New Mexico
Great American Get-Together in Santa Fe
Program No. 20684RJ
Explore local culture as you discover national monuments, historic sites and world-class museums, and learn about Santa Fe and Northern New Mexico from experts.
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8 days
7 nights
15 meals
7B 4L 4D
3
Full-day Taos Field Trip
Santa Fe
8
Program Concludes
Santa Fe
At a Glance
Immerse yourself in one of the most fascinating areas in the United States as you join Road Scholars and local experts for a week exploring and learning in beautiful Northern New Mexico. Experience the best of the Southwest with in-depth presentations and field trips to an array of significant historical and cultural sites. Learn about Georgia O'Keeffe, explore world-renowned Museum Hill and visit Bandelier National Monument.
Activity Level
Keep the Pace
Walking up to three miles daily over varied terrain. Standing for up to two hours at a time. Getting on/off motorcoach multiple times a day. Elevation of 7,000 feet for the entire program.
What You'll Learn
- Experience treasures of Northern New Mexico on expert-led field trips to the villages of Taos, Abiquiu and Chimayo.
- Explore world class museums in Santa Fe and Taos.
- Hear from local experts about contemporary issues facing Native American populations in the Southwest. Climb up ladders and into caves at Bandelier National Monument
General Notes
Max of 140 participants, divided into smaller groups for activities.
Featured Expert
All trip experts
Kirt Kempter
Kirt Kempter received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Texas at Austin and has visited and studied plate tectonics and related volcanism around the world, including Iceland, Costa Rica, Mexico, and South America. A Fulbright Fellow, Kirt now works for the U.S. Geological Survey as a field geologist, studying the volcanic history of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico.
Please note: This expert may not be available for every date of this program.
Kirt Kempter
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Kirt Kempter received his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Texas at Austin and has visited and studied plate tectonics and related volcanism around the world, including Iceland, Costa Rica, Mexico, and South America. A Fulbright Fellow, Kirt now works for the U.S. Geological Survey as a field geologist, studying the volcanic history of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico.
Jerry Rightman
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Who would have ever thought that a retired veterinarian would become a dedicated art lecturer? Jerry Rightman is just that person and is an active member in the art community of Santa Fe, applying his talents as a docent at the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. He has received rave reviews for the many years that he has been teaching for Road Scholar.
Christopher Gibson
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Christopher Gibson is an award-winning artist, writer, and arts educator who makes his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His work includes the Cuentos del Camino series on lower Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe and mixed-media installations at numerous museums in New Mexico and California. Over the years, he has written several articles on Hispanic arts and culture for the magazines "Tradición Revista" and "Imagen."
Elena Junes
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Elena Ortiz-Junes is a native New Mexican and member of the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. She has worked for many years as a study leader and group leader for numerous organizations and universities, providing a unique perspective on the region and its rich cultural tapestry. She is a writer and founding board member of Red Media, an indigenous owned and operated media project that highlights Native writers. Elena is also a board member of the University of New Mexico’s Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies.
Lois Ellen Frank
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Lois Ellen Frank, PhD, is a Santa Fe-based chef focused on Native American foods. She is also a Native American food historian, culinary anthropologist, photographer and James Beard Award-winning author. She is a featured instructor of the Southwest Indian Nations at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, and is chef and owner — along with Native Chef Walter Whitewater of the Diné Nation — of Red Mesa Cuisine.
Cisco Guevara
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Cisco Guevara honed his storytelling craft around campfires deep in the river canyons of northern New Mexico. A river runner since his teenage days in Los Alamos, “the Atomic City,” he has become a New Mexico legend: instantly recognizable by his black hat. Cisco’s stories range from his rebellious youth, to tales that draw on his Hispanic and Native American heritage, to hair-raising adventures in the wilderness, to haunting tales of love and loss.
Omar Villanueva
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Omar Villanueva holds a master's degree in classical guitar performance from the University of New Mexico. He is a multifaceted guitarist who performs classical, Spanish and popular music. His repertoire includes renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic and Latin music arrangements for solo guitar. He is also an accomplished and awarded singer of music from Latin America and New Mexico. He has been performing in New Mexico and surrounding states since 2004.
Sherry Moon
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Sherry Moon is a certified interpreter for the profession of heritage interpretation and an experienced group leader. She has a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications and has taught communication and art. For nearly 20 years, she has been a group leader specializing in the Southwest and Alaska/Yukon. As president of the Rocky Mountain Guides Association, she is regarded as a local expert. Her interests include the arts, history, heritage, geology, reading, outdoor activities, and socializing with friends.
Sheryl Russell
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Sheryl Russell was born to a farming family in Kansas. At the University of Kansas, she studied education in theatre and English literature, followed by decades of work in retail and communications systems in Dallas, New York City, and the California Bay area. Sheryl felt that she had “come home" when she moved to Santa Fe. Here she found a cultural diversity, architectural style, and historic richness that supported the next 30 years of leading explorations and study of native Southwest cultures and their history.
Suggested Reading List
(34 books)
Visit the Road Scholar Bookshop
You can find many of the books we recommend at the Road Scholar store on bookshop.org, a website that supports local bookstores.
Great American Get-Together in Santa Fe
Program Number: 20684
National Audubon Society Field Guide to the Southwestern States: Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah
A compact photographic guide to the wildflowers, trees, mosses, butterflies, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals of the American Southwest.
