Coming to America

I would say "Visit Seattle", but apparently, it's feels almost too "UK like" to people who visit it directly from the UK. That's just based on the opinion of a few I talked to, though.

To answer Gale’s question I’m a Brit living in Holland, below sea level in one of the most densely populated corners of the globe. It’s flat and full. Though more of an urban type I now long for wide-open spaces, and unfamiliar landscapes. Kerry’s southwestern deserts idea sounds fantastic. Anyway, sometime next year I think.

On a (slightly) related note, a friend is carrying out academic research on US 'cultural diplomacy' during the cold war. Vast amounts of dollars were invested in visitor programme schemes where various leading European politicos + opinion-makers were invited on all-expenses-paid trips to convince them of America’s various merits, its democratic credentials etc.

A recent interviewee was Hans Van Mierlo - former Dutch foreign secretary, and founder of left-liberal party D'66- who took up the offer of such a freebie in the late '60s. His state department ‘handler’ insured he got to meet the likes of Kissinger, and Robert Kennedy. Mierlo, no doubt enjoying the attention and largess, decided to test its limits by insisting on a meeting with the Black Panthers. Thus, reluctantly, the State Department arranged a ‘secret meeting’ with Mrs Eldridge Cleaver! Her husband was still in jail.

Now that’s the sort of visit I want. Including, of course, meetings with some of the key US cultural figures that populate IL*.

One thing I didn’t expect to learn, however, is New Mexico has the highest rate of theft and violent crime in the whole of the USA. Low incomes, rich tourists, and drug problems are apparently to blame. Do any of our American contingent have some safety advice for me, - and any other recommendations of things to do around Santa Fe?

We're flying into Albuquerque, stopping with friends of the Mrs in Santa Fé, before heading off towards the Grand Canyon. If Arizona proves to be too hot (being pale-faced Northern Europeans) we'll probably head back to NM, if the bandits haven't nicked the hired car by then that is.

Is southern NM/AZ worth visiting then teeny? Any tips?

First, you should check this site out and maybe buy the book (there's a New Mexico version too, by a different author but also very good).

I especially recommend two things I've done:
1) visiting Canyon de Chelly National Monument and taking a tour into one of the canyons (especially Canyon del Muerto) with a Navajo guide, including a hike from rim to floor (and/or vice versa) if possible.
2) at least driving along the San Juan River in SE UT from Bluff to Mexican Hat, and visiting nearby Goosenecks State Park. Even better, take a 1-3+ day raft/inflatable kayak trip from Bluff.

At the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, I'd eat in the dining room of the El Tovar hotel and hike at least part of the Kaibab Trail and/or the Grandview or Hermit's Rest trails.

I would also stop in Flagstaff and at least drive past the basin of the San Francisco Peaks to the NW, visiting the nearby Museum of Northern Arizona. I've never hiked in these peaks known for skiing, but I'd love to if I had the chance. It deviates a bit from my geographic limitations, but I'd also head loop SW through Oak Creek Canyon, drop by Garland's Navajo Rugs in Sedona, and maybe stop at Tuzigoot and/or Montezuma Castle National Monuments. Sunset Crater is also worth a trip if you have time, though you can't climb it any more. You can climb several similar volcanos - SP Crater, Colton Crater, Red Mountain - a few miles N of the SF Peaks. I've never been, but they sound pretty cool.

I'd also visit Anasazi cliff ruins at at least one of Mesa Verde National Park, the less-visited Navajo National Monument (especially if you can hike to Betatakin or Keet Seel) and the least-visited Ute Tribal Park (whose visitor kiosk I once helped build), though there's at least one of these in Canyon de Chelly.

I've never been to the Hopi Reservation, but I'd definitely want to visit the mesatop villages. I'd also consider visiting Hubbell Trading Post and, if you have time, exploring some of the big Navajo res cities like Gallup and Window Rock and driving a bit around the back roads of the Navajo reservation North or South of Hopi. Don't leave without having a Navajo taco.

I've never set more than a toe or so in Northern (or any part of) New Mexico, but in addition to Taos and Santa Fe, I'd want to see Shiprock (the rock) and visit at least the following: the Bisti/De-Na-Zin Wilderness ('Bisti Badlands'), Chaco Culture National Historical Park ('Chaco Canyon'), one or more pueblos (esp. "Sky City" Acoma, Zuni and San Ildefonso, known for their pottery, silver, and pottery, respectively), and the Jemez Mountains and Red River Gorge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I'd also think about El Morro National Monument, Aztec Ruins, Pecos National Monument/Pecos Wilderness Area and Las Vegas, NM.

When will you go? In August, there's a lot going on - the Inter-Tribal Ceremonial in Gallup, the Indian Market in Santa Fe and the Feast of San Lorenzo at Acoma, Laguna and Cochiti Pueblos.

Buy a gun, like every red-blooded American.

We're there for the first three weeks of August. Plenty of time to travel around and see some of these sights.

Tucson is a cool city to explore, and the Arizona-Sonora desert museum is an easy way to see all the exotic critters like bighorn sheep and javelinas and coatamundi and tarantulas up close. http://desertmuseum.org/

If you take I-10 through Tucson, you'll go through the airplane graveyard on the east side of town, or you can go to the Pima Air Museum for a better look: http://pimaair.org/

My dad worked on the Tohono O'odham reservation, in Sells, near the Kitt Peak observatory. More stars than you've ever seen: http://www.noao.edu/kpno/
You can also see San Xavier del Bac on the rez: http://www.sanxaviermission.org/

The city of Tombstone is also in the region if you are into old-westy type stuff, it's pretty hokey though.

