Sunset: Road to enchantment; Santa Fe, Taos, ancient wonders, and sublime food: take the ultimate dr

Always take the backroad. It's the smart traveler's truism everywhere, but nowhere will it work magic more reliably than in New Mexico. Set your course with all the certainty of a cottonwood leaf surfing an autumn breeze, pack a thick road atlas so you won't get irretrievably lost, and abandon the highway wherever an intriguing tributary offers itself. You'll stumble across an unadvertised volcano, a former ghost town, an Ancestral Puebloan ruin. Wander into a canyon with no trail and no name and let it rough you up a bit: New Mexico will never take your blood without giving something back.

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I'm taking a 10-day, 1,000-mile trip that begins and ends in Albuquerque, looping north through Santa Fe and Taos, west to the mysterious Chaco Culture National Historical Park and the living pueblo of Acoma, and south to volcanic El Malpais National Monument and revitalized Silver City.

As I travel, I find I'm exploring layers of culture along with landscape. You hear that New Mexico is all about the weave of its cultural triad: American Indian, Hispanic, and Anglo. But there is an overarching culture here that runs deeper than ethnicity. New Mexicans are forever defying conventions, improvising fresh ways to make a living and exercise the pursuit of happiness, adapting to the hands they're dealt. My friend Susan Hazen-Hammond, a Los Alamos poet and artist, tells me that New Mexicans don't actively try to be different. "We simply are different. Sometimes it pleases us, sometimes it startles us, and sometimes it alarms us--but whichever it is, we want to preserve who we are."

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2 Days 70 Miles

Albuquerque to Santa Fe

MYTHS EXPLORED, PHOBIAS CURED, promises a sign outside the American International Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque's Old Town. Okay, I'll bite. The privately owned museum is part tourist trap, with trinkets and party-joke rubber snakes, but the 33 species of live rattlers are stunningly beautiful, their beadwork a festival of argyle geometry. And a reminder that in New Mexico, nature is harsh and deadly, beautiful and irresistible.

Albuquerque unrolls westward from the Sandia Mountains into a "vast, sweeping, slightly concave dish ideally designed for collecting light, width, and space," as Robert Leonard Reid writes in America, New Mexico. "These it distributes to valley residents like electric power." It's impossible to drive or walk anywhere in Albuquerque without feeling energized, and sometimes tingling with unease, at the awesome scope of sky and mountain.

At every turn, Albuquerque also displays the awesome scope of human civilization. A quick freeway hop from the National Atomic Museum's panorama of nuclear science and history, about 20,000 prehistoric images--maybe homages, possibly prayers--bake in the sun on basalt boulders at Petroglyph National Monument. Among the figures are snakes (of course), mountain lions, birds, insects, humans, and shamans, and it's not idle graffiti.

"We have more than 20 contemporary tribes telling us this was a sacred place," monument archaeologist Gretchen Ward says. "Volcanic landscapes like this are places of great significance because they represent connections to the earth below."

Now north to Santa Fe. I could make the drive at interstate efficiency, driving I-25 and reaching New Mexico's capital in an hour. But a road trip is no time to be efficient. I detour on State 14--known as the Turquoise Trail for the ancient turquoise mines in the Cerrillos Hills--which winds north and east. I explore for eight hours, including a mountain detour to 10,678-foot Sandia Crest and a couple of hours prowling fetchingly scruffy Madrid. The town is a textbook illustration of New Mexicans' gift for improvisation. An artist's studio announces itself with a roadside collection of cowboy sculptures made of scrap car parts. One gallery owner gives me a capsule history of Madrid: "Founded as a company mining town in the 1800s--coal. It became a ghost town in the 1950s, was 'rediscovered' by hippies in the '70s. Now it's the artists' turn."

3 Days 70 Miles

Santa Fe to Taos

Santa Fe. Downtown at 7 a.m., well before the tourist town stirs, I'm scarfing a breakfast of red-hot blue corn enchiladas at Tia Sophia's. A twine of Spanish and English conversation fills the air; the city's civil servants flock here for breakfast. A warning on the menu--NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR TOO HOT CHILE--is only for the occasional errant tourist.

Tia Sophia's is where I first heard a local use the term "Fanta Se," an ironic dig at a city that has become too expensive for its own working residents. Two Santa Fes exist, parallel universes that split into divergent evolutionary paths eons past.

