by Matthew Jaffe, Sunset senior writer

Ask people in New Mexico what their favorite time of year is, and they’ll tell you autumn. The weather is nearly perfect, the summer crowds are gone, and the chiles are roasting.

It’s a busy time with the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, the Taos Fall Arts Festival and artists studio tours all happening in the coming weeks. But if you’re in New Mexico for any of these fall events, don’t forget to get out and explore the state’s natural side.

It’s aspen time above Taos and Santa Fe and one of New Mexico’s top outdoors destinations is also one of its least known and most beautiful: Valles Caldera National Preserve.

If 89,000 acres of protected land can be considered a secret, then this is it.

Located in the Jemez Mountains just outside Los Alamos and within an hour or so of Santa Fe, the preserve sits inside the collapsed 14-mile diameter crater of a supervolcano that erupted more than a million years ago. For 150 years the property was a ranch; log cabins and a hunting lodge stand as reminders of the preserve's earlier days. Some cattle ranching continues here but it's managed as part of the preserve's mission to protect the biological health of the land.

What’s striking about the preserve is its scale. You look across vast meadows cut by creeks (the flyfishing for brown and rainbow trout here is outstanding). Ponderosa pines, some 500 years old, cloak the preserve’s peaks, with the yellow and orange of aspens marbling the hillsides. Nor are the aspens the only autumnal attraction. The preserve is home to New Mexico’s largest elk herd, and fall is rutting season and a great time to hear the big bulls bugling.

Trails and some preserve areas are open to the public without reservations but to really get inside, take a tour or call ahead to arrange access into the backcountry for hiking and mountain biking. We've all heard references to "last best places," right? Well, Valles Caldera is definitely one of them. It will open the door to a side of New Mexico that most visitors never see.

By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

My family never did the reunion thing, and I sort of feel like I got gypped. I always envy the families who all get together for weeks on end of days at the beach, big group dinners al fresco, parents lounging by the bonfire with cocktails in hand while the kids tromp around content to be with their cousins. I barely even knew who my cousins were, let alone spent frivolous weeks away with them.

Now that I have my own kids, not to mention 13 neices and nephews, I'm dying to plan a reunion someday. The good news is that I recently stumbled upon the absolute perfect place to do it.

Westerbeke Ranch, in Sonoma Valley, minutes from dowtown Sonoma, is a rustic, family-run retreat that bills itself as a conference center but welcomes groups of any kind: 16 people minimum on weekdays, 21 people minimum weekends, 52 people total. Rates are on a sliding scale (cheapest for bigger groups), starting at $141 per person per night, including THREE meals a day! The food is supposedly excellent, featuring produce grown on the grounds, and the ranch kitchen is very inviting, with al fresco seating by a pool. Just think of all the money you save not eating out. And you don’t even have to cook, let alone walk more than 10 paces from your cabin.

The five redwood cabins have single beds only, but they’re plenty comfy in a summer-camp way, with country-style furnishings and porch swings outside. The place exudes summertime laziness, which might explain why I snoozed the whole afternoon away in one of those cabins recently.

I felt like I was entering the Sunset Magazine headquarters as I walked around the Spanish Mission–style property with its lushly landscaped gardens, oak-dotted hillsides, adobe buildings with Taco Bell–syle roofs, even a few cacti here and there. It’s an appropriate likeness, since the ranch is steeped in western heritage, having been built by a western couple in 1935 and occupied by four different generations of that same family since then.

Members of the family still live on the grounds, tending their vegetable gardens, driving cool old trucks around dirt roads, and living the western life we all like to dream of living someday. The same family also owns the very lovely looking El Rito Canyon Retreat in northern New Mexico; Oak Hill Farm in Sonoma County’s Mayacamas Mountains, which sells its produce and flowers at the San Francisco Ferry Builing Ferry Farmers Market; and Bucklin Winery, which produces an excellent zinfandel.

Like I said, I wish I had that kind of family. But at least the rest of us can go stay at the ranch, eat the produce, drink the wine, and dream.

by Matthew Jaffe, senior writer, Sunset

I’m New Mexico-bound in a couple weeks and as much as I’m looking forward to hiking and hot springs, my big can’t-miss on this trip is the exhibit Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams: Natural Affinities. The show at the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum will explore the creative bonds between these artists and includes nearly 100 of their works.

In a world where Miley Cyrus is anointed as an icon, that term has been overused to the point of meaninglessness. Still, it’s hard to find another word to describe O’Keeffe and Adams, two of the 20th century’s most significant American artists and part of a group of individuals who, in combination with the state’s Native American and Spanish Colonial traditions, helped make New Mexico an international center for art. If you need any proof, consider that Santa Fe is one of only nine world communities (and the only one in the U.S.) to be designated a UNESCO Creative City.

I’ve often felt my deepest connection with the world of Adams, O’Keeffe, and the other artists who ventured to New Mexico when I’m in Taos. There’s the San Francisco de Asis Church, a building painted by O’Keeffe and photographed by Adams. It epitomizes the kind of inspiration that New Mexico offered these artists as they turned this simple 18th century church into an icon (there’s that word again) of modern art. And for visitors, whether armed with a digital point-and-shoot or a large format camera, it’s almost impossible not to give it a go. With apologies to Ansel and the photo gods, here’s my very own quickie:

On my most recent trip to Taos, I also stopped in at Los Gallos, the Mabel Dodge Luhan House. Luhan, a writer and artist and a woman once described as “a reposeful hurricane” came to New Mexico in 1917 and eventually married Tony Luhan of Taos Pueblo. They built a Pueblo Revival home and compound that became the center of creative life in Taos, as a steady stream of artists and other visionaries came to immerse themselves in the exotic and alien world of New Mexico.

O’Keeffe arrived here in 1929 with her husband, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. For O’Keeffe, the time in Taos was critical to her artistic development and ultimately her deep creative relationship with the New Mexico landscape. Adams, too, stayed at the house in 1929, during which time he collaborated with writer Mary Austin on his book about Taos Pueblo. Taos so inspired Ansel Adams that it was the place where he said he finally committed his life to photography, after declaring, “This is the most completely beautiful place I have ever seen.”

The Luhan House is remarkably unchanged since its heyday. The latillas in the dining room are still painted like an Indian blanket in reds and blacks and the 200-year-old gates, originally part of the balcony at San Francisco de Asis Church remain.

You can also see windows that novelist D.H. Lawrence painted during his stay.

For all its renown, both from Luhan’s day and in the 1970s when Dennis Hopper owned the property (he dubbed it "The Mud Palace" and the house became a major counterculture haven) this place gets surprisingly little publicity. For an outstanding book on the house’s history, definitely check out Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture by Lois Palken Rudnick.

Coming here and taking a tour is a much more personal experience than the one you get at a lot of cultural landmarks. These days the house is used primarily as a conference center, with photography, writing, and yoga workshops, but it also operates as an inn, including stays in Mabel’s old bedroom.

Just in case you’re looking for a little creative inspiration.