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Northern New Mexico is full of people who came for a visit, fell in love with the place… and stayed. Anyone who takes this Best of the Road trip just might decide to do the same. The route traverses an endlessly surprising landscape of mountains, mesas, canyons, and badlands. It passes through booming Albuquerque, sophisticated Santa Fe, and laid-back Taos. And it offers plenty of opportunities to sample the rich stew of cultures – Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo – that gives New Mexico its exotic appeal.

The trip begins in Albuquerque, and the first stop is the Turquoise Museum. Housed inconspicuously in a strip mall at the edge of Old Town, the museum holds an impressive collection of turquoise, with some 60 different mines represented. There are exhibits on mining, lapidary, and silversmithing, but the best reason for visiting the museum is a practical one: the knowledgeable staff will happily teach you what to look for when buying turquoise jewelry.

Old Town is full of shops, galleries, and street vendors selling jewelry, but you might find a better deal downtown at Skip Maisel's Wholesale Indian Jewelry and Crafts. In addition to a large selection of jewelry, the store offers Indian pottery, hand-woven rugs, and Hopi kachina dolls at "wholesale prices." The Pueblo Deco-style building was designed by New Mexico's most famous architect, John Gaw Meem.

Meem also designed many of the buildings on the campus of the University of New Mexico, site of the next stop. The Meteorite Museum in Northrup Hall boasts one of the most important collections of meteorites in the world. Highlights include the one-ton, stony Norton County that landed in Kansas in 1948 and a 1,600-pound chunk of the famous Navajo iron meteorite. Admission is free.

The last stop in Albuquerque is the Rio Grande Nature Center. This is one of the best places in the city to explore the bosque – the broad ribbon of forest that stretches along the floodplain of the Rio Grande. In this oasis of tranquility and shade, trails wander among tall stands of cottonwoods and clusters of willows, tamarisks, and Russian olive trees before reaching sand flats along the river's edge. Wildlife thrives in the park's riparian habitat: lucky visitors might catch sight of beavers, muskrats, lizards, or coyotes. Some 260 species of birds have been spotted here, including sandhill cranes, Cooper's hawks, snow geese, and great horned owls.