As mentioned in this post, someone had done extensive damage to my Jeep on my way to Santa Fe, and I had to leave it at a shop in Grand Junction (Colorado). For my first several weeks in Santa Fe, I was driving a rental car provided by my insurance company. This limited my explorations to places with a paved highway.
That was OK, there was still plenty to see in this new land that was strange - and fascinating - to me. My first pilgrimage is documented in my previous post: the San Francisco de Asis church near Taos. My second foray was just north of Santa Fe to the pueblos there.
The southernmost range of the Rocky Mountains is the Sangre de Cristo (“Blood of Christ”) mountains, which extend south from Colorado and end just east of Santa Fe. I had explored the Colorado part of the Sangres on this trip:
According to legend, the mountains were named when a dying Spanish soldier (in some versions of the story it was a priest who had been killed by Natives) beheld the alpenglow on these mountains turning them red at sundown, and declared “The Blood of Christ!” with his last breath, confident he was on his way to Heaven.
As I mentioned in the post linked above, in Colorado the “Sangres” are almost entirely Wilderness, with only one road crossing them, and that one is a four-wheel-drive road. In New Mexico, there are several paved highways going across them, and at least two ski areas that I know of.
I said all that to say this: on one’s way to Santa Fe from Colorado on US Hwy 285, the Sangres are a constant sight over to the east. Here is a shot I took of them on my way home from photographing the famous church in my prior post:
And they are in the background of this photo of some badlands in the Tesuque1 Pueblo near Santa Fe:
The Tesuque Pueblo has been occupied since at least 1694 AD and probably since about 1200 AD. On their land is a distinctive hoodoo named Camel Rock:
which, when viewed from a certain angle, really does look like a camel. But I chose to shoot this side of it instead. It is right beside the highway and you can’t miss seeing it as you drive by.
Further north is another interesting geological feature in the badlands of that area:
And finally, another shot of Camel Rock, taken at sundown:
Pronounced “Teh-SOO-kay”