Road trip Dallas to Santa Fe
“ Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
A solo road trip can be a quick and easy way to ignite your creative spirit. Road tripping the US has never been easier with access to air bnb, our modern cars and technological luxuries. I loosely planned this trip to the southwest with an itinerary list I want to share with you to explore on your next adventure. My intention for this trip was to reconnect nature and build art connections in Santa Fe.
On your way… Cadillac Ranch , Amarillo Texas
On your way out of Texas, stop through Amarillo to experience at Cadillac Ranch. No need to bring spray paint to make your mark as you are likely to find some half empty cans out there. As a part of the painters tour, I had to add this gem to the list. This famous monument iconically glorified is told to represent America’s dreams. They are an image of art and commerce, fame and folly, materialism and spirituality. A piece of what once was being buried into earth.
First Stop Dallas to Carlsbad Cavern: Distance 477 miles, 7 hours
First Stop Dallas to Carlsbad Cavern: Distance 477 miles, 7 hours
Carlsbad cavern located in the Chihuahuan Desert is 120 caves known at this time and this number will continue to change as exploration continues, some of the caves are as large as 140 mies by 1604 miles deep. The elevation range is 3596-6369 feet above sea level.
Upon entering Carlsbad there is a paved entrance that will lead you to the information center. From here you can take an elevator straight down into the grand ballroom of the cave or hike the .8 miles to the natural entrance. Through the natural entrance you come to a large gaping hole in the middle of a rounded rock hill. As you step through you notice an immediate temperature difference and with each step forward silence falls upon you. The impressive scale of this cave is something to behold, it is another world untouched by light and the elements from the surface. Within the earth's domain the interior walls have created an entire cathedral-like ecosystem of their own.
Personally I've seen a lot of man made cathedrals throughout Europe, I've explored the grand canyon and the hoodoos of Utah… yet I had never laid eyes on something so majestic as Carlsbad Cavern.
It's so quiet, you can hear your heart beat beneath your breath, and as you traverse further into her inner walls the landscape reminds you of an extraterrestrial space. Formations stand tall and obscure as the path way winds and weaves through open and tight corridors. With every step forward the view becomes more complex. Water dripping excess expansively, calcite that looks like ice caps billow from the surface and the ceiling above you. The cavern continues. It is expansive, sexy, dripping with wet thin hairs of limestone, its every shade of Spanish Earth and Irish cream that I could ever imagine. Naples yellow is the most saturated of the colors in the mix, a hue standing out from the earth toned folds, peaks, and valleys. Folds of long, thin, and dripping rock billow in and out of the ceiling as if you're under ten thousand silk sheets falling from an unmade giants bed… they have been calcified in time. This hollow interior mirrored from above and below entrances you, pulls you inward to a place within you that is expansive… like the grand canyon with a lid on it. The mysterious, spooky, yet glorious cathedral has dramatic things to say, her magnificence will still you to you bones as you become digested into the earth's inner surface you begin to feel small… from being on the interior. Stalactites and stalagmites elegantly reach out towards each other like Adam reaching towards God in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Cool, crisp air… a decent so far beneath the surface your ears are popping. Your eyes relax, the cave walls begin to reveal more and more and more. This space is quietly filled with seekers, the cave dwellers… shuffling around in dim light to be in the presence of nature's monument. Some of her formations look like gigantic mushrooms with silky folds, hard white and listening formations, hit with spotted light the calcite pours out a masterpiece.
As a painter I have always found caves fascinating one of the first places that humanity begin to gather for sacred ritual, the walls in which man decided to take a piece of charcoal and draw a masterpiece, that would 34,000 years later call attention to a land we now call France. Carlsbad’s mystery and majesty is a must see for the southwest explorer and will remain high on my list of favorite places.
