe their souls haven't been sucked away by a maddening weekday commute complete with sick bus passengers with coughing attacks, broken down buses and massive overcrowding.

I read about Cinnamon Morning Bed and Breakfast in a borrowed copy of my friend's Frommer's guide, and found a gem. Cozy bed! I love sleeping.

I made fast friends with Casper, who jumped right into my lap. I love that he's a rescue dog, and am an advocate of adopting companion animals.

Chai tea, orange juice and scrambled eggs with Southwestern fixings: salsa with avocado, cheese and quite possibly the best tortilla I've ever eaten. Steve and the other guests partook in the chicken enchilada bake, not suitable for vegetarian me.

Someone looked quite eagerly at my breakfast plate.

This bird display on the sunny, colorful patio pleased the eye and soul.

A church in Old Town.

At a gallery in Old Town. I love the artist community here and throughout New Mexico. Support art!

I wish we would have had more time here, but if you have an alien-obsessed loved one who tries to work in the latest episode of Ancient Aliens into every dinner party conversation, your next stop can only be one place: Roswell.

On the American Road: Finding My Way Home

From modes of transport pioneers took seeking new frontiers (seating for 9 inside this coach in the New Mexico history museum).

To your blogger using modern modes of transport seeking pursuit of leisure time, something our pioneer foremothers new little of. This rental Chevy Aveo was my Southwest carrier.

Trails now to adventure. How different life was just a few hundred years ago.

I've been thinking a lot about letters and diaries of the past, and our modern world of sharing everything in real-time. Do you keep a diary or write letters as a witness of your own times and life? Modern forms of records of our lives like Facebook and twitter lack the permanence diaries and letters do.

I love both real and fictionalized diaries of frontier life. In "These is my Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901," based in part on the life of the author's great-grandmother, Nancy Turner's Sarah wrote in her diary the trials of pioneer living.

After surviving a trail to Arizona witnessing rampant death due to childbirth, sickness, Indian attacks and forces of nature, Sarah writes in her diary entry on February 11, 1882 of train travel,

"I wonder what it is like to travel safe and fast in an iron box away from Indians and cougars."

Far from it. "It is safer from things like snakes on the ground, [Captain Elliot] says, but not from the two legged kind. And there has been train robbery and something called derailments which happens when robbers tear up the tracks just to tip it over and kill the folks and rob gold shipments and payroll and such."

I wonder what those in the future will think of our times and what they would think of our documentations of our lives.

With letters on my mind, I also thought of the letter written by Benjamin Button in the film version of the F. Scott Fitzgerald tale, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

"It is never too late...to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit. Stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules to this thing. You can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that stop you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again."

I saw things on this trip that stopped me all the time. No image can truly capture it. I met people with a different point of view, like hunters. I am proud of who I am, but considered if I have the strength to say, to pick up and live elsewhere in our nation one day when I've always lived in New Jersey. My boyfriend wonders if he can make a living in some of the smaller towns we encountered, but in the northern New Jersey area, the cost of living, in particular taxes, is an oppressive force in our pursuit of the American dream, and overcrowding takes a toll on the quality of life. There are many wonderful things about living here, but I often wonder like the pioneers did, is a better life just across the prairie?

I have great adventures each year on my vacations, but I am back to my daily life, which means harried commutes on a bus, a rushed walk to the office, a day in front a computer, walk to the terminal on streets busy with tourists, long wait lines for the bus, back on the bus, come home too tired to enjoy pursuits I long to do, like cooking. Just a box of Trader Joe's tomato soup tonight. I know, cry me a river from what our pioneers endured, but life just seems to be passing by too quickly.

I take solace in the words of Laura Ingalls Wilder's words in Beyond the Prairie: The True Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

"In my life as a writer I have craved long hours of solitude and idle thought but I know the value of ordinary life as well. A life in which the task at hand is plain and hard and unchanging. It was the sort of rooted life that I learned from my father to tolerate but learned from my mother to cherish. A life that is full not because of the places you've been or the miles you have traveled but because you have stayed who you are, have coaxed something of value from the unforgiving Earth and have passed each day in harmony with those you love."

As mentioned before, I've discovered the Little House books this year, and in Beyond the Prairie, a thoughtful two-part film I watched from the library, I've connected to some of what I love about them with what Laura said,

"More than anything else my books have been about home, about a dream of home that all of us share."

The definition of home to me is wide ranging, and is not just four walls. It's family and friends, the dog, the familiar ones who know my name at the library, farms, and favorite thrift shops. The foods, the scents, the books. I've been to grand parks abroad, but none can hold a candle to a Sunday at a local park with the family dog. I love my adventures, but I love coming home.

One Year Older, and Grateful For It

Greetings readers. I'm back from my two week plus journey around the American Southwest, and have been sorting through photos to share with you. I had an amazing time. I also had a birthday this week - my 36th.

I love celebrating birthdays, and am grateful for another year granted. I always go back to one of my favorite sentiments on aging in the film P.S. I Love You expressed by Harry Connick Jr.'s character,

"We're so arrogant, aren't we? We're so afraid to age. We do everything we can to prevent it. But we don't realize what a privilege it is to grow old."

I always take the day off from work. I had a great meal with my sweetheart and family at The Kitchen in Englewood, New Jersey. It was almost as exciting as Dorothy's birthday celebration on the Golden Girls at Mr. Ha Ha's Hot Dog Hacienda, which I'd love if they served Tofu Ha Ha Dogs! Now these ladies make aging look fun!

Being the history loving nerd I am (I actually think "nerd" is a compliment!), I looked up the history of the Happy Birthday song. Do you know it's the most recognized song in the English language? Read more about that here.

Posts coming soon on my Southwest journey, including Santa Fe, the Taos Pueblo, the Utah state parks and the Grand Canyon.

Warmly,
Catherine