Richard Harris
1 A great travel book on New Mexico
We (Kaatje and Justin) live in New Mexico, and every holiday or free weekend we use this guide to lead us to new exciting and beautiful places. This book is the perfect travel companion for anyone interested in smaller, off the beaten path places. This book led us to discover Las Vegas, NM, a (yet) not so touristy place unlike Taos or Sante Fe. Thanks to this guide, we enjoyed the free road side Hot Springs located in a pristine alpine valley, and delicious restaurants that put the more known places to shame. It has small eateries and interesting museums, parks like the little known Three Rivers Petroglyph National Monument with thousands of drawings, on the way from Socorro to Alamogordo. Yet again, this is a place not mentioned in other tourist maps or books. I would recommend for anyone really interested in traveling through New Mexico to also have DeLorme Topographic Map of New Mexico with them for references and the smaller roads. The general RandMcNally or AAA maps just don't cut it. Those topo maps are only about 16 dollars and will work great with the Hidden New Mexico book or any travelguide. Check out Chaco Canyon National Monument as well, and stay in El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, you will not believe your eyes! That was also a tip from the Hidden New Mexico book. Enjoy the most beautiful state in the nation (I am biased, I know)!
2 Doesn't shed much light
This book gives virtually no driving directions or driving times - an email query to the publisher was not acknowledged. It claims that the only way to fly in is to Albuquerque - in fact, United flies to Santa Fe, as I discovered while boarding my plane to Albuquerque - giving me an extra hour's drive coming and going. The maps are inadequate at best - few of the attractions/lodgings mentioned are shown. Hotel listings are incomplete, and biased toward the high end. Admission fees to attractions - often as high as $10/person - are not given. Many sights are mentioned (Anasazi cliff dwellings, Mesa Verde) without a description, but are not in the index. No chart of annual temperatures was given - that I could see - I found out the hard way that it gets very, very cold in the winter. In short, using this book to plan and travel was an extremely frustrating experience.
