El Vado, pinholed

 Some blue sky and bright sun prompted me to load some Fomapan 100 in my pinhole camera.  I then headed down Central to the motels near where Route 66 crosses the Rio Grande.  The area is undergoing rapid development and the few remaining motels are being surrounded by multi-story apartments and shops.  The El Vado, closest to the river, was built in 1937 and restored in 2018 with the help of a 2 million dollar grant from the city.

The Fomapan 100 negatives had good density with two second exposures and I was pleased with the film's grain and tonalities.  This was the last roll of Fomapan I had in the refrigerator and I probably won't buy any more even though I was satisfied with its performance.  It is $6.49 at both Freestyle and B&H, while Ilford's new Kentmere 120 is still just $4.99 from the Film Photography Project.  

El Vado Motel

On Sunday we rode our bikes about a mile west to Zendo Coffee, part of the newly restored El Vado Motel.

Built in 1937, the motel was closed when we came to Albuquerque ten years ago.  A developer nearly bulldozed the place, but the City took over the property and then contributed 3 million to its restoration which was recently completed.

In addition to the motel rooms, the multi-use development also features a number of small restaurants, shop spaces, meeting rooms, a taproom and a large patio with a fountain.  The restoration apparently stuck pretty closely to the original Spanish Pueblo Revival style, though the white stucco and blue trim buildings combined with the intense summer sun makes the place resemble a transplanted bit of Santorini without the views.

The outdoor seating in the big patio has some potential, but the shade umbrellas are mostly ineffective in the morning and afternoon hours when the place is most likely to be used.  Unless some more substantial shade structures are installed the patio is likely to be more decorative than useful.

The motel is adjacent to the golf course and just across the street from the Botanic Garden.  There is a lot of development going on in the area which is rapidly transforming the character of the place in mostly welcome ways.

Central Avenue carries a lot of traffic past the motel because of the bridge across the Rio Grande just down the street.  Whether the currently stalled rapid transit project will contribute anything to ameliorating the rush-hour traffic jams is still an unknown.

Meanwhile, we are looking forward to more morning coffee opportunities, trying out the new eateries and the taproom, and hoping for the best.

Cars and Trucks and Mr. Lewis

We have had a nice stretch of sunny days in Albuquerque.  It seemed a good excuse for a little road trip going east on Route 66 to visit the Lewis Antique Car and Toy Museum in Moriarty.  Here is the proprietor, Mr. Lewis.

He looks rather formidable in my portrait of him; I'm sure he can be that, but he's actually a very friendly guy who is happy to talk about his car collection and his life in Albuquerque and Moriarty.  My pictures of his collection of 700 vehicles doesn't do it justice for a couple of reasons.
    The restored classics, many of which have appeared in films and TV series, are in a poorly lit barn. Mr. Lewis said that the recent cold weather had knocked out most of the overhead florescent lights.  That was actually ok with me as I was really more attracted to the outside collection which fills several acres in the back of the property.  Unfortunately, my Olympus XA2 camera did not perform as I had hoped and only about half of the pictures on the roll were usable.

My first car was a blue '48 Plymouth much like this one.  I drove it for a couple weeks before it developed an oil leak which ended up sending a piston through the side of the engine.  I spent the rest of that summer installing a motor in the car which I got from a salvage yard somewhat resembling Mr. Lewis's museum.

The trip out to Moriarty in my pickup was a bit of an adventure in itself as I generally avoid freeways.  There looked to be a couple hundred trucks backed up in the west-bound lanes due to an accident, but the east-bound road was clear.  I switched on the radio and tuned it to the NPR broadcast on KUNM of Native America Calling.  The program was about the reversal of the decision to halt the pipeline construction near the Standing Rock reservation.
    On the way home, I stopped at the Blake's just down the road from the Lewis museum for a corndog and some fries.  Then I got back in the truck and headed back to Albuquerque.  When I switched on the radio again I found a program devoted to the first day of Black History Month with some great music from the Civil Rights Movement of the '50s and '60s.  I hoped that the folks at Standing Rock were listening.

La Bajada

I drove an hour north of Albuquerque yesterday to enjoy the morning's cool breeze and a sunrise walk at La Bajada.

La Bajada is best known today for the remnants of the old Route 66 alignment which snakes up over the escarpment above the Santa Fe River. That famous roadway, however, was preceded by older north/south routes including the colonial Spanish Camino Real which stretched all the way from Mexico City to Santa Fe. Before that, the local native people followed trails across the mesas and down the river canyon for thousands of years. Many petroglyphs can be seen on the slopes beside the eroded Bajada roadway which are thought to date mostly from the height of the Puebloan period between AD 1300-1600.

An acequia at the base of the escarpment carries Santa Fe River water to cultivated fields and pastures around the village of La Bajada.

Petroglyphs along the La Bajada route are mostly in the Rio Grande style.  Some like the small horned serpent figure are nearly identical to glyphs at La Rinconada forty miles to the south.

The Sandia Mountains east of Albuquerque can be seen in the far distance in the scene below.  In the foreground a large, cryptic design covers the upper surface of a large basalt boulder.  On the other side of the boulder there are a number of zoomorphic figures.

There are said to be petroglyphs all along the five-mile stretch of the Santa Fe river canyon between La Bajada and La Cieneguilla where there is a concentration of thousands of petroglyphs along the rimrock above a marshy area.

Perhaps when the weather cools in the Fall I'll try hiking to the top of La Bajada and down through the river canyon.

Nice Day for a Ride

Perfect weather today for a ride up Route 66 to take in the car show at the Santa Ana Star Casino, and a good excuse to exercise the Mercury II.

Argus A2F

I've wanted one of these cameras for a long time. I'll get into the reasons for that further along. Suffice for now to note that the A2F is a pre-war model, just like me; and I paid $15 for this one, which is what it cost new. Of course, 1940 dollars were worth over ten times the value of the 2009 greenbacks.