New Mexico Pilgrimage Itinerary

Breakfast, 🍱 bag lunch, 🍽️ dinner included.

After breakfast at the Awakening Together Retreat House in lovely La Veta, Colorado, we will visit Colorado’s oldest town, San Luis. Perched high atop a mesa in the center of town, rests the beautiful Shrine of the Stations of the Cross. To access the shrine, head up the dirt path, which is less than a mile long, to the top of the mesa. Along the trail are a series of bronze statues that intricately depict the last hours of Jesus Christ’s life. Each station is adorned with a plaque inscribed with Bible Scriptures. There are a total of 15 stations, with the last one at the top depicting Christ’s resurrection.

Later in the day, we will visit St. Francis of Assisi Misson Church. Built between 1772 and 1816 when New Mexico was part of the Vice-Royalty of New Spain, it was the subject of several paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographs by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand and Ned Scott. Georgia O’Keeffe described it as “one of the most beautiful buildings left in the United States by the early Spaniards.”

We will end the day with dinner at our VRBO in Taos where we will also be lodging for the night.

DAY 2, Tuesday, September 17, Abiquiu, NM

Breakfast, 🍱 bag lunch, 🍽️ dinner included.

We will travel from the VRBO in Taos on a day trip to Abiquiu.

We will begin our day at the Ghost Ranch. The Ghost Ranch has a reputation as a “thin place” — where the boundaries between the divine and the physical world fall away — dating back to ancestral Pueblans and Spanish colonists who called the area Piedra Lumbre, the Valley of Shining Stone. On three sides, 700-foot cliff faces are striped with desert colors, from dramatic maroon to sparkly white and yellow, advancing and receding as clouds shift across the sky. To the south, the Rio Chama valley draws the eye toward the blue-gray silhouette of Cerro Pedernal. The lopsided mountain appears in dozens of works by artist Georgia O’Keeffe, who once wrote that God told her if she painted the Pedernal enough, “I could have it.”

We will also visit Plaza Blanca, or the ‘white place’. Plaza Blanca rests protected and guarded in a valley of the Rio Chama hills.  Made famous by a 1940 painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, the sense inside the walls and spires of white sandstone is that it’s been long forgotten; so lonely that it whispers to itself for company.

Near Plaza Blanca, you will find the Dar Al-Islam Mosque, the first planned Islamic community in the United States. The Mosque is dedicated to cultivating greater understanding of Islam among Americans of all faiths in order to establish commonalities and build stronger relationships.

We will end the day with dinner at our VRBO in Taos where we will also be lodging.

Breakfast, 🍱 bag lunch, 🍽️ dinner included.

Today, we will have a leisurely visit to the healing waters of Ojo Caliente Hot Springs. The hot springs are included in your pilgrimage fee. If you’d like to enjoy optional spa services, you will be able to reserve those services for an extra fee. You will also be able to get lunch on your own at the spa. Be sure to bring your swimsuit!

We will end the day with free time in Taos Plaza for shopping. And we will return to our VRBO in Taos where we will have dinner and be lodging.

Today, we will visit Chimayo Sanctuary.Chimayo, a little adobe church in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northern New Mexico, is one of the most visited holy sites in America. It’s known for its holy dirt that’s said to have healing properties. Chimayo’s fame spread to the larger world around the year 1810, when, according to legend, a local friar saw a light springing from one of the hills near the Santa Cruz River. After following it to its source, he found in the earth a crucifix bearing a dark-skinned Jesus. The local villagers paid homage to the relic and then took it to a church in nearby Santa Cruz. Mysteriously, during the night the crucifix returned to its original location. After this happened two more times, the locals built a small chapel to house the crucifix in Chimayo.

In the afternoon, we will also visit Bandelier National Monument, which protects over 33,000 acres of rugged but beautiful canyon and mesa country.  Here there is evidence of a human presence going back over 11,000 years.  Petroglyphs, dwellings carved into the soft rock cliffs, and standing masonry walls pay tribute to the early days of a culture that still survives in the surrounding communities. We will visit these cliff dwellings of the ancient Pueblo people–dwellings built against the rock face, several stories tall.  We will also have the opportunity to hike as the Bandelier National Monument has over 70 miles of trail within its boundaries, many leading to Ancestral Pueblo sites.

We will retire at the end of the day at The Lodge of Santa Fe and we will each be able to walk into Santa Fe for dinner at the restaurant of our choosing.