May 12 - Valley of Fires & White Oaks ghost town

We packed up and said goodbye to the rodeo horses on Wednesday morning and headed back south.  As we were heading northwest last week, Brad (my brother) found out he’d been scheduled to work south of Santa Fe (connecting power lines to new wind farms via helicopter because he is a badass and the Coolest Sibling.)  So we decided to double back a bit to meet up with him before continuing north.  Unfortunately, the company’s plans changed and he won’t be out here for w while yet.  We’re bummed we won’t get to see him out here, but there’s plenty more to do in this area, including a couple of Tad & Glenda’s favorites from previous trips.

We drove for about 4 hours and went through a sudden thick fog-fall.  I was napping for all of it, but Mom took this cool photo:

The skies were clear as a bell by the time we reached our destination - Valley of Fires, a huge lava flow in the middle of a desert.  

We were lucky enough to snag a nice site at a Bureau of Land Management campground, which are usually first-come first-serve.  You can’t beat this view!

The lava flowed out of vents several thousands years ago, making it the youngest flow in the continental U.S. (official literature says it’s “considered to be” so there may be some rogue toddler or pre-teen lava flows out there which no one’s stumbled across.)

While Mom & Dad paid the camping fee, I played a round of horseshoes and immediately remember that I suck at horseshoes.

After a snack, we rode out to nearby White Oaks, a former gold-rush boom town and current semi-ghost town. 

Gold was discovered in White Oaks in 1879 and it quickly grew from a small tent settlement of grizzled miners to a full-blown hub of commerce with with an “opera house,” many a saloon, a furniture store, an Italian shoemaker, MULTIPLE dentists, doctors, and lawyers, and its own red-light district.  

The only public buildings that remain are a large store that may have been the furniture store and the schoolhouse, and two beautiful Victorian mansions that are currently inhabited. 

This mansion belonged to the mine superintendent and was the last brick structure built in the town.

 The only operating business, besides a very tiny museum in the schoolhouse, is the No Scum Allowed Saloon, which brings customers from hours away. 

From their website:

 Housed in an 1884 building that was first an attorney’s office, then a print shop for one of the town’s early newspapers, the name comes from one of the “Young Guns” movies where White Oaks was depicted as the home “of 756 Respectable People NO SCUM ALLOWED.” For several years, the bar was run on the honor system: Patrons would fetch the key from under a rock, get a drink, leave their money, and lock up.

Unfortunately, it’s only open Thursday-Saturday.  Wednesdays are for scum like us!

After driving the roads surrounding White Oaks and property window-shopping, we drove through Carrizozo, another once-bustling town, now quite sleepy and not fully revitalized but home to a small artist community.

Back at the campsite, Mom and I made quiche for dinner and we walked the paved trail through the lava flow as the sun lowered.

At first glance, the land and the lava appear to be quite barren, with a  couple scrubby bushes and cacti here near there.  But up close, you’ll see a huge variety of plant life.

 

This long stalk is sotol, which is in the asparagus family.  It had many different uses by the local indigenous people, including diaper padding.  Millennia apart, we are all connected by our need to absorb doo-doo.

Sunset view from the dining table.  Next up - Alamogordo, NM

May 10 & 11 - Meow Wolf & Rail Runner

We had a long travel day and I’m pretty wiped, so I’m gonna keep this brief-ish and combine two days into one post.  First - Meow Wolf!

Meow Wolf is a performance/installation art collective that’s created several interactive art experiences around the country.  The Santa Fe outpost is titled “House of Eternal Return.”  It was AMAZING and I already want to go back.  It’s like a combination of House of Leaves, X-Files, Rick & Morty, and the coolest jungle gym ever.  You can easily have a great time just exploring the labyrinthine fun-house of interactive art, but there’s also a mystery woven into the entire installation that you could spend all day unraveling if you wish.  By sifting through the belongings of the family who lived in the house, and using your phone to scan QRcodes and collect more evidence, you investigate the family’s strange activities and disappearances in the service of a shadowy agency.  The amount of work that went into making all of this work is absolutely mind-boggling!

