I made it, 10 months later

Where did I made it to? Ojito Wilderness! I wrote about it in this blog last May and made it a priority.

I picked this season to avoid the heat one can find there, and timing was perfect! It is as gorgeous as I hoped. You are alone in this vast territory surrounded by silence, beauty, and peace. It seems in the middle of nowhere but it's very close to Zia Pueblo whose land surrounds the Wilderness. The area with the best rock formations and colors is not far from the winding road, the only one through the Wilderness, and an easy walk, but it feels you are in another world. The sun was shining and a cool wind made everything just perfect.

I was with my oldest New Mexico friend who introduced me to the secrets and beauty of this state. I was in heaven. We haven't traveled together for quite some time, life kept us too busy. As we began our road trip we both felt as if we never stopped traveling together. Back to the old days, it was so nice.

Not much to do in the evening in that area so we decided to visit a local winery,

Ponderosa Winery

taste their wines and buy some bottles. One helped us go through the late evening, after a good hamburger at Los Ojos Restaurant&Saloon. No other choice anyway! We also checked-out a couple of new-ish B&Bs in Jemez Springs, both a great and unexpected surprise, worth the trip.

For breakfast we decided that the Cuban Cafe in Cuba was worth the drive. I love that place, very firendly people, good family New Mexican food.

Back on the road for a fantastic off-the beaten track tour. I only found one website about the place I intended to see, unfortunately with bad directions! Never mind, we loved it and we go back with better directions soon.

Dirt roads, small village-like groups of homes and trailers, cows, horses, and ghost towns. I was so excited to have found such a place. After long drives, picture stops, and giggles I suddenly forgot about the world's bad news and realized that I again found MY New Mexico! The reason I moved here and the feeling that this was my home. For sure it's not for forest lovers!

 

It is the particular dry land, dry cholla, the horizon that never ends, shacks that tells the story of a better past, blue skies with amazing white clouds, silence, magnificent rocks that makes my heart beat at a fast pace.This is the place where I feel one with Mother Earth!

Trends, data, forecasts...true or false?

In my business -travel, excursions, road trips and the likes- we try to learn as much as possible about our customers and their tastes, which every other month, according to surveys, seem to change 360 degrees! We learn about growing incoming markets and about the attractions their travelers look for, we compare surveys and strive to interpret the data we diligently read.

I'm confused, to say the least.

The official sources always depict a glamorous future. Others tell you that a country is your must target or that, for instance, luxury travel is the way to go. But wait, this doesn't seem to be true anymore, I just read that coach tours are hot!

Coach tours

OR

Hands-on experiences?

 ????

It's so much fun to read about a city's growing success as the most coveted destination in the world and then see on a different report that in that same city hotel bookings have gone down! Is people spending their nights under the bridges?

Can someone tell me what would he or she do in my place? One answer could be: surf the tide! Alternatively, others may suggest to hire an expert (with a reputation for interpreting the crystal ball) and reward him/her with all my marketing budget. Or, possibly, to put my finger in the air (without forgetting to wetting the specific finger before). Remember the great Woody Guthrie's song? Put your finger in the air, and hold it right up there...Put your finger on your cheek, leave it there a week...Put your finger on your nose, and see if it grows...Put your finger on your ear, and leave it there a year...Put your finger on your finger, leave it there, let it linger....Sorry for the digression!

This is what I did: I stuck to my original business philosophy (and brand positioning, as the marketing gurus call it)  which, after 8 years is still convincing, I think. I call it gut feeling, it never fails you, my word. Sometimes Seven Directions Custom Tours even falls in one of the "travel categories" of the future!

P.S. Next time I will try to explain how to listen to your gut feeling.

The Land of Enchantment and....Mysteries

What the Roswell crash might have been

Pilot Paul Tibbit ready to leave for Japan

Strange figures left centuries ago

Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves at Trinity Site in 1945 at the first nuclear explosion

Quite astonishing what happened in this state!
From UFO to dramatic flights to deliver the first atomic bombs, to secret atomic experiments and ancient figures sculpted on rocks. And this is just the beginning.

There are numerous ghost towns, astronauts training sites, WW2 Army Airfields with their own adventurous stories, spies all over during the Atomic Era, and more.

If you begin a search, as I did, you can't avoid visiting New Mexico and discover what's behind the adobe walls!

Women's worlds

This is quite a topic! But it's going to be short because I want to just focus on three women who happen to belong to the same family, all three incredible artists with their own distinctive style.

They were, and one is, from a pueblo in Northern New Mexico, they shared a passion for following their inspiration and thinking outside the box, far from the boundaries of their times, their culture, and the art world establishment.

The books -three, written by different women- that just recently launched in Santa Fe, are precious in that they each give an insight into the human as well as artist being, all immersed in the history of their respective times.

Can you guess who these extraordinary women are? Let me help you.
Pablita Velarde, her daughter Helen Hardin, and Helen's daughter Margarete Bagshaw.