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There's the Santa Fe that has ordained itself "The City Different," the fantasy city of about 250 art galleries, 15 museums, and one of the edgiest culinary scenes of any city in the country: the city of well-heeled exiles from elsewhere. You can spend a fortune here--or not. I treat Canyon Road as a mile-long art museum and pass a day hopping galleries without dropping a dime.

Pieces of the other Santa Fe, the real city where people have worked and prayed and sewn soul-deep connections to the New Mexico landscape, are everywhere, if glimpsed only in fragments. A homemade shrine to St. Francis nestled in a patio. The surprisingly picturesque acequia madre, the "mother ditch," which residents still clean and weed annually as they have for more than 380 years. A slightly uneven adobe wall turning a ruddy gold in late-afternoon light as the sun probes the flecks of straw in it. An elderly woman, her face browned and arroyoed by decades in the New Mexico sun, selling apples and chile powder--and explaining how her father, who'd had all of three months of school, put her through college by selling his produce just like this.

Off-season, the High Road from Santa Fe to Taos--State 76 and 518--which weaves through the villages of Chimayo, Truchas, and Las Trampas, seems as drowsy and lonely as the New Mexico of a century past. And refreshingly informal. A sign in Pierre Delattre's gallery in Truchas says, STUDIO OPEN--AFTER YOU SEE THE FRONT GALLERY, COME VISIT. I do.

"I moved here from Minnesota because I was inspired by the light, and I wanted my own gallery so I could meet the people who bought my paintings," Delattre says. "I love the bohemian life here. It's almost as if your life becomes art."

Thirty miles on, I find Taos squirming out of its bohemian past. There's a buzz of recent Julia Roberts sightings. There's a startling resort where rooms start at $345 a night and a waterfall trills on the patio. Lovely, but hardly the Taos that lured photographer Ansel Adams for its light, novelist D.H. Lawrence for the "unbreakable spirit" of the place, and writer John Nichols for the absurdity that became The Milagro Beanfield War. But that Taos still exists; you only have to ask.

Taos Pueblo, if you ignore the inevitable casino, is unchanged--and, on a cold November morning, so nearly deserted that it feels like a discovery. The crisp morning light falls like a shower of silver needles, and a handmade ladder propped over an adobe parapet dissolves into sapphire sky as if it were a prayer.

3 Days 325 Miles

Taos to El Malpais

West of Taos, the roads narrow, the tourist luxuries wither, and my urge to explore surges. You never know what you'll discover here.

Eight miles out of Taos on U.S. 64, the flat, blue-green valley abruptly implodes into a basaltic gash 650 feet deep: the Rio Grande Gorge. I walk across the spidery two-lane bridge--you'd be a bloomin' idiot to drive and gawk--marveling at the silvery scribble of river in another world so far below.

A Taos hiking buddy. Howard Greene, knows a route into the gorge, so we mount an expedition. We hike down a surprisingly gentle trail, passing through stunted pinons to a Ponderosa coppice and a fetchingly derelict bridge at river's edge. I've found other passages to the river on previous trips, and they always manage to yield surprises. A secret hot spring, a cluster of petroglyphs, a moving memorial to a kayaker who misjudged the river's power--it's impossible to overestimate the Rio Grande's arterial role in the life of New Mexico.

On to another powerful canyon: Chaco. It's a long (230 miles), lonely, 4 1/2-hour drive, first on two-lane blacktop, then on a graded-dirt road. Chaco Canyon's current isolation seems ironic: 900 years ago, Chaco was the most important political and ceremonial center in the Southwest.

Today protected as Chaco Culture National Historical Park, Chaco Canyon's ruins pose questions that resonate in my mind for weeks afterward. Why did its builders construct roads up to 30 feet wide, radiating to satellite communities as distant as 60 miles? How did the leaders command the labor to build "great houses" stacked three to five stories high? And why here, in a desolate gulch that gets 8.7 inches of rain in a year?

There's more to the Chaco world than commonly known. The National Park Service quietly maintains several outlying great houses not connected to Chaco by modern roads, but directions are available at the visitor center.

Even with directions, I spend an hour lost on roads so obscure they don't even bear numbers. Finally I stumble onto the ruin of Kin Bineola ("House in which the wind whirls," in Navajo), and it's worth all the effort. The sense of isolation is so powerful that it becomes a palpable part of the experience. The ruin, parts still standing two stories high, grows organically out of a landscape of low hills and wan fourwing salt bush. A line from architectural historian Vincent Scully's essay on prehistoric pueblos occurs to me: "The building itself is once again the god of sky and mountain ..."

