Bye bye Taos

Saturday we spent on a photo safari with Bob Ayre -one time aeronautics engineer, atomic bomb salesman, silversmith and photographer. We visited the Taos Pueblo - claiming to be the longest occupied village in America, the plaza and downtown area and San Francisco De Asis church.

The shot above was taken in a Trading Post. I thought using old stirrups as containers to display this stuff was pretty cool.

 A mockingbird.

The Taos Inn is pretty famous. Inside you'll find Doc Martin's restaurant (named after a local doctor who was generous about taking payment in chickens instead of money), the Adobe Bar and it's an inn. We went in Saturday night for margueritas, dinner, more margueritas. We sat in the bar which was a great opportunity to people watch. At 7pm a fantastic flamenco show started. We loved the whole day.
The picture above with the dog is funny. It says The History of the U.S. according to Michelle Bachman's dog. In 1776 George Washington and John Quincy Adams sailed to Americal aboard the Nina, the Pinata and the Santa Claus where they freed all the slaves in Massachusetts except the gay ones."

Found out a few interesting factoids about the state - you do not have to get your car safety inspected - EVER. The state has been a state for less than 100 years (the anniversary is 2012) and, until 10 years ago, there was no building code. That explains why they only have 1 washroom in a restaurant that holds 100 people (and that's a co-ed washroom most of the time).

The Enchanted Circle

Drove the enchanted circle from Taos. First stop was Arroyo Seco, tiny town with maybe 10 shops. Kept a lookout for Julia Roberts and her children but didn't see them this trip. Lots of pickup trucks though.

This old truck was parked outside one of the shops.

In Red River, New Mexico. It reminded me of what Banff might have looked like 100 years ago.
Big ski area.

I just ate lunch. Can you tell?

Foothills of the Sangre Cristo mountains, the southern tip of the Rockies. Looks a lot like Cochrane, alberta.

Morning in Taos

Yesterday's post was frustrating. The internet connection is not very powerful and it took almost an hour to upload the photos.
Today we are driving "the enchanted circle" . We're heading north from where we are and driving an 82 mile circle, clockwise, through the mountains, Cimarron and back to Taos. We are interested in the small town of Arroyo Seco as there are many art galleries and they are more reasonably priced than Santa Fe.

We felt rather chilly last night while sleeping and woke up to find the water in the birdbath frozen (outside, not inside the casita) Looking west over about a mile of sagebrush we spotted a hot air balloon sailing through the Rio Grande Gorge. They do a think called splash and dash. They descend, just touch the surface of the river, then rise again. The Rio Grande Gorge bridge spans this crack in the earth's surface at a height of 800 feet. We are going to walk/drive across it later.
Tomorrow we have a photosafari booked with a local photographer and one stop will be Taos Pueblo.
Heading out soon but wanted to show you a few more pics, including the sink in our bathroom.