Gasoline Alley

I couldn't have asked for a lovlier fall weekend than the one I just had! My friend, Robbie Steinbach, whom I had met in a Making Art Safely Printmaking workshop in the summer of 2006 was opening a show at the Milicent Rogers Museum. This is a big deal, months ago, I made sure that I put the date down on my calendar so as not to miss it. She lives in Taos, New Mexico and the museum is there too. I convinced hubby to go up with me and to spend the weekend. However, I did give him fair warning that I planned to take MANY photos along the way (since we would not have our teenager with us complaining about all the stops). For thirteen years now, as we drove back and forth from our home to Taos, there are so many lovley photo ops along the way. I've never been able to stop and take all these pictures. I took a sizeable amount of pictures over the course of two and a half days. I do plan to post a good representation of the images from the weekend, but it will have to be broken down into main subject areas!

The main photo op that I was dying to do is a yard with old gasoline pumps in them. It is located in Embudo. Part of the criteria was to plan the drive so that the late afternoon sun would be on the pumps for ideal lighting.

I never noticed the name of the 'street' that this place was at: Gasoline Alley. When we stopped, I never realized what a huge collection of old gas pumps, cars, memorabilia, etc. was actually on the premises!

There was a sign the said, "museum" so, that seemed like a good enough invitation and I took as many pictures as I could without being too much of a 'trespasser' since it became obvious that the owner wasn't there. I also wanted to make sure that when we came back down that way on Sunday, that it would be durning the time of day that the owner would be there. I felt like I had to meet the person that had such a committment to collect all these old and wonderful things. We did get to meet him and Mark had a great chat with him while I took more pictures to my heart's content. Although he collects all these old things, he will sell them! In his vast collection, he has (of course) gas pumps, signs, oil cans, maps, globes, soda signs, clocks, neon, thermometers (this is what is listed on his card). If you would like to contact him, his name is Johnnie Meier and his email is: johnniev@roadsideculture.com. He is a very kind and gracious person! Thanks, Johnnie for letting me take photos! I think I easily took about 200 or more photos at this stop.

If you want a larger view of each image, just click on it (it's like a thumbnail).

The last shot in this group is the roadside view of the Rio Grande River which is right across the street from Johhnie's museum. There will be more of this fall eye candy to come in several more postings! Stayed tuned!