By Phil Undercuffler
How do you describe Tinkertown? How do you explain the amazing chaos and creativity and blessed idiosyncrasy of Ross Ward’s life and work to someone who’s never witnessed it? Well, on June 7, 2025, the BMW Car Club of America’s New Mexico Chapter took a beautiful drive down the Turquoise Trail to experience it all firsthand.
We met up east of Santa Fe, in El Dorado, with a little bit of a surprise – previous scouting trips had shown a wide-open, empty parking lot near the highway with plenty of room and visibility, a great place to meet up. However, we were blissfully unaware of the Saturday morning Eldorado flea market. The place was packed. Fortunately, there was just enough room near the entrance for our group of BMWs to congregate.
Once gathered, we made our way south, past Lamy before cutting across on County Road 42 at Galisteo, enjoying some of the most scenic byways of our region over to the Turquoise Trail. From there we passed through Madrid and Golden before meeting up with the rest of our group at the Tinkertown Museum.
From there, we made our way just a little further down the road to enjoy pizza and libations on the patio at Rumor Brewing Company. It’s not on the menu, but it’s rumored they make a wicked green chile cheeseburger – we’ll have to circle back again on another tour and see how they rate in our New Mexico wide taste testing search!