The next day, 140 miles south, I visit El Malpais National Monument. Malpais translates literally as "bad country," which decidedly it would have been during the last volcanic eruption, 1,000 to 3,000 years ago. But it's wonderful country now, a beast-and-beauty marriage of craggy black lava and graceful pink sandstone. More lonely country: In the fall, a ranger tells me, there are even fewer visitors to the Malpais than in summer.

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I ask the ranger about hiking the volcanic badlands. "Just be sure you're off the trail by dark," she warns. Why? "Because it's black and sharp!"

2 Days 285 Miles

Acoma Pueblo to Silver City

You can't just wander around Acoma Pueblo. Unlike New Mexico's other pueblos and natural attractions, visitors here are herded through in tours--but I can't really blame the Acoma people, considering their history. I buy a ticket and board a bus to the top of the village, accompanied by a guide. It doesn't feel crowded: It's the day's first tour, and she will be lecturing only to me.

Situated just a bit east of El Malpais, Acoma was founded around 1100 on one of the most spectacularly defensive sites in the Pueblo world: the flat top of a 370-foot mesa. The strategy apparently worked until the Spanish arrived with horses and firearms. In 1599 a swarm of soldiers climbed the rock under cover of darkness, seized the pueblo, and, in one of the most horrific acts of the Southwestern entrada, cut off the left foot of 280 Acoma men and forced them to labor as servants.

The guide moves on to a story that I find especially touching. "The church forced the village to give up eight of our children. They were taken to Mexico City to be used as servants and were never seen again." She points to a basketball-shaped hole in the ancient cemetery wall. "We left that hole so their spirits can enter."

From Acoma I continue south, climbing from desert into the dense Gila National Forest. There's a childhood memory here that I want to pursue: a steel catwalk cantilevered off the side of Whitewater Canyon near Glenwood. Catwalk National Recreation Trail is easy to find, thanks to the road atlas, and even more stunning than I remember. Mauve and gray rock walls soar 50 feet overhead; a riparian area of sycamores and willows flourishes on the canyon floor. I cherish intimate canyons like this because they exist as self-contained retreats, oblivious to the environment 50 feet beyond their borders--and somehow, they seem to enclose not only biological worlds but spiritual space as well.

My last planned stop is Silver City, a former mining town that's now vigorously spinning itself into a picturesque and culturally lively retirement mecca. Like so many New Mexico places, historic and contemporary cultures are colliding and blending here. You can walk the residential streets, see loving restorations of Victorian homes, and make plans for the annual blues festival around Memorial Day. "It's a funny town," a gallery owner confirms. "All these retirees are moving here, and we have a drag show that sells out."

The miracle of New Mexico is that it hardly matters where you go and whether you arrange your lap around American Indian cultures or funky contemporary art or bizarre landscapes--or overambitiously attempt a sweep of all these, as I did.

And it doesn't matter if you get lost, as I do, on another backroad while on the 280-mile return trip to Albuquerque. The road dips into an unheralded canyon in the pleats skirting the Gila National Forest. I park and bushwhack through desert cutlery for a mile. The canyon is beautiful; in most parts of the country, it would rate national monument status. In New Mexico, it's not even a destination, just a nameless miracle awaiting the traveler who loses his way while in a New Mexico state of mind.

RELATED ARTICLE: New Mexico Grand Tour

New Mexico tugs in so many directions when you're planning a 10-day tour. How to knead all its compelling destinations into a manageable itinerary? You have to make hard choices--but in New Mexico, you're never wrong.

Our 10-day, 1,000-mile excursion begins and ends in Albuquerque, looping north through Santa Fe and Taos, then heading west to the pre-Columbian mysteries of Chaco Canyon. From here we bend south to take in ancient but alive Acoma Pueblo, the eerie badlands of El Malpais National Monument, and the quirky, charming mining town of Silver City before heading back to our starting point. It's a great tour, but our advice is to customize it: Wherever a backroad or side trip presents itself, be sure you take it. The spirit of New Mexico is improvisation, and it never fails to reward.

Quick trip

If you have just four days in New Mexico, operate from a base in Santa Fe. Our suggestions:

DAY 1 Santa Fe. Get a map from the visitors bureau (see "Must See: Santa Fe," at right), then tour the Plaza and Canyon Road galleries. Best bets: Loretto Chapel, Museum of Fine Arts, Palace of the Governors, and St. Francis Cathedral.

