Once I knew the trick about the refrigerator I stood back with my camera ready and captured this sequence of three people being surprised by a group of people (a total of 6, I think) coming out of it. It starts with our unsuspecting victims reading the note on the door….
Here are more of the bizarre things I saw while at Meow Wolf:
When you went in the Refrigerator you went through a white tunnel and ended up in a futuristic room with Star Trek like doors. There was a projected image of a woman in white who guided you through various areas you could visit. You placed your hand on the panel and the doors would whoosh open.
These guys were laying almost on their backs, operating a steering wheel and projecting colors on a screen high above.
This white mouse appears on a video screen behind the round running cage. Although the two events are unrelated, the cage spins at various speeds as though the mouse were inside, propelling it.
Kind of hard to tell from the blurry photo but the floor in the upstairs bathroom was uneven and things were at odd angles. I didn’t try climbing in the toilet to see where I might end up (I think I already know…).
This was a room where everything, floor/walls/ceiling/items on a table were black and white (and in incredible detail). No tricks, no colored lights. Just different.
Two of the men in white lab coats, conspiring against us and plotting new rooms, perhaps…
The guy on the right was the one I asked if there was something people typically missed. He asked me what things I had already seen, then took me to the laser-organ room.
There, a triangular structure in the center of the darkened room had a series of laser beams which went from floor to ceiling. As you broke each light beam with your hand, arm, or whatever (remember, there are young children present!…) musical notes would play, a different note for each beam of light.
Another black and white room, this one upstairs, set up as a small eat-in kitchen.
And finally, the aquarium, which had lots of primary-colored fish and one big black one. They were all real fish, very much alive.
I spent most of the day Thursday on a train. I spent about 3 hours today in a bowling alley. Well, a former bowling alley….
Welcome to Meow Wolf, a 20,000 square foot immersive, interactive art facility located in Santa Fe, New Mexico. My Airbnb hosts in Las Cruces, NM told me about this place when I stayed with them Memorial Day weekend earlier this year. This facility represents the work of over 500 artists. A segment on National Public Radio called it “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse on steroids” (and those of you who know me know how much I loved Pee-Wee’s Playhouse!).
Once inside you enter the Victorian-style home of the fictional Selig family.
And after that, nothing is quite what it seems. Over 70 rooms with colored lights (including black-lights), secret passages and tunnels. Guests are encouraged to open doors and drawers, listen at audio stations, and explore the mysteries of Meow Wolf. There was a laser-organ, which played different notes as people broke the light beams with their hands and arms. There were some rooms which were all in black and white. Some rooms had constantly changed colored lights which made the various painted surfaces change appearance. Enter the closet in an upstairs bedroom, take a spiral staircase down and crawl out from inside the fireplace in the living room.
I was standing in the kitchen reading a note on the refrigerator when two people walked up, said “excuse me”, opened the refrigerator door and disappeared inside it!
And there WERE people in white lab coats spying on us! They work here, and were scattered throughout the facility to answer questions and help anyone who might need assistance, although they left people alone unless they were spoken to.
I’ll post pictures in the future of people who were reading the note only to be surprised by other guests emerging from the refrigerator.
Meow Wolf is an amazing concept and I hope it spreads to other parts of the country. I took lots of pictures and will post more in the coming days. Not all of them turned out to my liking (inside, in dark rooms) but they should give you some idea what I experienced. It was really cool, and I’m glad my Airbnb hosts in Las Cruces told me about it.
Oh, and I won’t keep you in suspense waiting for this:
This was what I saw on one wall in one room between 12:18:28 and 12:18:58 pm
Go ahead – climb in that ice cooler…
You are now in a small, mirrored room lined with LED lights. There were two young ladies already in there along with a small (maybe 3 year old) girl. As the young girl pushed some buttons the lights would change color.
I normally don’t like to post food pictures (who cares what I had for lunch) but being in Santa Fe I had to have a Frito Pie, the World Famous (their claim) attraction at the Five & Dime General Store, just off the main plaza in downtown Santa Fe.
Slit open the side of a small bag of Fritos, add some good chili and cheese, charge a tourist 5 bucks and everyone’s happy.
Mine could have used some jalapenos but I knew I wasn’t going to eat the whole thing so I didn’t spring for the extra 50 cents.
But doctor, it said it was only 320 calories….