Destination 2 : Carlsbad Cavern to White Sands, New Mexico
Distance : 181 miles, 3 hours, 19 minutes drive
The wind swept gypsum sand dunes is a pure white dazzling sight in the Tularosa Basin. It is 225 square miles of dry marsh playa encrusted with selenite crystals created by the evaporation of gypsum-ladun runoff water. After experiencing the piercing maximalism that is Carlsbad, White Sands greets you with a minimalist view and a breath of fresh air. The stretching wind blown dunes of pure white took my mind to a place of focused thought and purity. This place is ever shifting by the wind, not held down by stones or thought, it has been given a hundred shifting names. It's so bright here in the middle of the day , sunglasses are a must! If you are really going to be exploring the dunes make sure to keep track of where you are, as these dunes can shift and change with the wind. You can hear the wind softly sweeping over you, vast and brilliant… visitors meander between her gentle slopes. What appears to be not so far takes quite a while to actually get through. The gleaming landscape is spotted with Joshua trees, long thin plants with yellow flowers, they are short and tough. Little birds take flight around you, dipping into the spotted grasses and fluttering around you… sweeping over the gypsum so bright this is the perfect place to sit, take a deep breath and write. The blue mountains in the distance offer a colored horizon that will happily greet brilliant violet sunsets. With the seeing sun the colors radiate above you as the grasses burn gold. The night sky will take over you, enveloping you in a sea of stars and the stillness of the night will greet your campfire. The moonlight hits the dunes and turns her wavy wind blown patterns into a high lighted silver sea. Here you can rest on the dunes of gypsum and tap into the metaphysical healing quality of selenite that is clarity. Gypsum has been used to help break through barriers of stagnation in order to promote personal growth, it can create mental clearing, an energetic foundation for creativity and foster energetic support for bone strength and growth. The morning sunrise will greet you with brilliance and from here I made my way to Santa Fe.
Destination 3: Santa Fe
Santa Fe is a quiet oil painters dream. The canyon landscape appears minimal from afar but up close it quickly encapsulates your vision into a terra-cotta sunset pallet. Known for providing the inspiration and home of the famed Georgia O'Keeffe, it's easy to tap into the mystic quality that is this small canyon town. The city is totally tapped with handmade things. Precious jewelry, turquoise in every color, hand made pottery with tiny perfect geometric design, bronze sculptures, hand beaded dresses, hand quilted fabrics, and an array of stylistic oil paintings.
Top 8 Santa Fe things to do :
#1 : Breakfast or dinner at the La Fonda on the Plaza
#2: Spa treatments at Ten Thousand Waves
#3. Gallery hopping on Canyon Road
# 5. Contemporary art walk through the Rail Yard
#6. Meow Wolf , you got to do this one. The first of its kind before instragramable experiences lost real ingenuity, this is an incredible example of artists coming together.
#7. Tapas and the Paella at El Ferol
#8. Drinks and a stay at the El Ray boutique hotel
Destination 4: Santa Fe to the Petrified Forrest and the Painted Desert, Arizona
Distance 269 Miles, 3 hrs and 56 minutes
The Petrified forest is in northeastern Arizona in Navajo and Apache countries . The 230 square mile park is a dessert famed for its large deposits of petrified wood. The fallen trees of the Triassic Epoch about 2225 million years ago have become completely fossilized. More than 500 archeological sites, including petroglyphs have been discovered in the park as it used to hold dwellings of of early human inhabitants that arrived at least 8000 years ago. This geological rich treasure sits next to the colorful painted desert, a sea of bed lands of fine grained mudstone, claystone and siltstone exposed to wind and water over a period of time creating large mounds of elephant like skin over a vast landscape. Entire logs have turned completely to quartz, opal and crystal and have left stunning colors on the petrified pieces. Stones that used to once be wood are now topped in dazzling crystal and colored bright ocher yellow, purple, terracotta red and Spanish earth. At some points it looked like i had walked into my father's woodshop, the entire ground beneath me filled with splices of wood chips- except it's not wood, its stone. The Navajo and Hope reservations occupy a large part of the Painted Desert and the Navajo use the variegated brightly colored sands for their famous sand paintings.
Homeward Bound:
All and all the trip was a great insight to the beauty of the southwest. I got to play with my camera in nature, wrote some poetry, ate some green chilies, and meandered through beautiful desert landscapes. One thing I can really appreciate about driving through Texas is the vast, expansive openness of the sky. A long stretching road for hundreds of miles, engulfing you in clouds as you make your way toward your winding destiny.
Solo Ladies Travel Tips :
Only stay in Air bib’s with multiple great reviews, stay with a certified super-host if you can, look for places with private locked entry and exit points.
Never tell other travelers where you are staying or your next destination points
Always be aware of your surroundings and don’t drink too much when you’re exploring a city
Share with a close friend your itinerary
Hike smart and with a first aid kit, if you plan on being off grid have a gps locater with you.
Photograph by Rachel Marie Heimerman
Kels recommended Road Trip Reads :
Jack Kerouac : On the Road
Ralph Potts : Vagabonding
David Sedaris : When you are engulfed in flames (for the laughs)
Alan Ginsberg: Howl
Paula Coelho : The Alchemist
Tom Wolfe : The electric cooled acid test
Jon Krakauer : Into the wild '
Gregory Dielh : Travel as Transformation