During our time in Santa Fe we had planned on taking a day trip up to Taos. It turns out that the road to Taos from Santa Fe is well known as the High Road to Taos Scenic Byway. We knew it would be at least a two hour drive with stops here and there to take in the scenery and check out some of the small towns along the way.
After we landed in Albuquerque, we went to a restaurant near the airport and chatted up a lady who was serving us that day. We told her of our plans to go up to Santa Fe for a few days and take a day trip up to Taos. She started to tell us about Chimayo, a small village north and east of Santa Fe. "There are a lot of great restaurants in Chimayo and some neat little shops." Suddenly, we thought we would take a half day out of the three days we were planning on staying in Santa Fe and go up to Chimayo.
It turns out that we were oversold on Chimayo. While there were a couple three interesting places that we visited, there was only one restaurant - and it was closed. Realizing that there really wasn't much to Chimayo, we decided to turn our half-day trip to the small town into a full day trip continuing on to Taos.
Going north out of Santa Fe, US Highway 84/285 is a 4-lane road going up toward Española. There are two ways to get to Chimayo - take US 84/285 up to New Mexico 76 and go east to Chimayo. Or you can take the way we did by turning right at Pojoauqe on New Mexico 503. That road takes you through some farms and acreages and slowly climbs as you continue to the north and east. There's a left turn onto New Mexico 98 that takes you north into Chimayo.
As you go north out of Santa Fe on US 84/285, there's a natural sandstone rock formation on the west side of the highway called Camel Rock. (see map) From afar, it resembles a camel lying down with the hump prominently sticking up in the back. The neck and the head of the "camel" stick up from the ground about 35 to 40 feet.

The camel's nose was much more prominent until sometime in early 2017 when it fell off from natural erosion.
There is a exit ramp off US 84/285 and a free parking area with a path up to a viewing area outside the fence that surrounds the "camel" to keep out the idiots who would undoubtedly try to climb the rock and further damage the geologic formation.
The road up to Chimayo has some pretty stark and desolate vistas that are deep examples of what the Southwestern high desert of the U.S. looks like. Sage bushes along with little bits of green vegetation surround sandstone formations that seemingly stick up out of nowhere. At 6500 feet above sea level the sky was clear and void of any haze giving it a deep blue color that was just magnificent the whole time we were in New Mexico. The speed limit along the stretch of road up to Chimayo wasn't more than 50 miles an hour on a curvy high desert road that rose and dipped and featured a handful of turnouts to soak in the view.
Chimayo (pronounced chuh - MAY - oh) is known for a number of things. First of all, there's a restaurant there - the only restaurant (not "lots" as we were told) - Rancho de Chimayo, which was closed when we were there. But we understand that it's worth the drive. The restaurant was established in 1973 by Arturo and Florence Jaramillo and is considered one of the best restaurants in the area serving Northern New Mexican cuisine.
Chimayo is also famous for the weavings and the tapestries by the Trujillo and Ortega families. Both had shops in the small village, but - once again - they were closed while we were there. We did go to another shop that had similar weavings, as well as jewelry, pottery and other pieces of art for sale.
Thirdly, Chimayo is the home of the original lowrider car. Yes, we were told that by a guy who knew the history of the area in and around Santa Fe and he said that while nearby Española is called the "Lowrider Capital of the World" and California is the home of the lowrider culture, a Chimayo man - David Jaramillo - began modifications on this 1969 Ford LTD in the early 70's with hydraulic lifts and customized the paint job. Jaramillo was tragically killed in a car accident before his "Dave's Dream" was finished, but friends and family finished the modifications and customization of the car. The car is on display today at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.
Another thing Chimayo is famous for is their Chimayo peppers. The sweet, earthy and smoky flavor of the Chimayo pepper is coveted worldwide by chefs looking to put it in soups or salsas, or to used as an enhancement for meat dishes. The soil and arid conditions around Chimayo give the peppers their distinctive flavor. And because the peppers are notoriously thin-walled, only about 150 pounds of peppers are harvested and hung to dry before they're crushed into chili powder or chili flakes.
One place that was open and sells ground Chimayo peppers is the El Potrero Trading Post. Established in 1921 by Alfonsa Vigil for the residents in what was then known as El Portrero de Chimayó, the store is still in the family today with Alfonsa's grandchildren Raymond Bal and Vikki Tejeda in charge. True to the heritage of the Vigil family, strands of red Chimayo peppers were hanging from the front of the building drying in the sun.
We went in to buy some Chimayo chile powder and pulled what I thought were a couple bags of Chimayo chile powder off the shelf. When I asked the young lady behind the counter if this was the Chimayo chile powder. "Oh, no. We keep the Chimayo chile powder back here," she said while pointing to a number of baggies with bright red chili powder on a shelf behind the counter. I got a 4 ounce bag of Chimayo Heirloom chile powder - it was $11.00 for the bag. We also picked up some green chile powder made with Hatch peppers and also got some crushed green Hatch chiles in the a 4 ounce bag.
But what Chimayo is most famous for is the Santurio de Chimayo, a Catholic church that was built in 1816. (see map) Situated in a valley among the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the adobe shrine is one of the more famous in the southwest for the annual pilgrimages that take place during Holy Week. Tens of thousands of people walk from Santa Fe, Taos and as far away as Albuquerque to Santurio de Chimayo for blessings and to fulfill religious vows on the Thursday and Friday before Easter. Annually, 300,000 people visit the shrine which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

