Here we go again and again travel blog

Starting up the Sandia Mountain

We're getting a little too close to this white stuff

The ski area and our turn around point

Not a leaf on the trees yet

 

abanded mining equipment along the road

Thre's coal in them there hills

Historic Madrid Mining Homes

Now cute little lshops

Lunch spot of the day

 

 

Inside the Mine Shaft Tavern

That's a lot of Nacho's

 

The Mining Museum right next to the restaurant

Art everywhere

Men's Shop- and don't you dare move the sign says

Another neat shop

This one needs a little help

Bill found a new guitar to pick

More of Madrid

 

How old is this?

More Art

 

Movie Set for Wild Hogs - Can't you just picture all the...

The front door has posters of the movie

 

More miners homes

Ortiz Mountains

 

Private residence in Cerrillo

Beautiful courtyard

What a neat tree

Cerrillos Church

Inside the courtyard

 

Statues are all carved from wood

 

Tree carved into the statue of St Francis

Scenic? This is where they mine for the famous Cerrillos turquoise

First time we've seen this sign in the US

A stop along the road

 

The Hills of Cerrillos


Yesterday was another perfect day in New Mexico. We have setting up appointments to get work done on our Big Sky but none of them were going to happen yesterday so instead I grabbed our camera and we headed out to tour the Turquoise Trail. The trail is a National Scenic By-Way between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Along the Turquoise Trail, you can explore unique towns that offer restaurants, shops, lodging and tons of art studio/galleries and museums. Prehistoric people made their homes here. Spanish missionaries explored the area and battles were fought over land ownership. Outlaws and Confederate soldiers camped in the area. As you drive through you can just picture it in your mind. It hasn’t changed that much. Kit Carson marched Navajo people along the Trail on their” Long Walk” to incarceration at Fort Sumner.Scenic views are to be seen even today as we follow their path.The Trail starts at Tijeras at the Cibola National Forest Visitors Center. Unfortunately, we missed the cut off for this and did not get to the center. Even worse, it was the last place that had a public restroom for quite some time and we had been drinking coffee all along the drive. We passed thru the town of Cedar Crest and continued along on Hwy 14 to Scandia Park. This is where you turn to go to the Scandia Crest. The Crest is at 10,678 feet and away we went. It is fourteen miles to the Crest. We made it half way at about 7 miles. By this time we were close to 9,000 ft and still had a long way to go. The area we stopped in was near the Ski Resort which of course is closed now. We found a nice picnic area that had restrooms and decided that since we still want to take the tram to the top we should not waste our time driving the rest of the way now. Feeling much more comfortable on the way down we continued on to the neat little town of Madrid. We spent a lot of time in Madrid, starting at the Mine Shaft Tavern where we had a super lunch. Madrid is rich in history that dates back to the 1800’s when they discovered coal. Because of the unique geology of the area, a phenomenon found in only two other mines in the world, hard and soft coal were mined here with the shafts going down as deep as 2,500 ft. The area was booming in it’s heyday supplying coal for the Santa Fe Railroad as well as local and US government users. When coal use declined, the town became a ghost town until the 1970’s when artists and craftspeople made it back into the town it is today. We had a great time walking the entire streets on both sides. It was only a few blocks but was filled with shops of all kinds and one restaurant that became the Movie Set for “Wild Hogs”. The town sells t-shirts and things from the movie but for the life of me, I couldn’t find the DVD. We never did buy this one and I would have loved to get it in Madrid. What a fun town.Up the road a little further we came to the town of Cerrillos. Cerrillos is famous for the turquoise found in the area and was critical to the jewelry and pottery making of the prehistoric. The mining district dates back to 900 AD. Turquoise from here found its way to the crown jewels of Spain. Guess that’s why I couldn’t afford it. One thing I found the most interesting was the Cerrillos Church, the tree across the road from it and the gardens of a private residence that I was able to get pictures of.After leaving Cerrillos, the trail had a lot of scenic pull outs that we took advantage of to get some nice pictures. By now, we had traveled thru the San Pedro Mountains, the Ortiz Mountains, Sandia Mountain and the Cibola National Forest as well as the Hills of Cerrillos. The end of the trail came out at that nice RV Park we stayed at while we were in Santa Fe last week. It took us 102 miles to get to this spot but the return trip on I-25 was less than 60 miles. What a difference a freeway makes. The weather yesterday was another perfect day with lots of sun and the temps in the high 70’s. The clouds that we did have were those big white fluffy ones that you think you can curl up and go to sleep in. The only way it could have been better would be to have Jan and Jeff still with us. I know they would have loved it also.Later………….

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