Abiquiú & the Chama Valley — Georgia O'Keeffe's Landscapes

Ninety minutes north of Albuquerque, where the Chama River cuts through red-and-ochre cliffs, lies the country that Georgia O'Keeffe spent forty years painting until the landscape and the artist became inseparable. Day one drives into that palette directly at Ghost Ranch, the rambling high-desert retreat whose flat-topped Cerro Pedernal — the mesa O'Keeffe painted obsessively and where her ashes were scattered — presides over cliffs of Chinle red and Entrada gold, then follows the sculpted shoreline of Abiquiú Lake beneath them. Day two turns to the woman herself: a reserved guided tour of the Georgia O'Keeffe Home and Studio in Abiquiú village, the walled adobe compound where she lived and worked, followed by a long soak in the ancient geothermal waters of Ojo Caliente Mineral Springs before the drive home. A night in the valley lets the light do its slow work.