The interior of the church features long wooden crossbeams across the ceiling. The colorful wall behind the altar is adorned with Christ of Esquipulas, a statue of Christ on the crucifix, while other pieces of religious paintings from both Spanish settlers and native Pueblo Indians are found on the walls of the sanctuary. I took the picture above right before I saw the sign - in both English and Spanish - that pictures inside the shrine were prohibited.
The church sits on 6.5 acres of land bordered by a mountain stream with pastures surrounding the property. (Potrero in Spanish means pasture or paddock.) There was a large common area that had stone arches with embedded crucifixes on the perimeter of what is used as a prayer area.

Behind the church was an outdoor mass chapel. In warmer weather, mass is held outdoors daily (11 a.m., 12 noon on Sunday) in the circular chapel that is covered with tenting. They were just getting ready to hold mass outdoors when we were there that day.
In part of the church are two rooms - the prayer room and a smaller room that is where pilgrims find the holy dirt that has made Santaurio de Chimayo famous for the supposed healing powers the blessed dirt gives people. The prayer room features an area for prayer candles with pictures of sick people who were supposedly cured by the blessed dirt that is available in a smaller room off to the side. Crutches, canes and braces that were discarded by people who were "healed" by rubbing the miracle dirt on their extremities hung on the wall opposite the photographs of people. Notes of thanks for ailment cures were also posted on the wall.
The blessed dirt is located in a hole in the stone floor of the room next to the prayer room at Santuario de Chimayo. There were people lined up to get dirt while we were there. The dirt is taken from nearby hillsides (up to 25 to 30 tons a year), then blessed by the priest and then placed in the hole in the small room. People scoop the dirt into cups, bags, whatever, and put it on their body to cure ailments or to ward off bad spirits. My wife was raised Catholic and still has a bit of religion in her, and she filled up two quart-sized sealable plastic bags with the dirt. I just shrugged my shoulders - to each their own, I guess.

From Chimayo, New Mexico 76 continues on up into the Sangre de Cristo mountains as the landscape turned from high desert steppes to forested mountainsides like you'd see throughout the mountainous areas of Colorado. A number of small villages lined the route from Chimayo to Taos, each of them seemed to have their own adobe churches that were the most prominent feature of the town. We stopped at a couple of them along the way, but they were closed probably because there was no one was available to watch them.
In all, it took us about an hour and 45 minutes to make the 50 mile trek from Chimayo to Taos. There were a number of turnouts to take in some of the beautiful vistas along the way. The High Road to Taos is definitely a leisurely drive.
We ended up taking the Low Road to Santa Fe along the Rio Grande River (yes, the same Rio Grande River that separates Texas from Mexico) but not before venturing out north and west of Taos to see the Rio Grande Gorge and to cross the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. We were told by a shopkeeper in Chimayo that we needed to see the gorge - "It's our Grand Canyon," the lady told us.

The bridge spans the Rio Grande 650 feet above the river. The bridge length is nearly 1300 feet and was dedicated in 1965. When the bridge was built, the funds were not available for the continuance of the roadway on the west side of the bridge so it was truly a "bridge to nowhere". On the west side of the span is a parking area with restrooms. People can walk out onto the bridge to peer down into the Rio Grande below. I'm not certain I could have done that as I get queasy on stepladders these days. Still, it was amazing to see the flat steppe with this large fissure that pops out of nowhere. The stark beauty of the contrasts of flat land and a deep gorge was fascinating to me.
The Low Road to Santa Fe was much more quick to traverse than the High Road coming up. It did go along the Rio Grande and that was kind of neat to follow the river which is no more than a couple hundred feet wide at that point in New Mexico. But the High Road to Taos from Santa Fe was a much better and more memorable drive. Taos, itself, was a neat little town and it reminded us a lot of Steamboat Springs, CO, one of our favorite places to visit. We'll get back there for more than a day trip at some point. But for now, we'll certainly remember our drive along the High Road to Taos as one of the best scenic drives we've done.