Clarke Condé

THE OLD SPANISH TRAIL The vital pack mule caravan route connected Santa Fe to Los Angeles throughout the 1830s and ’40s. Following established Native footpaths, the roughly 2,700-mile trail runs along two routes that include historic sites such as the Aztec Ruins National Monument. Start in Abiquiú, as merchant Antonio Armijo did when he first established the trail in 1829. There you’ll find Bode’s General Store, which has been supplying travelers since 1919, for all your road trip essentials.

THE OLD SPANISH TRAIL The vital pack mule caravan route connected Santa Fe to Los Angeles throughout the 1830s and ’40s. Following established Native footpaths, the roughly 2,700-mile trail runs along two routes that include historic sites such as the Aztec Ruins National Monument. Start in Abiquiú, as merchant Antonio Armijo did when he first established the trail in 1829. There you’ll find Bode’s General Store, which has been supplying travelers since 1919, for all your road trip essentials.

WHERE LONGHORNS ONCE kicked up red dust,oil pumpjacks known as “nodding donkeys” now pepper the land along the Pecos River, from the Texas border to up past Artesia. The opportunity to turn hard work into good money that inspired ranchers Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving to drive cattle through this patch of land on horseback on the heels of the Civil War now finds a similar breed of men driving crude tankers along rough roads.