DAY 2 Santa Fe. Visit outlying museums, especially the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. Consider a hike in the Santa Fe National Forest.

DAY 3 High Road to Taos. See the church of San Francisco de Asis Parish, the Santuario de Chimayo, and Taos Pueblo. Visit at least one roadside flower-and-chile stand; take home a ristra of dried chiles and a package of authentic Chimayo chile powder, the world's best. Return via U.S. 68 for a 145-mile round-trip.

DAY 4 Los Alamos and vicinity. Visit the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, detour north to see the Ancestral Puebloan sites at Bandelier National Monument, then drive the sinuous and scenic Jemez Mountain Trail (State 4) and return to Santa Fe for a 170-mile round-trip.

Essentials

Deciding when to go? Fall is quiet and lovely, reservations are usually unnecessary, and the aspens and cottonwoods generally turn between mid-October and mid-November, depending on elevation. Ski season in northern New Mexico typically runs from late November to early April. If you're planning for next summer, the season is a constellation of festivals, from opera to art.

Planning your trip

The free 195-page New Mexico Guide is published every year; to order a copy, contact the New Mexico Tourism Department (www.newmexico.org or 800/733-6396). Some other useful resources:

New Mexico Bed & Breakfast Association (www.nmbba.org or 800/661-6649)

New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs (www.newmexicoculture.org)

New Mexico Lodging Association (www.nmlodging.org or 505/983-4554)

Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper (www.santafenewmexican.com)

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Must see

Before visiting, call to check seasonal hours and prices.

Albuquerque

It has ballooned into a big city (metro population: about 713,000), but Albuquerque's best attractions are hundreds or even thousands of years old. Essentials: American International Rattlesnake Museum (202 San Felipe St. N.W.; 505/242-6569); Old Town (www.albuquerqueoldtown.com), the original Spanish village, founded in 1706 and renovated as a lively cluster of restaurants, museums, and galleries; and Petroglyph National Monument (6001 Unser Blvd. N.W.; 505/899-0205). Not far away is the National Atomic Museum (1905 Mountain Rd. N.W.; 505/245-2137). The Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.itsatrip.org or 800/284-2282) can help with trip planning.

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Santa Fe

Continued from page 2.

Most common mistake: allowing too little time to see and understand this 400-year-old city. Two days is your bare minimum, three or four far better. The city's gallery scene is so rich, the best advice may be just to browse randomly; still, don't miss the Southwestern art at the Gerald Peters Gallery (1011 Paseo de Peralta; 505/954-5700). Buy a four-day pass for admission to five of the top museums, including the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art (750 Camino Lejo; 505/982-2226). Also see the Georgio O'Keeffe Museum (217 Johnson St.; 505/946-1000); the Museum of Fine Arts (107 W. Palace Ave.; 505/476-5072); and the Palace of the Governors (105 W. Palace Ave.; 505/476-5100). Above all, eat frequently and adventurously: Santa Fe has more interesting restaurants than any American city 10 times its size. For more information, contact the Santa Fe Convention & Visitors Bureau (www.santafe.org or 800/777-2489).

Taos/Taos Pueblo

Taos deserves at least a day; There are six engaging art and historical museums, and 4 miles northeast of town is Taos Pueblo (on Veteran's Hwy.; 505/758-1028), the Southwest's most architecturally dramatic living pueblo. Also see San Francisco de Asis Porish (off State 68 in Ranchos de Taos; 505/758-2754). New Mexico's most beautiful mission church. Contact the Taos County Chamber of Commerce (www.taoschamber.com or 800/732-8267). In nearby Truchas, visit Pierre Delottre Gallery (1632A State 76; 505/689-1005).

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Chaco Culture N.H.P.

This national historical park is the most monumental and baffling pre-Columbian "city" in what we now call the United States. Every route to the park involves long distances and gravel roads, but you won't regret the effort. Allow four to six hours in the park, and bring your own food and water. Primitive campsites $10. Off U.S. 550 at County Rd. 7900; 505/786-7014 ext. 221.

El Malpais N.M.

This national monument (off 1-40 at exit 85; 505/783-4774) offers fascinating hiking over volcanic flows and cinder cones on the west side, and New Mexico's largest easily accessible natural arch on the east side; check weather conditions before going. On your way south from here, consider a stop at Pie Town's two estimable pastry establishments; the Pie-O-Neer Cafe (call ahead; mile marker 56/57 off U.S. 60; 505/772-2711) and the Daily Pie (mile marker 56 off U.S. 60; 505/772-2700).

