Go West!

I peered through the condensation of the hotel room window at the Motel 76 over the road, my stomach still wrestling manfully with the carnage inflicted upon it the night before at Ruff’s. Although decidedly crisp outside, the day looked like it was going to be yet another superb one, and with some significant driving to attempt to achieve there was little time to be spent reflecting upon the poor dining choices of the previous evening. We breakfasted, packed, dashed across an icy cold car park, and bolted for Santa Fe.

It’s an unusual town, with a still very prevalent Spanish influence – pretty much the bulk of the town, including new structures, is built in Pueblo Revival Style architecture with organic shapes, rounded edges, stucco walls, interior corbelling and exposed beams, external vigas (wooden roofing beams which stick out of the adobe) and earthen colour schemes. It sounds kitsch when spelled out, but it works very well, and gives a degree of homogeneity – in a good way – to the town. After a quick stop at a local Target to procure an urgently needed Bakugan Maximus Drago for Jackson, we found the main drag into the old city, stumbled upon a rare-as park on West San Francisco St, and headed for the plaza.

The plaza, or town square, feels like nothing I’ve experienced in the US before – roads leading to it are narrow and one way, with covered sidewalks and roofing supported on carved, rounded timber posts. The usual and expected array of touristy gimcrack dominated, from steer skulls to strings of chilli’s, Indian art both authentic and opportunistic, right the way up to full size bronzes of bull elk (perfect for the living room), yet the shop fronts had a genuine, rustic feel to them, and the plaza proper is more European in feel than American. I liked it, and it’s slightly gnarly, unpolished feel.

We headed for the Palace of the Governors, a long, low building with a colonnade running its length, under every arch an American Indian on a folding chair, a rug spread before them, selling everything from necklaces and bracelets to paintings, pots and oddments. While Nic was buying a bracelet for Elise I took the opportunity to fire off a few quick, (hopefully) candid shots of the locals and visitors buying nick-nacks, burritos and churros from street vendors, then we headed for the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi one street from the edge of the square, wandered the interior somewhat aimlessly for 15 minutes while Jackson and Elise took turns lighting candles without donating the requisite quarter, before leaving and following the Old Sante Fe Trail for a couple of blocks to the San Miguel Mission, apparently the oldest church in the United States and, unlike the European styled Cathedral Basilica, is built entirely in the traditional adobe style… as would be expected, given its build date of around 1610. I was a little disheartened to see good old American capitalism rear its ugly head, requiring you to pay $2 to go through the gift shop, to get a look at the chapel – if you just walk through the timber doors, a large white screen prevents you from getting a free peek. I’d happily pay a donation, but to be strong-armed and led through a couple of aisles of religious paraphernalia just to see the interior is a bit cheeky.

Our brief time in Santa Fe over, we returned to the car (scoring a desperately needed coffee along the way) and made tracks north, passing through a series of nondescript towns including Hernandez, location of Ansel Adams famous and prosaically named photograph “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico”, arguably the most famous American photograph ever, and one of the most recognized in the world. The human landscape had changed dramatically, adobe buildings torn down and replaced with utilitarian, thoroughly charmless weatherboard houses, but I was astounded to see the photograph that literally put Hernandez on the map doesn’t get a single mention or site marker. If you don’t keep an eye out between mile markers 194 and 195 you’ll miss it. It’s almost a pilgrimage site for landscape photographers, and Hernandez hasn’t seen fit to do a damn thing.

We drove onward and, in time, started to swing to the west, past cottonwood trees, pick-up trucks, front yard car wrecks, satellite dishes and dusty side roads before finally striking south, 30 or so miles shy of Farmington, for Chaco Culture National Historical Park Instead of the originally planned Canyon de Chelly. I’ve no idea whether this was the better choice, to be honest, but it was outstanding – ruins of vast great houses were studded across the valley floor – Hungo Pavi, Pueblo del Arroyo and, perhaps most impressively, Pueblo Bonito. The level of detail still present in the design and execution of the buildings is staggering, more so when you consider the harshness of the landscapes, the extremes to which the Chaco Anasazi went (travelling 40 miles simply to find timber for the Pueblos), and the scale of the structures – Pueblo Bonito alone has around 650 rooms, not including circular kivas, used for religious or ceremonial purposes. As a tall guy, however, living in Pueblo Bonito would be criminally painful – the original residents were obviously either small, supple, or both, with most doorways maybe little more than a metre tall, some not even that. I had to crawl into a store-room, much to the amusement of my kids. Pound for pound they’re the cruelest people I know.

The site was given a forensic going over, liberally photographed and explored, then the same was repeated at Pueblo del Arroyo, literally a stone’s throw away if you were an excellent thrower of stones, where the entire process was repeated while the kids set about destroying one another in a Bakugan v Zooble Battle Royale from the comfort of the car.

Sunset was approaching when we drove the 30 miles or so back up a long, dusty road, overtaking lesser mortals in maroon BMW convertibles and others driving their SUVs as though they’d never taken them off-road before (which was more than likely). We returned to the highway, the endless, unfolding highway, passing townships with water towers like alien walkers from War of the Worlds, catching the last, burning rays of a northwestern New Mexico sunset, and finally arrived at Farmington where the usual process of doing a hot lap of hotels on the outskirts culminated in a night at a Best Western, and was followed by the further ritual of dragging suitcases into hotel rooms, undoing locks, and keeling over in exhaustion.

In this case the evening was livened up by relocating the car to the front of the hotel after seeing some Clockwork Orange-esque droogs, drunken lurching about in the shadows of the hotel, down by the river, their strange, unearthly calls (“Fra-ank! FRA-ANK!”) floating across the parking lot. I’m sure there wouldn’t have been any problems, but I still took the iPod from the car…

Room service of stuffed jalopenos, quesadillas, nachos and a burger  - not all for me, I swear! – culminated in a fitful nights sleep on overstuffed pillows, dreams of Monument Valley running wild in my head.