New Mexico Trip, Part 6

August 8, Monday. My Karla Winterowd and I took a road trip to Ghost Ranch! I was so excited. Ghost Ranch is near the village of Abiquiu and became known because of the painter Georgie O’Keefe. On the way, we stopped at a road-side taco stand. They had vegetarian tacos! I spotted this great “Saints & Sinners” sign while we were getting gas. I think it was a liquor store, but I can’t remember.

It was a bit of a drive there, but the scenery was beautiful. I think near Abiquiu, we pulled over so I could take some photos of this lovely landscape. Karla had to tend to some gallery business on the phone, so I took lots of pictures, and did a quick sketch.

Once at Ghost Ranch, we went into the welcome center to check it all out, and to find out about the different hiking paths. We chose the easiest one, which was about an hour and a half hike up to Chimney Rock. It was an incredibly beautiful hike. It was also a very hot day, and very high altitude for this Kansas Girl from an elevation of about 600 ft. But we took water with us and took it slow (because I kept stopping to take pictures, and to shoot video). I also put on SPF 70, wore a thin shirt over my tank to protect my shoulders, and wore a cute hat. Karla had on special SPF treated clothes! We were good to go.

I took a bag with a few cameras, my flip video camera, and my little sketch book. I had big ideas of sketching along the way. But, as we soon realized, there was no shade, and it was crazy hot. Too hot and sunny to stop and sketch. So that didn’t happen. But I did get lots and lots of photos. The scenery was so amazing. I felt like we were in a western movie, like True Grit, or something where my secret boyfriend, Viggo Mortensen, would come galloping up on a horse, hand me his canteen, then suck the rattle snack venom out of my leg. Luckily we didn’t see any snakes, or really any wild life. But it still would have been nice for Viggo to join us, rattle snake bite or not.

As we were getting higher and higher up, I told Karla, “You know, if one of us fell over, there’s not much the other could do about it, and our cell phones probably don’t work.” With a straight face, she said “I’d have to leave you here Traci, but I’d come back with help.” We both laughed about that. But I guess, it’s the truth. Neither of us fell, so we didn’t have to test out the solution.

Below is a slide show of the hike for your viewing pleasure.

The photo below is a panoramic shot I took along the way. I took a lot of photos with my iPod touch and used the app AutoStitch to stitch them together. Click on the photo to see a much larger version.

After we hiked back down, we had a nice little lunch that Karla packed for us of fruit, cheese, and yogurt. Drank more water, then hit the road back to Santa Fe. By the time we got back to Karla’s, it was time to pack up and drive back to Albuquerque to pass me back off to Juliana Coles. Sadly, it was the end of my vacation and Juliana was going to take me to the airport in the morning.

In Albuquerque, we met up with Juliana at a Thai restaurant and had a very nice dinner.

That was such a great day, and a great end to a fabulous vacation. But wait! It’s not totally over. There is one more post. You can see the rest of the posts here.