Acoma Pueblo

The "Sky City" may be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement (at least 1,000 years) in North America. On 1-40 at exit 102, 55 miles west of Albuquerque; 800/747-0181.

Catwalk National Recreation Trail

This steel trail clutches the side of Whitewater Canyon in the Gilo National Forest. In Whitewater Recreation Area on State 174 (Catwalk Rd.), 5 miles east of U.S. 180 at Glenwood; 505/539-2481.

Silver City

A retired mining town with Victorian architecture, a cluster of downtown galleries, and, at the Western New Mexico University Museum (off West St. at 10th St.; 505/538-6386), the world's best collection of Mimbres pottery.

Sleep and eat

Albuquerque

Best Western Rio Grande Inn. Close to Old Town. 173 rooms from $98. 1015 Rio Grande Blvd. N.W.; 800/959-4726.

La Posada de Albuquerque. Downtown hotel, built in 1939, offers classic Southwest style. 114 rooms from $89. 125 Second St. N.W.; 800/777-5732.

Sadie's Cocinita. Its ferocious salsa is a favorite. $. 6230 Fourth St. N.W.; 505/345-5339.

Santa Fe

El Rey Inn. Near downtown, and a good value for Santa Fe. 86 rooms from $89, 1862 Cerrillos Rd.; 800/521-1349.

Inn on the Alameda. Quiet luxury inn, east of the Plaza. 71 rooms from $159. 303 E. Alameda St.; 505/984-2121.

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Cafe Pasqual's. Wildly delicious but crowded; plan for an odd hour. $$$. 121 Don Gaspar Ave.; 505/983-9340.

Tia Sophia's. Best New Mexican breakfasts in Santa Fe. $. 210 San Francisco St. W.; 505/983-9880.

Silver City

Bear Mountain Lodge. A 1928 school turned into a bird-watchers' inn operated by the Nature Conservancy. 11 rooms from $115. 2251 Cottage San Rd., 3 miles north of Silver City; 877/620-2327.

Shevek & Mi. Eclectic Mediterranean menu. $$. 602 N. Bullard St.; 505/534-9168.

Taos

Fechin Inn. This elegant hotel incorporates Nicolai Fechin's home. 84 rooms from $114. 227 Paseo del Pueblo Norte; 505/751-1000.

The Historic Taos Inn. Famous historic-district hotel opened in 1936. 36 rooms from $60, 125 Paseo del Pueblo Norte; 800/826-7466.

Lambert's of Taos. Elegant setting, new American cuisine, $$$; reservations suggested. 309 Paseo del Pueblo Sur; 505/758-1009.

Rita's Mexican Restaurant. Basic and authentic. $. 1638 Paseo del Pueblo Norte; 505/751-4431.

Side trips

These nearby destinations don't rank below those on our Grand Tour, they just invite different wanderings. Use these listings and our map to create your own itinerary. For all travels, the New Mexico Atlas & Gazetteer (DeLorme Publishing Company; $20) is a wise investment.

Bandelier National Monument

Adolph Bandelier, a Swissborn amateur archaeologist, created the foundation of Southwest archaeology here. Sites date from 1175 to 1500, and there are more than 70 miles of forest hiking trails. Off State 4, 10 miles southeast of Los Alamos; 505/672-0343.

Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness

Northwest of Chaco Canyon, Bisti is serious-business badlands, a giant chess set of sandstone-and-shale hoodoos. You're on your own here--no ranger station, no trails, no interpretive signs, absolutely no water. Off State 371, about 35 miles south of Farmington; 505/599-8900.

Carlsbad Caverns National Park

Touring all the caves in the national park's 30-mile complex will take two days, but it's worth the time. Most tours are now ranger-guided; reservations recommended. Off U.S. 62/180, 7 miles west of Whites City; 505/785-2232 (information) or 800/967-2283 (tour reservations).

Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument

The national monument honors cliff dwellings the Mogollon people built around 1276, the first year of a devastating 23-year drought. Like the Ancestral Puebloan cliff dwellings far to the north, Gila has T-shaped doorways and kivas. At the end of State 15, 44 miles north of Silver City; 505/536-9461.

Los Alamos

Birthplace of the atomic bomb, the government town has the highest per capita percentage of PhDs in the country. The Brodbury Science Museum (15th St. at Central Ave.; 505/667-4444) documents the development of the A-bomb and its enduring controversies.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY TIM CARROLL

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVID ZAITZ