New Mexico the Land of Enchantment

This is our view of the sunset from our homebase in Santa Fe, NM, the Santa Fe Skies RV Park. These sunsets are often and beautiful. This area is one of our favorite stops on our way to and from the east and west coasts. The New Mexican food is unparallel in any part of the USA, our favorites are the sopapillas, New Mexican enchilada/egg on top, and green chile stew (chili verde), besides the delicious food, there are spectacular museums featuring the black pottery made famous by Marie/Maria Martinez (Maria Montoya Martinez) and her husband, Julian.

They were the genesis of the modern potters at the San Ildefonso pueblo near Santa Fe, NM. The pair is credited with inspiring the key techniques and designs of both San Ildefonso and Santa Clara blackware pottery. After Maria and Julian discovered in 1918 how to produce the now-famous black-on-black pottery, they spent the remainder of their careers perfecting and producing it for museums and collectors worldwide.





Georgia O'Keeff'e's museum is located west of the city square at 217 Johnson St. There you will find many of her paintings depicting local scenery and objects. Her colors are vivid and come to life on her canvases. We visited the Ghost Ranch where she did her early paintings and her home in Abiquiu.

Ghost Ranch gave her the freedom to paint what she saw and felt. Knowledgeable visitors can look around and identify many of the scenes she painted. Red and gray hills like those across from the roadside park south of the ranch headquarters were frequent subjects. Kitchen Mesa at the upper end of the valley is an example of the red and yellow cliffs she painted many times. Pedernal, the flat-topped mountain to the south, was probably her favorite subject. "It's my private mountain," she frequently said. "God told me if I painted it often enough I could have it."

On our drive out to the Ghost Ranch, I spotted the Pedernal to our left, I told Donna to stop the car and I got out and pointed to the famous Pedernal and said this is where Georgia must have stood to paint some of her paintings, this is the right position of the mountain that is used over and over in her paintings. It was exciting and neat to see what she saw.

The Georgia O'Keeffe museum opened in July 1997, we were there soon after and what a treat that was, we will never forget it. On display were 94 pieces of work by O'Keeffe, the largest group at any one time in the world. I still remember one painting, her clouds were packed evenly across the sky with flat bottoms. It was so spectacular. We have been back several times since to see the changes in art pieces.

Georgia O'Keeffe was an interesting (putting it mildly) lady. She was a loner, eccentric, and talented, she was born 1887 and died 1986.