9 Best Towns In New Mexico For A Two-Day Recharge
Two days is all it takes to reset in New Mexico. Some travelers do it in a mineral hot spring in Truth or Consequences, with a view of the Rio Grande. Others head up to Cloudcroft or Ruidoso for cool mountain air above the desert. A few just want quiet, and they find it in Chimayó's old adobe shrine or Mesilla's shaded plaza. You will leave any of them more relaxed than when you came.
Truth or Consequences
The hot springs beneath Truth or Consequences supply a cluster of small bathhouses and lodges downtown. People have soaked here for generations, and the town went by "Hot Springs" until a 1950 radio contest renamed it. Day passes and private tubs keep a soak within reach of most budgets.
Blackstone Hot Springs pipes the mineral water into private rooms so guests can soak on their own. Riverbend Hot Springs sets several pools along the Rio Grande, most kept between 95 and 107 degrees. Indian Springs offers one of the cheaper soaks in town, in gravel-bottom tubs built in 1927.
Taos
Taos has drawn working artists for more than a century, and many of them teach. Mood Bake Baby, a small queer-owned vegan bakery, runs hands-on baking classes. Steven Bundy leads photography tours to nearby landscapes for photographers of any level. The Taos Center for the Arts schedules performances and classes through the week.
The Taos Art Museum fills the former adobe home and studio of painter Nicolai Fechin, with work by early Taos painters alongside modern pieces. For lodging in the pines, Alpine Village Suites rents stand-alone suites and cabins near Taos Ski Valley.
Chimayó
El Santuario de Chimayó, a small adobe shrine completed in 1816, receives close to 300,000 visitors a year. It sits along the High Road to Taos in the Sangre de Cristo foothills, and its chapel is a well-preserved example of Spanish Colonial architecture. Many come for the "holy dirt" and for quiet.
Ortega's Weaving Shop keeps the Chimayó weaving tradition going, with coats, bags, and blankets made on family looms across several generations. Casa Escondida Bed and Breakfast serves a home-cooked breakfast each morning to guests staying in the village. On the way out, the High Road to Taos Scenic Byway passes badlands, adobe villages, and views toward the Jemez Mountains.
Abiquiú
The red-rock country around Abiquiú, on the Rio Chama, has stood in for the Old West in film after film. City Slickers, Cowboys & Aliens, and 3:10 to Yuma all shot among these cliffs and basins. The Chimney Rock Trail, a moderate 3-mile round-trip, climbs to wide views over the same landscape.
Abiquiu Lake spreads below the red rock, and the easy 1.5-mile Abiquiu Dam trail follows it with views of the Rio Chama. Many of the area's trails run through Ghost Ranch, the 21,000-acre retreat where painter Georgia O'Keeffe spent her summers. The ranch runs education and history programs and keeps rooms for overnight guests.
Cloudcroft
Cloudcroft stands at 8,676 feet in the forested Sacramento Mountains. The elevation keeps summers mild and brings winter snow. Hikers visit in the warm months and snow-seekers in winter. The town sits inside the Lincoln National Forest, a woodland of about 1.1 million acres, and many local trails follow old railroad grades left from its logging and rail era.
The Osha Trail Loop runs about 2.6 miles and takes a little over an hour, with the Tularosa Basin and White Sands National Park visible below. The Pines Trail follows a flat old railroad grade through the forest. Small, family-owned lodgings line the main street near Zenith Park.
Ruidoso
The Screaming Eagle Mountain Coaster at Ruidoso Winter Park is the only mountain coaster in New Mexico, a 5,100-foot run with a 360-degree helix. A half-hour up the road, Ski Apache offers a mile-long zipline that the resort bills as one of the longest in the world, plus summer mountain biking and winter skiing. The resort is owned and run by the Mescalero Apache Tribe.
Back in town, Bosque Coffee and Crepes keeps a relaxed room where locals gather. Rental cabins ring the surrounding hills, many with decks that look out over the Sierra Blanca range.
Silver City
The Cosmic Campground, in the Gila National Forest northwest of Silver City, is an International Dark Sky Sanctuary with almost no light pollution. Visitors set up telescopes on concrete pads to view stars and constellations rarely visible near city lights. The campground sits within the Gila, the largest national forest in New Mexico.
The forest contains three wilderness areas: the Aldo Leopold, the Blue Range, and the Gila Wilderness. The Gila River runs through the backcountry, and hikers find more open wilderness here than anywhere else in southwestern New Mexico. For a bed instead of a tent, Bear Mountain Lodge offers individually decorated rooms and a fire-lit common room hung with local art.
Chama
The Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad has run coal-fired steam trains out of Chama since 1880. Its excursions climb to 10,015 feet at Cumbres Pass, with open views of the San Juan Mountains. The premium Parlor Car rides at the rear of the train.
The Edward Sargent Wildlife Area, a 20,000-acre preserve at the edge of town, has well-kept trails where elk graze. Anglers work its mountain streams for trout. The Lodge and Ranch at Chama runs private water stocked with brown, brook, and rainbow trout, along with the native Rio Grande cutthroat that has been reintroduced to the region. The lodge also keeps guest rooms for overnight stays.
Mesilla
Mesilla was a stop on the San Antonio-San Diego Mail Line, which linked San Antonio and San Diego through the New Mexico Territory. The Butterfield Overland Mail later ran its stagecoaches through the same plaza. The adobe buildings and narrow streets still show what a border town looked like in the 1800s.
The Mesilla Plaza is the center of town, ringed with restaurants, bars, and shops. La Posta de Mesilla opened here in 1939 with four tables on a dirt floor and now fills a rambling adobe compound known for its margaritas. In 2009 the U.S. Navy named the galley of the submarine USS New Mexico after the restaurant. Hacienda de Mesilla sits near the plaza with traditional food and hacienda-style rooms. Billy the Kid was tried and sentenced in the courthouse just off the plaza, and his story turns up all over town.
Planning a New Mexico Reset
These nine towns split roughly into two kinds of weekend across New Mexico. The hot springs at Truth or Consequences, the shrine at Chimayó, and the quiet plaza in Mesilla suit travelers who want to soak or wander at a slow pace. Cloudcroft, Ruidoso, Silver City, and Chama lean toward the outdoors, with high-country trails, dark skies, and cold mountain streams. Two unhurried days in any of them leaves time to do one thing well rather than rush a checklist.
