Our trip back to Santa Fe from Vermejo was much simpler than the other drives we’ve taken in New Mexico: 45 minutes out of the Vermejo River Valley, and then 2:15 straight down I-25 to Santa Fe. I-25 runs along the western edge of the Great Plains and is lightly traveled, so I put the Caddy on cruise control at the speed limit (75) and, well, cruised.

Once in Santa Fe we dropped our bags at the the hotel and I went to return the car – we won’t be needing it this weekend in town.

We’re staying at the Inn of the Anasazi, located right off the central Plaza in Santa Fe. It’s very different than our other accommodations ; actually, all of our hotels have been very different from each other.

Holiday Inn Express (Alamogordo/White Sands) – your basic Holiday Inn; clean, a bit tired, excellent staff. I never actually took a picture there. Not even on my iPhone.

Inn of the Five Graces (Santa Fe) – exotic, colorful furnishings, large suite, attentive staff, but run as a hobby by the owner of a furniture store (1).

Historic Taos Inn – a motel dressed up in adobe and old school wooden furnishings; cramped even though we had a two room suite.

Vermejo Park Ranch – an early 20th century mansion on 600,000 acres with luxury pretensions operated by a bunch of amateurs.

Inn of the Anasazi (Santa Fe) – a Rosewood Hotel, luxurious and well run, but the room is smaller than you might like for the price (picture shows the hotel library).

Overlooking the Plaza, May 2019

Anyway, we’re here for two nights before flying home. We spent the afternoon wondering around a bit, and sat in a 2nd floor patio bar overlooking the main Plaza for some beers. Dinner was at the hotel (courtesy of a credit from our travel agent) and quite nice. There was a cocktail hour for guests before dinner, and we spent time talking with the GM, the Executive Chef, and the Food & Beverage Manager. The wine was nice, and the dinner was tasty.

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(1) Sally disagrees with this characterization, and she’s the hotel maven in our team.

Vermejo is all about outdoor activities. This time of year, the most popular activity is fishing – most of the other guests here seem to be doing that for part or all of their stay. In season, one can go hunting. There’s horseback riding (as I mentioned yesterday), hiking (which I did yesterday), mountain biking, archery and both rifle and shotgun shooting. This morning Sally and I tried clay shooting, which she had never done and I did once many decades ago (1).

We were with a young couple from southern New Mexico; he had shot enough to be semi-competent and she had not shot before.

Sally was – understandably- a bit nervous about this whole thing. We both are appalled by the level of gun violence in the country and the whole public debate about gun ownership. We grew up in an environment where guns were just not present (2). I was merely nervous about not hitting a single clay during our session.

So we both exceeded our expectations. Sally fired a number of shells successfully, hitting her target a couple of times. I went through the introductory shooting and then the Five Stand “competition” (3) and hit a number of clays (4), which was satisfying enough.

After lunch in the restaurant (as opposed to the PB&J sandwiches in the truck drive yesterday), we split up. I went for a walk/hike (5), while Sally engaged in one of the only indoor activities here (6): a massage.

Her massage turned out well. My walk/hike, not so much. I did have time to take a couple of images before a wind-swept rain came on, forcing me to pack up and head back to the lodge. I didn’t feel that bad about getting wet and muddy, but was frustrated at having my outing cut short (7).

When i was cleaning up, I discovered that the shotgun had left its imprint on me. Literally.

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(1) I did rifle target shooting a number of times at Boy Scout camp, most recently probably 55 years ago. Sally had never touched a gun before.

(2) I had NYC cops as next door neighbors growing up, and never saw either of their guns. And then there was Boy Scout camp.

(3) Five Stand is a competition where you each move across five shooting positions, and shoot at clays thrown from a variety of locations and in different trajectories. There were four of us, and no one was keeping score. But the New Mexico guy won.

(4) My instructor told me after every miss – without fail – that I was very close.

(5) Remember, you can’t really go anywhere far away without a guide, at $350 for a half day. So I stayed pretty close to the lodge.

(6) The other appears to be cocktails in the afternoon.

(7) As I’m writing these words later in the afternoon, the sun is shining through the windows and the glare is making it difficult to see my screen.

Today was split in two parts.

In the morning, I went for a hike with my guide, Lee. I’ve never been hiking before with an actual guide, but Vermejo is pretty touchy about guests getting lost or hurt while wandering around their 600,000 acres. Pretty much all of the outdoor activities here: fishing, hunting, hiking, biking – require that you book a guide. Lee works at Vermejo full time, mostly doing light construction and general maintenance. He acts as a guide when there’s business.

As we started the hike, I realized why a guide is a good idea – there aren’t any trails. We drove about 30 minutes on dirt roads and barely-roads and then started walking uphill across snow-covered meadows. As I wrote the other day, it snowed on our way up here and looked heavier on the mountain peaks. The ranch buildings are about 7,500′, but we started the hike around 9,000′. So despite having been in New Mexico for a week now, the air still felt thin to me.

