Plaza Blanca

 

Plaza Blanca

One day while staying at Abiquiu Lake, we went exploring so I could finish walking all the way into Plaza Blanca, famous for Georgia O’Keeffe’s series of paintings of “The White Place” as she called it.  I tried this hike a couple of years ago, and although I saw other interesting sites around Plaza Blanca, I could not make it all the way to the end of the canyon where she painted.  This time, I’m happy to say, I made it!

There was one large difference this time when we went to Plaza Blanca.  Previously, we could always drive in without any issue, as the Mosque on whose grounds Plaza Blanca lies, was very agreeable to having people visit the area.  However, due to the bad behavior of some, who were destructive or disrespectful in some ways, there was a gate at the entrance to the overall property and then again to the Plaza Blanca parking area itself.  We needed to call a number provided at the gate, and agree to certain conditions (mainly, that we wouldn’t be destructive or disrespectful) and then we received a code that would open both gates.  The guy I talked to, Tariq, was very nice, and invited us up to see the actual mosque after we were finished exploring Plaza Blanca.  This image is of the road we were on as we approached the parking area of Plaza Blanca, or The White Place.

The views were great heading into the canyon.  Plaza Blanca is a box canyon and a slot canyon.  A box canyon is one that only has one way in or out, and a slot canyon is one that gets progressively narrower the further in you go.  But, for now, we are looking at wide open spaces, and goldenrod at the base of the towering white rock formations.

When I saw what appears to be a small tree growing on top of the canyon walls, I thought it was an inspirational scene about the power of perseverance, not that the tree thought of that!!

Amazingly, there was a lot of growth in an area that was very rocky and sandy when we were there.  The two bottom flowers are Apache Plume, and the upper flower is a penstemon.

And, here we are, reaching my goal!!  You can see from the image on the right, Jeff is walking in an area that isn’t nearly as wide open as the canyon was at the beginning of our walk.  The image on the left is the view as we got very close to the slot canyon part of the walk, and the center image is one of Jeff and Max (you have to look close) at the very end of the canyon, the area where the slot part of the canyon sort of folds into the canyon wall.  I suppose if one was a mountain goat, one would find the climbing easy, but that wasn’t any of us!  In fact, Max was very uncertain as to how he was to climb down from the spot in which he found himself!!

Since we were invited, we did stop at the Dar Al-Islam Mosque.  I found the design of the mosque to be quite simple, which really set it off in such beautiful surroundings.  I took a photo of one of the lovely wooden carved doors there were on all sides of the mosque, and also the scenery to be had right off the east side of the mosque.

Enjoy!