An Abiquiu Outing

Georgia O'Keeffe was one of Americas greatest artist and a drive from Santa Fe  to Chama takes you past the hills and landscapes that were the inspiration for many of her most famous paintings.

Start your trip by traveling north from Santa Fe on US 84/285 (from Taos take US 68 south) past Espanola to Abiquiu, a small hamlet on the "Rio Chama." and the location for Ghost Ranch. The Ghost Ranch landscape was the area Georgia O'Keeffe loved, explored, painted, and lived in for over 50 years. A detour on NM 96 takes you to Abiquiu Lake, a popular fishing and boating area. Visit the Ghost Ranch conference center, a rare find with its paleontology and anthropology museums. Just beyond the conference center is the Christ-in-the-Desert Monastery (Benedictine). Lay persons are welcome for weekend retreats (reservations required).

Continue north on US 84, past the Echo Theatre Campground to the scenic village of Los Ojos (The Springs), a detour on NM 95. Here you will find Tierra Wools, where the public is invited to see weavers, spinners and dyers at work creating yarn and hand woven goods from wool gathered from the local flock. A detour to the west takes you to Heron and El Vado lakes, both popular recreation areas

Continue north past Los Brazos. The Brazos Cliffs to the east are worth the short side trip. At 11,403 feet, Brazos Peak is one of the state's loftiest. Your Abiquiu outing ends at Chama, a rough-and-ready old western town filled with quaint Victorian cottages and home to the coal-burning Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. Operating from mid-May through mid-October, the narrow-gauge train takes passengers north into Colorado, then back to Chama (a one-day trip), a trip back into the 1880's.

A short distance west of Chama on US64 is the home of the  Jicarilla Apache Nation. The museum is well worth a visit.

For a more detail description of what you will see during your "Abiquiu Outing" as well as a short history about Georgia O'keeffe Click Here. For a map of the Outing Click Here.

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  Sights along the Way

Georgia O'Keeffe

Georgia O'Keeffe,  one of the great American artists of the 20th-century, was born in 1887 in Sun Prairie Wisconsin. In 1905 she attended the Art Institute of Chicago and in1906 went to study at the Art Students League of New York. Her art work while a student was well received but she found it unfulfilling, and abandoned the fine arts until the summer of 1915 when she discovered an interest in non-European art. This helped her move away from the art forms she had found so restrictive in her previous experience. In 1918 she moved to New York City and lived there and in Lake George, New York and painted some of her most famous works.

In 1929 O'Keeffe took a vacation in Taos, New Mexico. Falling in love with the open skies and sun-drenched landscape of Northern New Mexico, O'Keeffe returned every summer to travel and to paint. In 1946 that she came back to live and work full-time in New Mexico and resided there until her death.. Those early New Mexico landscapes and still life paintings  represent her gift to the art world. In the 1950s and 1960s, O'Keeffe's  traveled around the world and had a number of major showings in the U.S. including a 1970 at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In the vanguard of American Modernist painting, O'Keeffe was a pioneer both as a figurative artist and an early proponent of abstraction. Her ability to adapt early modernist tenets to quintessentially American motifs helped develop Americans' appreciation for the pictorial and poetic possibilities of abstraction. Her cityscapes and still life's filled the canvas with wild energy. Known for the reductive power and simplicity of her compositions, O'Keeffe felt a special affinity for the vast, austere landscape of the Southwest. She explored the essence of her chosen subjects through a subtle balance of poetic illusion, intense color and linear precision.


Best known for her monumental depictions of flowers, O'Keeffe shunned Freudian interpretations of her work and critical evaluations that focused on her gender. She once commented, "The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters."

O'Keeffe moved from her principal home and studio in Abiquiu, New Mexico to Santa Fe several years before her death in 1986 at age 98. Her studio in Abiquiu, less than 50 miles from the O'Keeffe Museum, is operated by The Georgia O'Keeffe Foundation and is open to the public by appointment.

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Hernandez

Hernandez: This town was made famous by Ansel Adams 1941 photograph, "Moonrise over Hernandez". During the summer/fall months you’ll find roadside stands filled with the valley’s best locally grown fruits and vegetables. You’ll also find all sizes of chili ristras, the favorite sign of welcome in this warm and friendly area.

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Abiquiu

Abiquiu, a tiny town on a bend of the Rio Chama, is remembered as the home of celebrated American artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Visitors will appreciate the inspiration she drew from the surrounding landscape. See for yourself  the flat thump of a rock called Pedernal that is seen in many of O'Keeffe's paintings. Tours of O'Keeffe's restored adobe hacienda can be arranged by appointment. The Abiquiu Artist Studio Tour is in October.

