On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Morning. One last entry from me. Let’s see if we can avoid controversy today (somehow I doubt it).
Idaho Springs is a quick forty-five minutes from me, and they have caves, so I’m often up there for their hot springs.
But when I need a real break to recharge, we pack up the car and drive a few hours to New Mexico to Ojo Caliente. Just looking at the photos relaxes me. Hopefully, they’ll do the same for you.
Above the springs are ancient ruins. You can read more about the history here.
Surrounding the springs are the ruins of the cities populated before the birth of history. Posi or Poseouinge, “village at the place of the green bubbling hot springs” was the largest of 4 Pueblos surrounding the springs and home to thousands of people. Because of the work of archaeologists Adolph Bandelier and Edgar Hewitt, we know that Posi was a vibrant center of activity until the 15th century. The unusually diverse and abundant styles of pottery shards and other artifacts remain as a testament to Posi and the spring’s long-standing iconic significance within the larger region.
Bonus Rio Grande:
Well, now I’m relaxed and remembering to breathe…
Quinerly
Love Ojo. Going to be there in February! Jemez Springs is fun also!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“Hot Eye”?
Wag
As many times as I have been to northern New Mexico, I’ve never been to Ojo Caliente. I guess that needs to change. Very nice photos!
waratah
@Wag: I was looking at the photos and they were not familiar to me! I find it hard to believe my husband missed this lovely place.
Thank you TaMara for the beautiful photos. The Rio is striking every where I have seen it.
Cheryl Rofer
Haven’t been to Ojo in a long time. I hear they’ve fancied it up and made it more expensive.
arrieve
Looks like a lovely place to get away from the New York winter (looking ahead a few months…..)
Quinerly
@Cheryl Rofer: it is definitely more expensive.
hedgehog mobile
Thank you, TaMara. Embarrassed to say I’ve never been to Idaho Springs. Have you been to Cottonwood Hot Springs in Buena Vista? I need to add Ojo to my list.
And now I’m jonesing for Ten Thousand Waves in Santa Fe…
the Conster
Ojo is one of my favorite places on earth, and I own land in Taos, very much near where you’re viewing the Rio.
Yes, Ten Thousand Waves too. The Land of Enchantment, indeed.
TaMara (HFG)
@hedgehog mobile: What Idaho Springs has going for it, it’s close and you hangout in hot spring caves. It’s not exactly pretty. The town is very pretty and they have some nice restaurants.
I have not been to Buena Vista, nor Ten Thousand Waves. On my list now…
Miss Bianca
@Cheryl Rofer: they have. Every time I go now, I get nostalgic for the days I first discovered it, 20 + years ago. The Hush Nazis are the worst part – they have people going around shooshing you if they think you’re disturbing the Wah by y’know, having a conversation or God forbid, laughing.
But it’s still a cool and lovely place.
Miss Bianca
@TaMara (HFG): @hedgehog mobile: Orvis. Orvis. Orvis. Orvis. In Ridgway. My favorite, tho’ it’s been years now, since I no longer live on the Western Slope.
StringOnAStick
I second Miss Bianca about Orvis hot springs.
J R in WV
We’ve been to several hot springs around the SW, even up to Idaho Hot Lava Springs (or is it Lave Hot Springs?) in SE Idaho. That used to be a TB sanitarium, turned to fun in hot water after antibiotics were discovered. There are hot springs near Safford AZ, where there is still a copper mine working, and in Gila National Forest in far western NM not too far from Silver City, NM, where there are small silver mines.
We haven’t visited the springs near Taos, nor in Colorado… didn’t even know about Idaho Springs, will make it a point to visit those next time out west.
Rand Careaga
True story: beginning in 2013 my wife took it upon herself to begin looking after an elderly neighbor, now in her mid-nineties and in assisted living. She visits the woman a few times each week, picks up her prescriptions, runs interference with the appalling healthcare bureaucracy. When we visited friends outside Taos in 2015, the old girl mentioned that she had grown up in Ojo Caliente “in a big house with three trees in front”—she could not remember the address—and Lina assured her that we would look it up.
So we dragooned our friends into a trip out to Ojo, something like an hour away and, wouldn’t you know, there were several houses with trees outside them. So the spousette buttonholes the first passer-by she sees, a man of advanced years, and asks him if he knows where the Garcias used to live (I, meanwhile, am rolling my eyes hard enough to strain the relevant muscles). “Well, there are a lot of Garcias around here,” the man replies. “I’m trying to find where my friend Dora Garcia used to live.” “Dora Garcia? Dora Garcia from San Francisco??” (Oakland, actually, but we get that sort of thing a lot).
Turns out that the guy is Dora’s cousin and childhood best friend. He pointed us to where we could find the old Garcia spread—some ways outside of town, but readily identifiable from his description—so we drove there and took a lot of pictures for the old thing. Meanwhile I’m muttering “I’m never going to hear the end of this,” to which the wife agrees “You never will.”
We finished up the afternoon with our friends* at the hot springs, which are indeed well worth the visit.
*In the early eighties, when we were all skinnier and comelier, social hot-tubbing was in vogue in the Bay Area, and there was a period over the course of a few years during which pretty much everyone in my circle had the opportunity to check one another out naked, which was kind of gratifying. This time, although we paid for a private pool, no one shed their bathing attire. Some memories are best left sealed and undisturbed.
West of the Rockies
@Miss Bianca:
I’d love to visit, but the Human Silencers sound very annoying.
Major Major Major Major
I can’t believe you live, and spend tourist dollars, in a state that does so much frakking; in a city overrun by NRA dollars. You are complicit in the poisoning of groundwater and the murder of schoolchildren.
/sarcasm
TaMara (HFG)
@Major Major Major Major: I hate you just a little right now. :-) LOL