About 12 miles north of Abiquiu (which is 53 miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico) is Ghost Ranch, which was the home and studio of artist Georgia O’Keefe. This 21,000 acre ranch is now mostly owned by the Presbyterian Church and is a retreat and conference center, but remains open to the public. There are also some museums on-site, which is what brought me here.
At the entrance to the ranch is a wooden cabin. No, it wasn’t Ms. O’Keefe’s residence, in fact, it didn’t even exist back in her day. It was constructed for the movie City Slickers, starring Billy Crystal.
Ah, the magic of Hollywood.
Here is Ms. O’Keefe with Orville Cox in a photo taken by Ansel Adams.
But what brought me to Ghost Ranch was the Ruth Hall Museum of Paleontology, which I learned about from a young man I met at the Petrified Forest National Park in northeast Arizona about a week ago. He was the 15-year old (also named John) who is a budding paleontologist and showed me the cast of the skull of a young Coelophysis (pronounced SEE-low-FY-sis), a dinosaur which lived at that Park, as well as here in New Mexico, over 200 million years ago. In fact, there is a large quarry of Coelophysis bones here at Ghost Ranch which were declared a National Landmark in 1967 and the dinosaur remains were declared the New Mexico State Fossil in 1991.
Not the biggest dinosaur on the block, the Coelophysis was among the smallest of the meat-eating dinosaurs.
I spent most of today on a train. I got up early so I could leave Taos soon after sunrise for the hour-long drive northwest up to Antonito, Colorado. There I would board a bus for the hour and 15 minute drive west to Chama, New Mexico where I would board the train and take it on the 64 mile ride back to Antonito.
This wasn’t our engine but is the same type.
(Photo credit: Cumbres & Toltec brochure)
This was the car I would ride in:
And these were some of my travel-mates:
I sat at a small (only one place setting wide) table on the right side of the car as seen here, although it was at the front of the car and on the left side given our direction of travel. The left side as seen here also had tables but only sat one person in each direction. They were all booked by the time I made my reservation a few days ago.
Ours was the next-to-last car on the train. In front of our car was an open “parlor” car which anyone could walk to once we were underway for unobstructed photo ops, although you were then out in the strong wind, generated by nature, not train speed, and were, at times, in the smoke and cinders generated by the engine. I did not go out there at all, opting to takes pictures from the windows (which we could open) in our car.
Looking at the open car through the door in the front of my car:
Once we were underway the open car became populated pretty quickly. I shared a table with the three women in the left/foreground of this photo. The one in the maroon hat lives in Taos, her mother has on the purple hat and her aunt isn’t wearing a hat. Behind her is the train photographer who busily took photos suitable for framing (and for a fee, if you chose to buy it – no pressure, no obligation).
The weather was fantastic and the scenery was spectacular.
And it turns out I had a birthday-girl at my table! It was the woman in the purple vest’s birthday (I’m not very good with names, I think they said it was Johnnie as we were singing to her). It was also the woman (wearing sunglasses) sitting a few rows behind her’s birthday.
Veronica (on the left in the photo below – as we sang to Johnnie), our car attendant for the first half of the ride, served complimentary beverages and snacks and explained where we were and what we were seeing at various points during our trip. Veronica also makes an awesome Bloody Mary, not complimentary but well worth the price!!
We stopped for lunch (included in the $166 fare, as was a complimentary glass mug) in Osier, about halfway through the ride. I picked turkey with all the trimmings, plus a choice of several desserts (I had 2), and it was excellent.
I took so many pictures with my smartphone during the first half of the trip that I didn’t have enough room on it for the second half. I tried taking some with the digital camera but quickly learned that there was too much movement to allow good pictures while zoomed in even a small amount, so I just put it away and enjoyed the ride. It was a shame because the scenery on the second half of the ride was even more breathtaking that it was on the first half.
I boarded the bus in Antonito at 830am, the train left Chama at 1000, we stopped for over an hour in Osier for lunch, and arrived back in Antonito around 5pm. It was a great day!
I will be taking a similar train ride from Durango to Silverton, Colorado in less than a week. I assure you, I will clear plenty of room for pictures on my phone before taking that ride.
There is a photo gallery on the Cumbres & Toltec website if you want to see more photos. It includes many external shots of the train as it travels the countryside.
These are more of the photos taken on Day 1 at the South Rim using the digital camera.
This is the final set of images I took on Day 1 at the South Rim using the digital camera. In future posts I will present close-ups taken on Day 2 which were mainly taken after going in the east entrance to the Park, and will show some new formations (already shown in the smartphone posts).
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