Kokopelli's Cave - Our 1st Anniversary!

When we picked up our trailer here in Farmington November of 2006, we had seen an ad for this interesting B&B, built into the face of a cliff, just outside of the city. Our first anniversary just happened to coincide with the stop for warranty work, so we booked "the cave" for our celebration. http://www.bbonline.com/nm/kokopelli/




This one-of-a-kind B&B has been featured on television, magazines, newspaper articles, and is considered one of the top 10 most unique places to stay in the world. A local geologist got the idea in the early 80's to house his office, but after blasting out the cave realized that his clients wern't going to drive out to the middle of nowhere, and hike down 80 feet of cliff face just to have a short business meeting. You can imagine driving up to this ledge, and saying "where's the office?" "oh, right there, just 80ft over that edge!".




As we climbed down the side of the cliff, Kim looked back with apprehension...."are you sure about this, dear?" The entrance to the dwelling is just in front of and to the left of the outcropping with the handrails that's above Kim's head in the photo. The brick walled structure above that is a storage area for equipment & supplies used to work on the dwelling.






Looking across from the top of the cliff way above from the other direction, the dwelling is barely detectable, blending into the rockface almost perfectly!














However, things change quite a bit as one enters the cave! Walking directly in, one is greeted by another rock wall, that is actually circular, with the living area to the left, and bath & kitchen to the right.

This sketch may help.... the entrance at the bottom right, balcony off the beroom to the bottom left, and as you can see, the rooms encircle a central "ROCK" core that was left to help support the cave.

As you enter the living area, you immediately notice the round kiva in the back. A modern-day version of the sacred Anasazi gathering area, provided a wonderful meditation spot complete with candles and a fire.

The bedroom has it's own opening out to a decl on the cliff face, where we enjoyed the wonderful view at dusk & dawn....

While Kim relaxed with her reading, I found the blast marks, layout & design of the structure interesting.

And of course, there's the rock jacuzzi! With a steaming waterfall, glasses of wine and oodles of candles, it provided that perfect romantic anniversary treat!
We highly recommend this place to all for any special occasion, or just an unforgettable visit to this area.

The Fly Room and an Anniversary Mistake

A few weeks back we saw on our calendar that we'd be in the Farmington area for some warranty work on our trailer right around the time of our first anniversary. Having bought our trailer in Farmington back in Nov. of 06, we decided that the dealer should be the one to do the few minor repairs that we needed done. What really needed to be done and why we are still there a week later in a whole other story. Sam will fill you in on that later.

Back to our first anniversary......

We made reservations at the Kokopelli's Cave while back in west TX. We remembered reading about it while in Farmington when we purchased the trailer. Neither or us are very good at remembering days and dates since we've been on the road. Somehow had the wrong date in our heads. We called up the hostess of the cave the day we thought we were supposed to be there to confirm our reservation. We were very surprised to hear her say that our reservations weren't till the next day!

Since we had the trailer in for repair, we had to find another place to spend the night - quick. We normally don't like to stay in hotels and motels so we started searching the internet for cabins or bed and breakfasts in the area. There were a few B and B's but nothing that appealed to us. We finally found a few fishing lodges that rented rooms. We called up to find out about availability and were warmly received by the manager on the phone. She was very excited about our interest and wanted us to know that this was not a luxury accomodation. She told us that she would not be there when we arrived and told us where to find the key. We made ourselves at home in the Fly Room at the Enchanted Lodge.

We ended up being the only people in the whole "lodge" all night. We had the outdoor hottub to ourselves and an enjoyable grilled meal on the patio.

Not bad for finding something quick!