Views from the Presidential Suite: May 2015

Monument Valley was my favorite location when I toured the west 11 years ago with Bradley. I wasn't disappointed this time. We stayed at Gouldings, the same campground across the road from MV that we stayed in last time. The campground is surrounded by red rock cliffs, has a gift shop, dining room, grocery store, and a lodge. It also has the movie site of a cabin used by John Wayne while filming Stagecoach.

Monument Valley is on Navajo Tribal Lands. When you visit it, you must either drive an assigned dirt road or hire a Navajo guide who will take you to sites that cannot be seen when driving the planned loop road. Over 135 movies have been filmed here. The story is that the original Mr. Goulding went to Hollywood during the depression (1930's) with $60 in his pocket. He met director, John Ford, showed him some black/white photos of the valley and talked him into making movies in what became the "iconic west."

We chose to hire a Navajo guide who spent 1/2 day driving us around the valley, telling us about his native culture, showing us natural arches and monoliths, and taking us to a traditional Navajo home, the hogan, where we observed a woman spinning wool into yarn. At the end of the tour he sang us several Navajo songs in a beautiful setting.

The Navajo society is matrilineal. When a man marries, he moves in with the wife and pays her family a dowry. If she is a skilled weaver, potter, etc., the dowry is increased accordingly. The Navajo, or Dine, value the sky, mother earth, water, women and then veterans in that order. Elders are highly respected. The female hogan is round to symbolize the woman's pregnant belly, and has nine wooden supports which represent the 9 months of pregnancy. The door always faces the East. The family awakens at least one hour before dawn to welcome the sun. Movement around the hogan is always clockwise. The traditional hogan is made of cedar wood and is covered by a mixture of sand and water (mud). Some Navajo still live in hogans, especially elders. We were informed that the reservation is @the size of West Virginia and @75% of the Navajo live on the reservation.

The next day we decided to visit National Bridges Ntl Park which is about 2 hours away. We had to drive about 1500 feet on a dirt road that scaled a mesa. There were no guardrails and at least 10 switchbacks. The park itself had 3 natural bridges formed within the same sandstone canyon. Quite interesting.

Hogan

Me on horse at John Ford's Point

We spent 10 terrific days in Santa Fe. While there we visited Bandolier National Monument, Taos and the Taos Pueblo, Madrid, Los Alamos, and many great restaurants, museums and shops in the city.

The city itself has a population of 82,000 people and is 7,000 miles above sea level. It is surrounded by mountains, some with snow, in the high desert environment. The landscape has a lot of desert plants, pinon pine trees and juniper as well as some plants that you might find in the northeast. When we arrived the lilacs and irises were in bloom.

Santa Fe has several building restrictions. There are no tall office buildings. In fact, I rarely saw buildings taller than 2 stories. Pueblo architecture is mandated and all roofs must be flat. Swimming pools are prohibited in the city limits.

There are many people in Santa Fe from somewhere else. It seems that many of the citizens have chosen to live there in a 2nd or 3rd iteration of their lives. You also find many people with Hispanic and Native American backgrounds. A large number of Pueblo Indian reservations surround Santa Fe. New Mexico is greatly influenced by these cultures. I was also surprised to learn that Sephardic Jews settled in Santa Fe to escape the Spanish Inquisition. For a small town, there are 5-6 synagogues in the area. New Mexican food is similar to Mexican, but also flavored by the red and green chiles that grow in the state.

Downtown Santa Fe is unlike any other city. Even though the city is the site of the state government, you see little to no office buildings, and many galleries and museums. The stores carry very expensive Native American jewelry, pottery, and southwestern clothes. Sculptures are everywhere. There is a small town square, some very old pueblo style buildings and churches, and artisans selling their work all over town.

Bandolier National Monument and Los Alamos are both about 1 hour North of town in the Jemez (pronounced Hay-mez) mountains. Bandolier is the site of ancient Pueblan cliff dwelling located in Frijoles canyon. You can walk or hike several trails in the canyon and climb by ladder into some of the cliff homes. There are also ruins of several ancient Pueblan towns.

Los Alamos was the secret site of the Manhattan Project during WWII. Prior to the creation of laboratories and a surrounding small town, Los Alamos was home to a few ranches and a school for privileged and underachieving boys. When Albert Einstein requested that President Roosevelt and congress dedicate money to the creation of the atomic bomb, this location was chosen for the scientists who worked on the project. All was top secret. You had to have a pass to get into or out of the city. All outgoing mail was censored by the Federal Government. People living in Los Alamos did not have a street address and were unable to identify themselves by name. In fact, when traveling out of the area they had to use pseudonyms.

It is now a modern small town. Much of it consists of research laboratories. When approaching the town we had to drive through a gate where we were asked if we were US citizens. I visited a small museum which had replicas of the two bombs dropped in Japan, one named after FDR and the other after Churchill, thus the name "fat boy."

Also north of town, but a little farther is the small town of Taos. It is named after the Taos Indian Pueblo which is just outside town. This pueblo has been continuously lived in by the Taos natives for over 1,000 years. All the homes are adobe. They have outside adobe ovens and no electricity or indoor plumbing. Drinking water is obtained from the stream that runs through the village. We were told that many of the Taos residents also have modern homes outside the pueblo.

South of town is the small, ex-mining town of Madrid. It is now a town of artisans and small shops which are quite funky. We ate lunch there and purchased a few items.

My last day in Santa Fe I visited museum hill and went to the Museum of Indian Art and Culture. There were at least 6 more museums to visit but I ran out of time.