From time to time deer or elk would run across the open area, presumably spooked by us. And the views were stunning.

After climbing for about an hour, we turned back downhill. I set a new personal best, having hiked at 9,602′.

On the way down Lee started finding elk antlers. They shed them in the spring, and are collected for sale. The value is pretty low, since they’re pretty common. Sally is considering having a pair shipped home for installation somewhere (1).

After cleaning up, we collected Sally and took a four hour tour of Vermejo Park, with Lee the guide driving. I know I keep repeating myself, but four hours doesn’t get you close to covering the 600,000 acres. But we did see a bunch of great scenery, elk, deer and turkeys (2). We also saw a herd of ferrel horses that are descended from horses freed after a flash flood on the ranch 100 years ago.

After we got back, I took a walk over to the stables. The horses there are fully domesticated and (obviously) available for riding. Today they all seemed to be in the coral, some munching on hay. They were quite friendly and all came over to inspect me.

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(1) Update: we decided to not hav them shipped. They would just be clutter.

(2) Elk are fairly exotic to us. Deer and turkeys, not so much. They’re all over our town.

Sally built the centerpiece of this trip around our stay at Vermejo Ranch. Vermejo is a 600,000 acre ranch in northeastern New Mexico, as well as a small bit in southern Colorado. It’s the largest of the properties owned by Ted Turner, whose 2,000,000 acres make him the second largest private landowner in the US (1).

But first we had to get there.

The road to Vermejo from Taos goes over the mountains and through narrow canyons. Waze, my preferred GPS navigator, said it would take more than 4 hours for the 135 miles. Quick math tells you that equates to about 30 mph, implying a set of very slow roads. And the first couple of hours met this expectation; narrow, twisty roads snake though the mountains and canyons north and east of Taos.

At one point, it was snowing lightly on us and quite heavily in the distant mountains we could see. After we came out of the mountains at Cimarron, we could see the Great Plains stretching off to the east, while the foothills of the Rocky Mountains were to the west.

We arrived in Raton, NM with Waze still projecting about 2 hours to complete the remaining 36 miles. So we grabbed a “meal” (2) at Micky D’s while I checked Google Maps for its estimate on the travel time. It showed 1:20, which meant we would be averaging about 30 mph rather than Waze’s implied 18 mph.

Turns out that Google Maps was also estimating our projected speed way too slow; it took us only 45 minutes to cover the ground. I’ve never seen these two navigation systems differ by so much, or be so wrong.

The main buildings at the ranch are expansive, to say the least. As is the suite apartment mansion Sally reserved for us. It’s three rooms, including a huge sun room, a living room and a bedroom. Plus a two room(!) bathroom.

After we settled in for a bit, I went for an easy hike. Tomorrow, I’m planning a more involved one with a guide, so this was a warm-up.

Finally, we spent an hour chatting with Will the bartender, who carefully questioned Sally before preparing a heavily customized Mai Tai. My bourbon on rocks was much simpler. We both had onion bisque and bison for dinner, which was yummy. Much better than MacD’s.

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(1) John Malone of Charter Communications is #1 with 2.2m acres.

(2) I actually got a Happy Meal with Artisan Chicken. It’s still McD’s.

Wrong, Bucko. The National Weather Service says 0.94″ of rain in an average May. We got a bunch of that allotment today.

We left Santa Fe under cloudy and breezy conditions for the shortest travel day of our trip, less than two hours to Taos. There are two routes to Taos: the High Road, and the Low Road. The High Road is reputed to be more scenic, so that’s how we went. Unfortunately, the clouds, wind and generally lousy weather killed most of the views. But it was a pleasant enough trip.

Our hotel in Taos, the Historic Taos Inn, had our room ready when we arrived around 1:00, so we dropped our bags and went for some lunch. The hotel is a collection of adobe-style buildings, and looks nicer than it is.

We then went up to the Taos Pueblo, a traditional Native American settlement just outside of town.

The Pueblo has homes for over 1,000 people, but only a few dozen live there full time now. Other members of the tribe live in modern homes on the 120,000 acre reservation.

We paid for admission, and went to wait for a tour, but the guide never showed. We waited 20 minutes for the next scheduled guide, and started the tour, but it began to rain and blow shortly after she arrived. So that was pretty much a bust. And we had planned to walk around and visit some of the art galleries clustered in town near our hotel, but that didn’t look like a lot of fun in the cold, blowing rain.

The hotel was having an open mic night in the lobby, we we watched a bit before dinner and then I went back after dinner again. As with all open mics, some of the performers were good, while others needed work. By the time I went back to the room, the rain had stopped. But it was pretty cold.

The next morning I went out before breakfast just to see what the town looked like when it wasn’t raining. It’s a pleasant little place, but once you get away from the very center near the Taos Inn it devolves into strip malls designed like adobe buildings. What I learned is that Kit Carson, the famous frontiersman and guide, settled here and lived the last 25 years of his life in Taos. His home is now a museum.