Turquoise Trail and Tinkertown

I'm posting some pictures today that I took a few weeks ago while we were staying in Tijeras, New Mexico on the Turquoise Trail. This is probably one of my favorite places in the U.S. The Turquoise Trail is a scenic byway  between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains. It runs through a series of small towns that were once mining towns but became ghost towns for many years until the 60's and 70's when a lot of artists moved in and converted the old mining shacks into homes, stores and galleries. It's a beautiful drive with a lot of interesting places to stop along the way.

 

Cerillos is the town closest to Santa Fe. There is a beautiful greenish colored turquoise named Cerillos turquoise which is mined in Cerillos. They sell some there at the Cerillos Trading Post and Petting Zoo.

 

Madrid is the next town on the trail. It's a charming little town filled with art galleries and stores and brightly painted houses.

My favorite stop on the Turquoise Trail is a place called Tinkertown. Tinkertown is hard to describe. It is a folk art museum built by Ross Ward and contains his life's work. Ross Ward was a sign painter who worked for the circus. In his spare time he would hand-carve a series of  miniature scenes like boot hill or an Indian  trading post.. He also collected small, antique toys that he used in his displays. He built Tinkertown by transforming a group of old mining shacks and adding bottle walls to connect the buildings. He collected other things, like antique wedding figurines, fortune telling machines and various circus artifacts, which are also on display in the museum. It's an amazing place: quirky and oddly inspirational.

We left Tijeras and headed back to Storrie Lake for a few weeks. We are officially headed  east now, on our way to Maryland. We're spending the weekend in Tucumcari and  plan to head to Texas on Tuesday. There has been wild weather in New Mexico the past few weeks- hail storms, wildfires and extreme heat- but we've been very lucky and missed most of that. It was actually kind of chilly at Storrie Lake last week which was a nice change.

I hope you enjoyed today's pictures. Thanks for stopping by!