The Lovely Espanola Valley, New Mexico

Where you can discuss history and famous dead people with the locals and walk across the street to the cyber café?

Where you can see some of the most exquisite art, sculptures, pottery and crafts in the world? And go gambling?

Here, in Española Valley, in this exquisitely beautiful space between Taos and Santa Fe, in the heart of the Pueblo Country, you have such a place.

Do you love hiking? Riding in early-century train coaches or mid-century luxury cars?

How about ancient and modern history and culture? Or museums, art galleries, fine dining, day trips, storytellers?

Do you like Oriental rugs? Or do you want to learn to weave your own rugs?

Well, they're all to be found here, and more.

Take, for example, Ghost Ranch at Abiquiu, whose thousands of acres are spread out across the Piedra Lumbre basin -- this is the place that so deeply fascinated and inspired the great American artist Georgia O'Keefe that she couldn't stop painting the awe-inspiring landscape. She just had to show it to the world, and the world sat up and took notice - still does!

Over a century ago, Ghost Ranch was a hideout for the legendary outlaws of the wild, wild West. As time passed, it morphed into a dude ranch for people who wanted to have their own taste of that wild, untamed land memorialized in so many wonderful movies; their own moment of stepping out of time, out of the rat race, the business, the stress of modern life.

Its anthropology museum is home to artifacts that span over 10,000 years of history, from the Paleo Indian culture all the way through to the modern Pueblo. Pottery, baskets, metal tools, railroad memorabilia, farm equipment - all are here, reflecting the intertwined presence of the ancient ancestral tribes of Ute, Navajo and Apache, and later the Spaniards and ranchers.