The range on your right is the Sangre de Cristo — the Blood of Christ mountains — and it is the southern end of the Rocky Mountains, running out of Colorado and dying away south of Santa Fe.
The name comes from the light. At sunset, when conditions are right, the snow and rock on these peaks catch the last red light and glow a deep blood red, and that alpenglow is genuinely startling the first time you see it. Spanish colonists named them for it.
They are also high. Somewhere in there is Wheeler Peak at thirteen thousand one hundred and sixty-one feet, the highest point in New Mexico, and this entire loop is essentially a lap around it — you will see it from several sides today without ever driving over it.
Geologically these are uplifted blocks along the Rio Grande Rift, which is a place where the continent is slowly pulling APART. That rift is why the Rio Grande has a valley to run in, why there are hot springs in the region, and why there are volcanoes out on the plain west of here.
Watch the light on them in the evening. That is what the name is about.
Photo: MichelAlicia08 · CC BY-SA 4.0