Pablita Velarde and her father Herman

Helen Hardin

Margarete Bagshaw

Margarete has put an enormous amount of energy into the book project. She convinced other two special women to write a book each, and she herself wrote the third. Shelby Tisdale, who was until a few months ago the director of Santa Fe's Museum of Indian Arts & Culture/Laboratory of Anthropology, is an award winning author and an anthropologist specializing in the arts and cultures of the native people of the American West. She moved to Los Angeles to become the Vice President of Curatorial and Exhibitions at the Autry National Center. We miss her.

The second book is by Kate Nelson, an award winning journalist who found her home in New Mexico 23 years ago. She is the super active Marketing Manager at the New Mexico History Museum/Palace of the Governors.

The crown jewel of the whole project about the extraordinary artists' family, is the recently opened The Pablita Velarde Museum of Indian Women in the arts, in downtown Santa Fe.

Believe me, the books are worth your time and money! Great design too, and lots of pictures!
They open up a cornucopia of information, feelings, anecdotes, lifestyles, dreams, failures and successes, fears, culture clashes, love and death.

Enjoy!

Pueblo Ceremonial. Pablita Velarde

The Women. Helen Hardin

Messages. Margarete Bagshaw

Pause between canyons

The Southwest can be overwhelming.                                                                                                     Particularly if one wants to see it all in, say, 10 days. Each canyon, desert, rock spiral has a life of its own and requires time, concentration, dreams, and much more to then say "I've been there"! Imagine seeing Paris, Kathmandu, Brazzaville, and San Francisco in a week and going home trying to remember something about what you've seen. Kind of hard, right? Same for the Southwest, my friends.

But I'm being digressive. My story today is about finding a meaningful stop among the stunning canyons, without losing the focus on the area you are discovering. Usually, after a canyon, another one follows.





As an example,
between this (Canyonland)





and

                                          this (Monument Valley)

Not if you travel, for instance, from Moab, Utah, and Monument Valley, expanding over Utah and Arizona. There is a jewel that is easily missed. But it's seriously worth a turn off the main road.






This jewel is The Edge of the Cedars Museum. Here one finds an amazing collection of important artifacts excavated in the archaeology rich surrounding area or not very far from there, all belonging to the Ancient Puebloans civilization, once known as Anasazi. Effigy pottery, mugs, ladles and vessels are incredibly beautiful and very well preserved. It's the largest collection of its kind in the whole Four Corners area!

Two pieces caught my eye: almost intact "coverlets" i.e. turkey feathers blankets. Doesn't sound that astonishing? Just figure an Anasazi guy weaving in those days to make such a wonderful and useful piece.
It is hard to take a good picture of these blankets, so I post what I have, sorry!

This is the base on which the feathers were woven around

Around the museum there are some fantastic murals reproducing some of the most famous but hard to get to rock art with immense figure whose message we will never discover.

Not only the Edge of the Cedars has a collection to die for, but is dedicated to preserving and interpreting the prehistoric Ancestral Puebloan presence.

Plan to stay for a long time to read all the fascinating stories and findings about each object. You won't regret it.

It was exciting, OMG!

Every tour I lead offers me something new, something never experienced before. I can't tell you if I like seeing over and over again the places I love more than experiencing something totally new. I'd say both.

This time, thanks to the increasing drought  the float on the Colorado River was cancelled at the last minute for lack of, yes, water! Rocks and sand stuck out of the low river's water, it was so sad. But, this adventure was replaced with a true adventure! If I were alone I would never have gone, my word. But I had to, and I had to show how relaxed I was, hiding terror going through my whole body. I did it, and I'm happy I did.

We boarded three hummers and off onto the nearby rocky mountains, just beside Canyonlands National Park.
I realized there were no roads or trails to speak of. Where were we going to go? On the rocks themselves, of course!

See the firm grip of the driver? He was great, I knew he was reliable (it's his job, after all!) and I decided to trust him and relax. My companions in my hummer were between terrified and excited. We all tried to laugh...ehm...

After every steep climb unfortunately always followed a steep, VERY steep, downhill slope. Once at the top we were all wondering "what's next"...a fall into the Colorado River? But after a couple of these exercises we all relaxed and enjoyed the most incredible views surrounding us.

It wasn't easy at all to take pictures, as you can well imagine. I tried, and here are some examples of my skills!

La Salle Mountains as a backdrop

Charming little cloud!

Finally we took a break and we all got out of our  vehicles. Surprise! We were in a spot that allowed to see the Colorado River! Spectacular!

All the women held hands thinking about Thelma and Louise!

Wondering around on what seemed to us the top of the world...almost

We were both sad and relieved when we saw "land" and knew we made it through a fantastic experience, proud, safe, happy, and willing to do it again.

Rocks speak

That touch of white left by the first snow of the season over Petrified Forest created a special atmosphere, everything was still, silent.

What would that petrified log from the Mesozoic era tell us if it could talk to us? Let's use our fantasy and listen!