North Isn't Always The Best Option

When I was looking for "Breaking Bad" filming locations around Albuquerque, NM, at the end of July, I began pondering why it was that I knew so little about Santa Ana Pueblo. It shouldn't be that big a mystery: it's right next to Bernalillo.

Nevertheless, in part because of its small size, and in part because it's off the main roads, I couldn't remember ever having gone through Santa Ana Pueblo. So, I decided on a plan: use Google maps on my i-Phone to help me drive through the Santa Ana reservation in my little rent-a-car. All I had to do was keep driving north, and everything would be OK.


I kept having the sensation I had been here before. Maybe I had, when I was a kid, or maybe I was confusing it with a trip through Pena Blanca, also when I was a kid.

Now, I know intellectually that this notable landmark is the core of an extinct volcano. Nevertheless, when I was a kid, my father told me it was a monster that had been frozen into stone. No matter what anyone says, for me, it will always be a monster frozen into stone.


The Church at Santa Ana.


I crossed the ditch into agricultural fields, lost the pavement, started travelling a dirt road, and kept heading north.


A magnificent alfalfa field!


I startled what appeared to be a colony of Gunnison's Prairie Dogs.

Nevertheless, the road deteriorated, fast. The car was in danger of getting stuck. I also discovered that, despite Google Maps' prediction that exits existed to Old Highway 85, these exits were barred and locked. Google Maps promised that if I just kept going north, more exits would appear. This began sounding suspiciously like the way the Spanish explorer Coronado was enticed to look for the Seven Cities of Cibola in the infinity of the Great Plains.


So, there was only one sound recourse left: head south!