Cool off by going into the mountains or the caves:
http://www.pr.state.az.us/Parks/parkhtml/kartchner.html
http://www.colossalcave.com/
http://www.nps.gov/chir/

Bisbee is a neat old mining town that's managed to stay alive, you can take a mine tour and stay in the airstream hotel. http://www.bisbeearizona.com/ http://www.azcentral.com/travel/arizona/oddballaz/shadydell.html

There are a lot of ghost towns scattered around if you're into that as well.

That time of year, it can get as hot as 120 in Kingman/Bullhead City, Yuma, and Phoenix, and 110 in Tucson. Make sure your car is reliable and stocked with a few gallons of water, and know when the next gas station is.

The Santa Fe Indian Market is on Aug. 21-22 and sounds like it turns the whole city upside down.

The Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial in Gallup is Aug. 3-8, with nighttime parades on the three middle nights. Aug. 6 is the monthly rug auction at the ceremonial office. There are also nightly indian dances at the Gallup Cultural Center every night of the month.

The Feast of San Lorenzo is Aug. 10.

And the world-famous Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival will be on throughout your time there, featuring, among others, Pinchas Zukerman and Ursula Oppens.

I think I've convinced myself that I'm going here sometime in the next year.

I also highly recommend you read in advance or bring with you a copy of one of Tony Hillerman's 'Navajo Detective' mystery novels, which, while not scholarly works, give you a somewhat accurate and very entertaining window into Navajo and other cultures, old and contemporary, from an outsider who is a friend to many of the people he writes about (he has literally been named a 'special friend' of the Navajo Nation, though he has his detractors). His early novels consisted of two series of three books each about separate Navajo Tribal Policemen - older and more cynical (and probably more entertaining) Joe Leaphorn and younger, more traditional Jim Chee. One book from each series is generally regarded as the best, if not the best of all his work - Dance Hall of the Dead (the second Leaphorn, includes lots of Zuni content) and People of Darkness (the first Chee, much attention to witchcraft). The detectives come together in his later books, the best of which is probably A Thief of Time (focusing on the Anasazi, and taking place in part at Chaco Canyon).

Though he did not write much about the specific country I've talked about above, focusing more on the canyonlands of Utah and the deserts of Southern Arizona, one of the great writers about the Southwest and land in general (and, ok, one of my favorite writers) is Edward Abbey. I also recommend picking up a book of his good-humored, impolitic (to be polite), and impassioned essays or fiction. His classic, Desert Solitaire, is an account of the seasons he spent as a park ranger in Arches National Park in Utah. Other good nonfiction collections, which I like better than his fiction, include Down the River (slightly scattershot, but perhaps a good alternate place to start; includes chapters on the Grand Canyon and the San Juan River) and Beyond the Wall. His famous fiction work is The Monkey Wrench Gang (though actually this is probably not something that would endear you to a customs officer, given that it's the inspiration for 'eco-terrorists'). An earlier work of fiction, The Brave Cowboy, is set in a town based upon Albuquerque, and was the inspiration for a Kirk Douglas movie. Abbey himself provides the best description of these last two - a 'comic extravaganza' and a 'romance' (involving a loner and a horse), respectively. Another novel, Fire on the Mountain, is set in Southern New Mexico.

Finaly, an interesting historical work (which I've never read) might be Wallace Stegner's Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West, about the Southwest's version of Lewis and Clark, who led the first trip down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon and later became the director of the U.S. Geological Survery.

Also check out Meteor Crater, it's near the Grand Canyon.

We'll probably be staying in the north Teeny but some great ideas if we decide to head south. The State Parks you linked looked tempting. Having lived below sea-level for 8 years in the pancake flat Netherlands I'm especially looking forward to the mountains and deserts, and a landscape unlike anything I've previously seen.

I really appreciate the reading list gabbneb + and will be definitely picking up some of these when we get out there (unless the American Book Center in The Hague can sort me out).

I'd be interested in the VLA, White Sands, Carlsbad, and Roswell (and the unmentioned Guadalupe Mountains National Park, Gila Wilderness, Jornada del Muerto, and Las Cruces), but these are in Southern new mexico if not Northern Texas. While I'd very much like to see these areas, I'd want to really focus on them and points South, such as Texas' Big Bend National Park. And to reach this area, you have to cross a lot of central New Mexico that most people consider uninteresting. Similar arguments apply to Southern Arizona, which may be more interesting (certainly more different) than Southern New Mexico, but is further away and again that means you'd want to spend more time there. If you do go off course, I think the first place to go is not South, but North into Utah, either 1) crossing the Colorado Northwest through Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and traveling W through Capital Reef National Park and Hwy 12 through Escalante to Bryce Canyon and maybe even Zion Nationa Park and looping back East to Page on Alt-89, or 2) heading North to Moab and Arches and Canyonalands National Parks and maybe returning on a big detour East into the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and heading South through Telluride towards Cortez, CO near Mesa Verde and Farmington, NM. If you want to drive through as much different country as possible, by all means follow one of these routes (and if you're not planning on being back for a long time, maybe you should), both of which may be more beautiful than anything else you could see, but you could easily spend a week on each (mostly dayhiking) and it means you will have less time to stop and look at many of the places in the more immediate area you outlined above. I'm thinking about a trip of my own (in October?) and think I need to spend at least 10 days, with interesting drives, visits to pueblos and museums and hiking trails and maybe a day river trip, in just the areas around Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Taos and Las Vegas.

hahaha, quit complaining. when i want to see eastern new mexico i have to cross a lot of central texas! it's about 700 miles!