Indian Arts of the Southwest
Featuring color photographs of the basketry, pottery, weaving, jewelry, and carvings of 200 noted artists, this book is both a collector's guide and cultural history of the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Pueblo peoples and other native peoples.
Ceremony
A powerful novel about Tayo, a half-white Laguna Pueblo Indian who returns to his reservation after surviving as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II.
New Mexico Wildlife, An Introduction to Familiar Species
A handy fold-up card featuring color illustrations of common plants, animals and reptiles of New Mexico.
Desert Solitaire
One of the great works on the value of the desert, eloquent and laugh-out-loud funny. Although Abbey writes specifically about his experiences as a ranger at Arches National Park outside Moab, Utah, his message is universal.
Taos, A Topical History
Profiling the small, but highly influential northern New Mexico town, this collection of 23 essays were written by scholars in a variety of fields, including: archaeology, geology, history, art and literature.
Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest
This illustrated introduction provides an in-depth look at the ancient cultures that first inhabited the pueblos and cliff dwellings of the American Southwest. Organized chronologically, it features hundreds of maps, mostly black-and-white photographs and site diagrams.
Bandelier National Monument Map
A detailed map of Bandelier National Monument at a scale of 1:29,000.
Anasazi: Ancient People of the Rock
Anasazi America
A thought-provoking, engaging account of the rise and fall of Anasazi society in the desert southwest.
Recreational Map of New Mexico
A very good fold-out map of New Mexico.
Santa Fe Map
A plastic-coated, fold-up map of Santa Fe, including Taos and Albuquerque. Size: 18x27 inches.
Ancient Child
Spider Woman's Granddaughters: Traditional Tales and Contemporary Writing by Native American Women
A powerful collection of traditional tales, biographical writings, and contemporary short stories, many by the most accomplished Native American women writing today, including: Louise Erdrich, Mary TallMountain, Linda Hogan, and many others.
My Time There: The Art Colonies of Santa Fe and Taos, NM 1956 - 2006
Taco Table
A handbook for creating these Southwestern staples with easy to prepare recipes, from homemade tortillas to meat, poultry, seafood, and vegetarian fillings, to salsas that top them off.
Dark Beauty, Photographs of New Mexico
Southwest photographer Parsons presents the rugged landscapes and the people of New Mexico, exploring religious iconography, far-flung ranches, small towns and wide open spaces in this full-color coffee table book.
Pueblo Nations: Eight Centuries of Pueblo Indian History
An expansive history of the Indian Pueblos of New Mexico from a Native American perspective. The book explores the origins of the tribe to its current struggles to maintain sovereignty, land and water rights.
New Mexico Geologic Highway Map
The Great Taos Bank Robbery
Nine indelible tales of life in New Mexico by the great newspaperman and author of the terrific series of mysteries set on the Navajo Nation.
Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life
American Prometheus
Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico: A Sense of Place
Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico is the first book to analyze the artist's famous depictions of Southwestern landscapes.
DK Eyewitness Top Ten Santa Fe, Taos and Albuquerque
A compact, illustrated guide in the popular series, featuring the best natural and cultural attractions of the region.
In Search of the Old Ones, Exploring the Anasazi World of the Southwest
An exuberant, engaging account of archaeological adventures in the desert Southwest. Roberts investigates the factors that may have led to the demise of the Anasazi civilization and looks into longstanding controversies.
Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations
Photographer Lois Ellen Frank spent four years documenting the culinary techniques used on reservations throughout the Southwest, compiling her discoveries into this handsome book, rich in photos and recipes.
American Indian Myths and Legends
More than 160 tales from eighty tribal groups gives us a rich and lively panorama of the Native American mythic heritage. From across the continent comes tales of creation and love; heroes and war; animals, tricksters, and the end of the world. In addition to mining the best folkloric sources of the nineteenth century, the editors have also included a broad selection of contemporary Native American voices.
The Spell of New Mexico
A selection of 12 thoughtful essays on the New Mexico state of mind by great writers, including C.G. Jung, Mary Austin, D.H. Lawrence and Lawrence Clark Powell. Hillerman succeeds in communicating the lure of the desert Southwest in this wonderful, literate introduction to the state.
The Book of the Navajo
A Study of Southwestern Archaeology
In this volume Steve Lekson argues that, for over a century, Southwestern archaeology got the history of the ancient Southwest wrong. Instead, he advocates an entirely new approach—one that separates archaeological thought in the Southwest from its anthropological home and moves to more historical ways of thinking.
Focusing on the enigmatic monumental center at Chaco Canyon, the book provides a historical analysis of how Southwest archaeology confined itself, how it can break out of those confines, and how it can proceed into the future. Lekson suggests that much of what we believe about the ancient Southwest should be radically revised. Looking past old preconceptions brings a different Chaco Canyon into view: more than an eleventh-century Pueblo ritual center, Chaco was a political capital with nobles and commoners, a regional economy, and deep connections to Mesoamerica. By getting the history right, a very different science of the ancient Southwest becomes possible and archaeology can be reinvented as a very different discipline.
The Magic of Bandelier
Guidebook featuring the archeology and anthropology of Bandelier National Monument
Georgia O'Keeffe and New Mexico, A Sense of Place
A catalogue of O'Keeffe paintings pairing 20 original images with modern photographs of the landscapes depicted by the curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe.
The Geology of Northern New Mexico's Parks, Monuments and Public Lands
Portrait of an Artist, A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe
Lisle shows how O'Keeffe was both changed and inspired by her Southwestern surroundings in this insightful biography of Georgia O'Keeffe.