Framedlight

  We were going to fly back to the UK from Denver airport so we planned a slow route from Santa Fé to Denver, through Colorado and the Rockies. But when we got up to leave the Parador on the Friday morning, we found that snow had fallen quite heavily overnight as was evidenced in the car park. We were pleased that we were now in possession of a Ford 4x4 which we felt would do the trick. The route took us back over our well worn path of Highway 84, running north west past Ghost Ranch and the Pedernal  towards a town called Chama. In fact by the time we got up to Abiquiu the snow was disappearing although we could still see it falling on the Pedernal. I stopped to take a picture of the entrance to Gost Ranch as we realised we had not got one Snow was falling on the Padernal - Georgia O'Keeffe's mountain There was lots of colour in the hills as we drove west Chama is only 7 miles from the Colorado border and, according to Wikipedia has a very harsh subarctic continental climate. N

Before we left the UK I had booked tickets for a landscape tour of Georgia O'Keeffe locations at Ghost Ranch. The tour didn't start till lunchtime so we stopped en route and took a short walk, not far from Ghost Ranch, through some red rock countryside. The stark desert landscape was very beautiful.  Georgia O'Keeffe also loved these surroundings. She first visited here in 1929 when she had come down from New York to visit friends in Taos. Ghost Ranch is now a retreat where you can stay and take courses if you wish. In the 30's it was a dude ranch. A place where rich people could come and pretend to be cowboys. It had got its name as it had once belonged to cattle rustlers who had become outlaws and murderers and were hanged for their troubles.  In 1934 O'Keeffe stayed in a cottage in the main area of Ghost Ranch, but she later managed to rent a small property on the outskirts called Rancho de los Burros. O'Keeffe came back every summer and spent her time explor

  We went down to the shore of the reservoir hoping to get close to the water. There is an area advertising itself as a bathing beach and having some changing rooms, toilets and picnic benches. Unhappily all these facilities are made of brutal concrete and ornamented with rusted metal. I am sure in the height of a New Mexico summer any place to get into the water would be good, but they could have made it more pleasant. Driving back towards Abiquiu the road makes a dramatic sweep around a cliff and there is a place to park to take in the view. I crawled underneath the barrier to get a better composition and Alan photographed me  returning!