Abiquiu Lake and Dam- Just beyond Abiquiu, is Abiquiu Lake and Dam. This is a popular fishing spot. Many dinosaur skeletons have been found at the base of the cliffs nearby.

Ghost Ranch Conference Center & Echo Canyon Amphitheater

The Ghost Ranch Conference Center was the summer desert retreat for artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Today it  is home to the Florence Hawley Museum of Anthropology and the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology. There are displays of early human artifacts and dinosaur fossils found in the area. You can obtain permission to hike in the magnificent red-rock country at the retreat. The Echo Canyon Amphitheater, is a large natural "auditorium" carved by erosion from the surrounding sandstone cliffs. Short hiking trails, grills and sheltered picnic tables make this a great place to stop.

Information: 505-685-4333

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los Ojos

Los Ojos is home to Tierra Wools, an 100 year old weaving studio & showroom that provides a glimpse of a time when the Hispanic weaving tradition maintained village artisans though long cold winters. These Rio Grande weavers quenched a deep thirst for color, harmony and spirituality by weaving for family, church and community.

Tierra Wools is a spinning, hand dyeing, and hand weaving workshop and a retail store. It buys local wool, washes it, spins it, and weaves the yarn into beautiful weavings which are sold from its workshop in Los Ojos, a small village in the Chama Valley of northern New Mexico.

Many of the weavers of Tierra Wools descend from Spanish immigrants who settled in the Rio Grande Valley as early as the 16th century, with latter waves of immigrants from Spain and Mexico. Sheep raising was the economic mainstay of these settlers and the textiles produced by them were called "Rio Grande blankets" . This weaving style was influenced by a mix of Spanish, Mexican and Indian designs, and characterized by the use of stripes and bands, saltillo diamonds (diamond pattern usually in center of weaving), and Vallero stars (six pointed star).

For more information
Call - 888-709-0979
Click - http://www.handweavers.com/index.htm

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El Vado Lake  & Heron Lake  State Parks

Approximately 14 miles west on NM 112 is El Vado Lake State Park. This is a popular venue for boating, water-skiing and fishing, as well as cross-country skiing and ice fishing in the winter. There are good camping and picnic sites, plus a marina for boat-launching.

Approximately eight miles west on NM 95 lies Heron Lake State Park. Heron Lake follows a "quiet lake" policy--no motorboats of any kind. There are boat slips and ramps, camping and picnic sites and a visitor center. The 5.5-mile Rio Chama Trail connects these lakes.

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chama

A mix of peoples, history, and scenic beauty produces a feeling in Chama New Mexico that most people find irresistible. Nestled in the Chama river valley (Rio Chama ), this town is a great example of classic northern New Mexico. When you enter Chama from the south you see a vast valley full of pasture surrounded by mountains. As you arrive in town, you see the railroad cross bucks foreshadowing more good things to come. Main street looks a lot today as it did in the 1890's. There are many gorgeous old homes, churches and other buildings. It is  home to the coal-burning Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad.

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jicarilla Apache Nation

The scenic mountains and rugged mesas of northern New Mexico near the Colorado border are the homeland of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. The tribe includes approximately 2,755 tribal members (Census 2000), most of whom live in the town of Dulce. Nomadic in nature until just before European contact, the Jicarilla people established trade with Taos and Picurís pueblos centuries ago. They wandered and traded as far east as Kansas until they settled deep in the southern San Juan Mountains in the mid-1720s.

The Jicarilla Apache Nation's land is renowned for hunting, fishing, camping, boating and hiking opportunities. The tribe maintains Horse Lake Mesa Game Park, the largest single elk enclosure in the country at 14,500 acres. Black bear and mountain lion roam freely throughout the reservation.

The Nation offers fishing at five beautiful mountain lakes (La Jara, Horse, Stone, Mundo and Embalm) from 30 to 400 acres in size, and harbors thousands of ducks and the greatest variety of waterbirds found in the Southwest.

Stop by the Jicarilla Arts and Crafts Shop Museum and marvel at Jicarilla beadwork, baskets, paintings and ribbon shirts. Scattered across and under several enfolding limestone-streaked mesas, Dulce, the tribal capital, is pretty quiet except during the mid-September Go-Jii-Ya Feast Day and Stone Lake Fiesta (mid-September) and July's Little Beaver Roundup. There are plenty of overnight accommodations in Dulce, and a community center offers bowling, a gym, swimming pool and exercise room.

For more information
Click - http://www.jicarillaonline.com/

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Map of Abiquiu Outing Tour