My phone takes terrible photos in anything besides bright daylight, and I didn’t want to be distracted too much, so here are some official photos I found online:

Honestly those feel like such a pale impression of the real thing- this is definitely something you have to experience for yourself!

Just a few photos I got:

One of many inter-dimensional portals in the house

Our favorite installation was covered in literal trash!

You’ll never want to throw out another bit of junk after seeing this room.  It was so cool.

We spent a little over 3 hours at House of Eternal Return.  There’s a cute cafe that you can take a break at anytime and return to the House.  If you can swing it, I’d recommend making a day of it!

Afterwards we had a late lunch at Tomasita’s, a popular New Mexican restaurant near downtown.  They’re known for their sopapillas, which were deeelicious.  Dad got a beef & bean stuffed sopapilla, Mom had tortilla soup, and I tried menudo, a beef tripe stew that sadly does not include hearty chunks of Ricky Martin.    

Tuesday, May 11 we started the day with shopping at two nearby thrift stores, The Cat & Savers.

The Cat (here) is a nicely curated boutique that benefits area animal shelters and has lots of animal-themed stuff.  Saver is a chain of enormous Goodwill-Meets-Walmart stores.  Mom and I found a few treasures, including some things we’ll be altering later in the trip when we’re in place for long enough to do some sewing.  I’ll hopefully share them then.

Then we headed back downtown to the Santa Fe Rail Depot to catch the Rail Runner to Alburquerque!

The Rail Runner is the commuter rail for the Santa Fe/ABQ area.  It’s not very busy these days, but it makes for an especially peaceful ride and the trains are very well-maintained.  The staff is also super friendly and helpful.

Don’t tell — we didn’t have anyone close to us so we unmasked for a quick photo.  Snitches get stitches!

The route passes several historic pueblo settlements and some old buildings amongst farmland, mesas, and flatlands.  We even saw some wild horses in the rocky area just outside of Santa Fe!

Downtown Albuquerque was pretty deserted, but Central Avenue had some cute cafes and bars that were just starting to reopen, and there’s some cool architecture.

We only had an hour to kill before our return train, so we wandered into a Food Hall and split a Big-Gulp-size horchata and a Detroit-style pizza from a stall called Thicc.  It’s a lot like a Sicilian pie, but the crust is basically just crispy charred cheese.  It was fantastic.

When we got back to the camper, Dad finally updated the door map with three new states - Mississippi, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

Next stop, more New Mexico — which already has a sticker, so really, what’s the point?

 

May 9 - Magical Mystery Miracle Tour

 

We started our first full day in Santa Fe with a stop at Whoo’s Donuts.  I’m not stoned here, just under-caffeinated, but this would be a great choice if you were.  We got a couple Boston Creme Pie ‘nuts, a Blueberry Something or other, and a Chocolate Toffee thing.  All yummy!

Next we headed to Downtown Santa Fe to see the “Miracle Staircase” in the Loretto Chapel.  The nuns who founded it in the 1800s travelled all the way from the Lorettine Mother House in Marion County, KY, where Mom & Dad both grew up.  Sisters of Loretto even taught Glenda in school!  So they had this chapel built once they got there, and there was only a ladder to the upper choir level, which was normal for monks but everyone knows women can’t climb ladders, so they needed a staircase built.  But - a plain ole diagonal staircase would’ve reduced seating capacity too much.  They prayed for nine days for a solution and legend has it that on the ninth day a mysterious carpenter with only a hammer and carpenter’s square, and a pile of mysterious non-indigenous lumber arrived and constructed a spiral staircase with no central support and no nails.  Apparently the miraculous status is questionable since other similar staircases existed in Europe at the time, but it’s pretty amazing that a carpenter of that caliber was just wandering through the desert then.  

