My cousin has been on my case to visit Kyoto, her new hometown. But the thought of flying 20-plus hours over innumerable time zones gives me jet lag. So, Lenny and I opted for a change of scenery closer to home – New Mexico.
We started in Albuquerque with Road Scholar. The nonprofit educational tour company used to be known as Elderhostel but rebranded to appeal to the under-Medicare-age crowd. As a footloose single 60-something, I had visited Barcelona with the group. With my sweetie, even better. The theme was New Mexico’s Converso and Crypto-Jews, Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism by the sword of the Inquisition but were banished anyway and escaped to New Spain. Still, vestiges of Jewish traditions persist five centuries later.
We enjoyed day trips too. Old Town Albuquerque: adobe architecture, galleries, Wild West skull decor, Indian pueblo ceramics, boutiques (I got a wide-brimmed hat for the blazing sun). Santa Fe: similar but ritzier, and home of the Museum of International Folk Art, an eye-candy colorful collection of toys, dolls, paintings, miniature village scenes – impossible to digest in one visit.
After bidding our new friends farewell, we headed to Los Alamos, home of the Manhattan Project. We drove the scenic backroads, stopping in Madrid (pronounced “MAD-rid”), a high-country version of Gulfport – artsy and fun. After coffee at Java Junction we strolled the one-street downtown and found ourselves at Alchemy, Lucy Barna’s gallery featuring her amazing Fibonacci designs (had to have one!).
The Inn at the Delta in Espanola was spectacular. Lenny counted 24 stairs up to our spacious adobe-lined, Mexican-tiled, log-ceiling room. The owner’s quarters next to the inn was a museum of southwestern pottery and paintings, the grounds rich with juniper, pine, and other sweet-smelling alpine greenery.
Los Alamos next. A craft fair was in full swing when we arrived, so we felt right at home. The city has evolved from the wilderness boys’ school that predated Oppenheimer to a thriving town built around the Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Everyone we met, from the park ranger at the visitor center to the young lady in the history museum gift shop and the period-dressed gentleman at the Hans Bethe House, was a native descended from generations of lab employees.
The high desert scenery made me a little homesick for Colorado, where I spent most of my adult life. But I’m glad to be home, gardening in my wide-brimmed New Mexican hat.