NEW MEXICO, PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES

and the last spot for the charter, the previously visited narrows/lake lobato





all in all, a pretty good 2 days on the cumbres & toltec, after this we just went on down to chama, thanked the trains magazine staff and railroad crew for a good time, found that at that hour on a sunday there were not many food choices open, so we made do with subway, and were back at the hotel, very tired, and cleaned up at the unusual for a charter time of 9:00 pm, more to come from monday's trip back to albuquerque, where michael and i were on the same flight to bwi, one that did not leave until 3:15 pm, so we did a little bit of tourist hiking enroute

 

so monday 8/27/18, due to the at least for me unusually early 9pm bedtime, coupled with falling asleep quickly due to charter fatigue, both michael and i awoke early, 6am roughly for me, up with no prompting, and since i had gone to bed pretty much flight packed, we hit our usual chama diner for breakfast, a very very good diner by the way, good food, fair prices, open at 6 am promptly, and fast enough service to make the charter time each day. so we were on the road headed south towards santa fe by 7:15 even with lingering over a second cup of coffee. we stopped at ghost ranch in abiquiu, the place georgia okeefe made famous in her western paintings, look up the very interesting history of how she strong armed her way into owning a small piece of property inside the ranch boundaries. since we were there at the guest house at 8:00 when they opened, we had plenty of time, and it was not a hot day yet, we paid the $5.00 day use charge each and took a fairly easy hike towards one of her frequently painted subjects, the aptly named chimney rock.
this is the main ranch buildings area from up on the trail, ghost ranch is a property of the presbyterian church, and is now a retreat and educational center. it was won in early 1928 in a card game by the bum husband of a local woman, she eventually divorced him, and tried to make a go of the ranch, but it was on the financial ropes in 1935 when arthur pack, publisher of nature magazine came with his daughter to visit, she needed a drier climate for health reasons, so he ended up buying the ranch and promoted it in ny society circles, okeefe's husband alfred stieglitz, was a famous ny society photographer, and they were acquaintances of the publisher, she came for a visit and fell in love with the place, and spent every summer there of the rest of her life painting the ranch and surrounding areas. the ranch has many different types of accommodations, bunk houses, hotel rooms, casitas, a campground. a dining hall, i may get back there some day for a stay



the trail with chimney rock, our destination up ahead, but it is closer than it looks in this photo, i traveled very light, a9 body and again, my current favorite lens, the zeiss loxia 21mm f2.8, a light small all manual focus landscape beauty of a lens. and the essential water bottle.



looking down an arroyo type canyon leading out onto the valley where the road to santa fe travels in



michael and i agreed that this was close enough, chimney rock at ghost ranch, the trail did continue on up over a steep ridge and seems to go to the ridge facing the rock formation



looking to the southwest, out to the valley, mid left side of the frame is a piece of the ranch entrance road, not paved



and the end of yet another great trip, it was a very good 5 days in the american southwest. a lot of varied scenery photographed, another interesting road find of a museum, some good tex-mex food. worth the trip