Inn & Marcantile at Ojo Caliente

The little, six-room B&B just outside the gate of the main spa is a real favorite. The rooms are comfortable and free of TV. No other appliances either, but guests are welcome to use the adjacent kitchen, which has everything. Pleasant indoor and outdoor sitting and breakfast tables.

The breakfast is really fine. Deserves to be called gourmet, because much is home-grown as well as home-made. It's different every day, and personally prepared by a friendly staff - and sometimes by the owners. These two ladies have been here for a long time - as I can attest from frequent stays. This time I learned from one of them that the little fruits on the counter were not grapes, but plums. indigenous, pre-Colombian plums, which she has cultivated and turned into jams and syrup of gluten-free pancakes. Then there were her peaches. Maybe not indigenous, but really delicious, grown in her own orchard.  The small peaches - like wild strawberries - gain in flavor what they lack in dimension. Best I have ever tasted, I think.

To top it off,, there is a lively, old, adobe church right across the street. 

San Luis and Rabbit Brush

The San Luis Valley is a high (almost 8,000 feet) park between the San Juan and the Sangre de Cristo ranges, where the Rio Grande rises. It is amed for the little town near the New Mexico border, which is the oldest in Colorado. I drove so9uth from Salida Springs through this kind of landscape:

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Rabbit Brush is in full bloom this time of year, turning the valley floor gold.

The Sangre de Cristo are my favotrite mo9untains, stretching from SantaFe on the southern end north to this vallet. The main Co9lorado peak is called Blanca because itis often white from top to the vallet floor. Not now, though. Bare because of little precipitation, although there was a smattering that turned it white for me in the afternoon.

I think Blanca is my favorite mountain. For me, it marks the furthest extent of the Spanish Empire in the new world. .It is also the highest of the range, at 14, 344 feet:

The Spanish neer settled the area, though. They set it aside for the Ute people. AFter we took it from the Mesxicans in 1848, farmers, the Utes were driven away and Spanish farmers from further so9uth were recruited. San Luis was incorporated in 1851. This was also the time of the arrival of the first RC Bishop  of Santa Fe, Jean Baptiste Lamy who founded a number of parishes (San Acacio, San Antonito, San Luis, San Pedro y Pablo), which still have hamlets named for them. Lamy came from Clermont-Ferrand via Cincinnati. Willa Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop is based on his ministry. Until then, the nearest bishop was in Chihuahua, and things got a little rough in New Mexico



Virgo de San Acacio - oldest church in Colorado.

Among other things, there arose a society of flagellants called penitentes, which Lamy tried to supress - unsu8ccessfully. They went undergro9und until they were later reconciled, agreeing to tone down some of their practices.  Their muradas, windowless meeting halls, are still to be seen.

The San Luis Valley is also home to a society called S.P.M.D.T.U., a Hispanic labor union founded in 1900 and still going.

At one poinbt while exploring these towns, I had to stop for a herd of cows, driven by cowboys and cowgirls on ATVs!

Then on to Ojo Caliente, named by the first European to see it, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca in 1536. He had been shipwrecked in Florida, and somehow made his way to New Mexico! When he arrived, the spring was already sacred to the Indians. [There is a pretty good eponymous  movie about this. The Indians 0of Ojo Caliente look like lepers, because of their salutary habit of mud-bathing.]

Now, Ojo Caliente is a fancy spa, with several different kinds of mineral bathsk, icluding iron and soda (magnesium) the oldest, arsenic, and lithium,, in addition to llarge heated pools. Mud bathing is still offered. All with the pleasant aroma of pinon from the fireplaces in the air.

 Arsenic pool at Ojo Caliente

So, the sun has come out, and it iis time to bathe!

A big cloudburst with lightning shut down the outdoor baths - they are afraid of lightening, I guess. I had  more than two hours of soaking, though and that it enough for today.