Hey hey USA - 25th October - a breakdown and an exploration

The house I had rented near Abiquiu was an adobe built small cottage which had been built as a schoolhouse in the 1890's. It had been bought by the owner's great grandfather and been in her family since then. We had decided on Abiquiu because of its Georgia O'Keeffe connection. I had liked her work since going to the large retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern in 2016. As a photographer I also found her relationship with Stieglitz interesting.

The morning dawned sunny if not too warm and we were excited to get out and about. But the van wouldn't start. We phoned the owner, phoned the agency, phoned some sort of mechanical online service but nothing was doing. Eventually the help line brought a mechanic to our door who spent time exploring the van, a manual, and chewing his pen. Many cups of coffee later and after tracing some wiring, he found a switch underneath a skirt on the front of the driver's seat which was a kill switch. Which it had done, very effectively. Anyway $550 dollars later (we did eventually get some of this back) and a modicum of depression we managed to leave the house.

The house was close to the River Chama which runs through Abiquiu and then north west to Lake Abiquiu, a reservoir which was finished in 1963 and the height of the dam raised in 1986. The lake is nearly opposite Ghost Ranch, the house O'Keeffe lived in when she first moved to New Mexico, and is overlooked by Cerro Pedernal, the mountain that so inspired her. We drove out of our house, over the river bridge and on to Highway 84 a road we got to know well.

We drove up a side road which led to the river where it exits the dam on the eastern side of the lake. The cottonwoods looked gorgeous on the banks and reflected onto the water.

The road switchbacked up to the top of the dam.

Cerro Pedernal dropping down towards the lake.

Alan was amused to find some tumbleweed bowling down the road. We were sad not to have seen it before, but apparently it doesn't start tumbling until late autumn when the plant shears off from its base and tumbles to spread its seeds. Clever!