Ghost Ranch + Abiquiu Landscapes Day Tour from Taos

An hour and a half from Taos, the landscape begins to shift into something otherworldly. This is the country that drew Georgia O'Keeffe for the last half of her life, and through her, photographers like Ansel Adams, along with a long line of filmmakers chasing its impossible color and light. It is also remote and easy to get turned around in, which is exactly why we drive the long miles and hidden turnoffs, so you can spend the day inside the scenery rather than navigating it.

At Ghost Ranch, a 21,000-acre expanse on the edge of the Colorado Plateau, you take in the sweeping formations and the afternoon light as it sets the ribbons of Entrada sandstone aglow, rising over the Chama River valley. Then the palette flips at Plaza Blanca, the White Place, a protected landscape of towering white sandstone obelisks. Its geology tells a staggering story, volcanic pyroclastic flows and a time when all of this was ocean floor, and O'Keeffe made it famous in her "White Place" paintings.

In between, the day slows down for a gourmet lunch on the shaded patio at Café Abiquiú, and a stop at the Bosshard Gallery, once the original Bode's Mercantile and now home to a fine collection of Indigenous textiles, jewelry, and ceramics. It is a day that trades gallery walls for the real thing, and sends you home seeing the Southwest the way its artists always have.