Unfortunately you can’t climb the staircase anymore, but it is a lovely piece of work.  Also, fun/scary fact - it didn’t have a banister at first!  That was added by local artisans later.  

One of the stained glass windows, imported from France.  The chapel was designed and built by Real Live Frenchmen and modeled after Sainte Chapelle in Paris.  Oo-la-la! 

Outside, we found an excellent example of Big-Building-Eating-a-Small-Building architecture.  Also, lilacs are in bloom here now and they’re EVERYWHERE!

We stopped in the plaza outside of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, hoping to look inside, but being Sunday, they were only holding mass services and not allowing looky-loos like us inside.  

The grounds were beautiful on their own, though, with lots of these pink blooming trees that we discovered are crabapples.

We also walked the Labyrinth in front of the Cathedral.  

After walk-meditating on world peace and what we wanted for lunch, we ambled into the main square.

Santa Fe is famous for its red & green chiles, and there are huge strands of red ones hanging everywhere you look in this area.

There are lots of high-end art galleries in downtown but the only one with adorable play-fighting doggos (according to my research, at least.)

We drove up to the Santa Fe National Forest to scout some possible campgrounds for later.  The foothills as you leave the city are very scenic.

Afterwards, we headed to the next stop on our Unintentional Tour of Important Catholic Landmarks - El Santuario de Chimayo, in the town of Chimayo about 45 minutes north of Santa Fe.  It’s one of the most important Roman Catholic pilgrimage spots in the US but is also highly recommended as a fascinating piece of NM history even for the non-religious.  I couldn’t even begin to explain the story behind this, so here’s this Atlas Obscura entry for you to read. You won’t regret it.

The approach to the shrine containing the holy dirt is lined with saint’s shrines, many to different regional appearances of Mary, where pilgrims leave rosaries, scapulars, and mementos.

The gates to the main shrine.  Between them and the entrance are the graves of several generations of care-takers.  

There’s no photography allowed inside the main shrine, including the small chamber containing the holy dirt, or the adjoining room filled with photos and mementos left by pilgrims praying for their loved ones as well as crutches left by those who claimed to be healed by the dirt.  There are photos of these spaces online if you’re so inclined.  The carvings and paintings on the chapel walls are amazing, but the most affecting section is absolutely the walls of photos.  It’s overwhelming to put yourself in the shoes of the people who came here to pray for those pictured in them.

Next door is what was once the family chapel of the Santuario’s caretakers, the Medinas.  It’s a shrine to the Holy Infant of Achota, and is now where pilgrims with prayers for children leave photos and mementos, similar to the Santuario, as well as pairs of baby shoes which line the ceiling. As you can imagine, it’s equally, if not more, moving than the memento room in the Santuario.  

Photography isn’t allowed inside this chapel either.  There is genuinely a sacred feeling to this place even if you are not a person of faith, so it doesn’t feel like an unreasonable request at all.

After the Sanctuary, we looked for the gallery and museum of LowLow Medina, a local artist who specializes in themes of Jesus, chiles, and low-riders, painted on canvases or low-rider cars themselves.

I’d read about LowLow on Roadside America, but those unawares would probably spy his display  with his contact info across from the Santuario.  

We found LowLow and his lovely wife Joan set up a couple blocks down the street.  Since the recent partial reopening of businesses in NM, they’ve begun to alternate days between selling handmade soaps, spice blends, jewelry, and crosses, and running tours of LowLow’s gallery and car/motorcycle museum by appointment.  Unfortunately they weren’t doing tours that day, but we had a nice chat with them and I bought a soap bar and some spicy spices.  

It was cool to see one of his car collection “in the wild” all the same.

Before returning to Santa Fe, we scouted some other campgrounds along the Rio Grande del Norte.

And got back in time for another A+ sunset over the rodeo fairgrounds (I took this from the announcer’s tower!)

Next - Meow Wolf!