We have spent two days now in the beautiful mountains around Santa Fe, New Mexico, and it certainly feels like we have finally biked past the Great Plains! Yesterday we biked into Pueblo, Colorado, where we were picked up by my friend Liz to stay with her and her family on the Nambe Pueblo Reservation near Santa Fe. We left our bikes at a bike shop in Pueblo to get them in shape for the Rocky Mountains, as we took a couple of days off to get our bodies ready to start pedaling again.
By all appearances, we have truly reached “the West” (we were finally sure of this when we saw the Stetson window at the Western Apparel Store in Pueblo), and we are so excited for what feels like the final leg of our journey. But we didn’t suddenly reach the West, as I might have expected – as early as northern Kentucky, we started seeing convenience stores called “Cowboy” and “Cowgirl.” This only increased in Missouri, and by Kansas, we were seeing business and town names lettered in classic old West font and cowboy paraphernalia everywhere. In Kansas, we learned, this is a tribute to the history of the cattle drives from Texas up into Kansas.
In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense that each of these areas would have been considered “the frontier” at different points in history, and that the way people think about these places now would reflect this history. But at the time, it seemed strange to think that we would have already seen monikers of the Western frontier when we were less than a third of the way through our trip. I am now excited to see how these impressions change as we get into the mountain towns – a completely different kind of Western history. What happens when your geographical history gets eclipsed by new developments? In a way, this sensation reminded me of how I felt thinking about historical settlements in the East that have become suburbs of large cities, visually obscuring the unique history of each place.
Similarly, it has been fascinating to suddenly discover new layers of history in Colorado and New Mexico. Throughout the trip, the founding dates of towns and buildings have become more and more recent, but here we have started seeing the older Spanish settlements, as well as the incredible history of the Pueblo civilizations. I was so amazed to see the architectural uniformity of the city of Santa Fe, which is regulated to preserve the appearance of adobe buildings. Although Santa Fe is one of the most touristy locations we have been on the trip, the question of how communities (however small) interact with their history has definitely been on our minds. As we get further West, and the history gets more and more recent, I will be curious to see how immediate this history seems.
Finally, another blog entry fix! Great to hear how well things are going, and I can’t wait to hear about your adventures in the Rockies and then the Cascades.
I’ll see your parents this weekend. We’ll miss you at the reunion, but you’re giving us a lot to talk about!
I’m so glad y’all made it to post again–after my second journey through the west (by car, but still) a week ago, I started to get mighty afraid it was for a bad reason that you hadn’t updated. Hope Santa Fe is going swell.
I miss bicycling. It would be so swell to do right now. Too bad my wheels got robbed from me. Have fun crossing the rockies!
Hey Rhiannon,
Just met Gitte at Herbert’s 95 birthday party last weekend. She told me about your trip. WOW! that’s a long way. I bet it is a wonderful experience.
I could kick myself, because i didn’t use that chance to go for such a bing thing before applying for a full-time job.
all the best
Martin
Your posts are wonderful reflections of the country’s terrain. When Doug was in college, or grad school, he remembers a policeman in Chicago telling him, “We do things differently here out west.” Having come from Seattle, or maybe Berkeley, this seemed absurd.
What an adventure you are having. See you at home … one day.