Taos

Taos, August 26, 2007

Taos isn’t at all what I expected. I thought it would be like Santa Fe, only more so. More art, more spiritual, more expensive. But it isn’t. Unless we we’re in the wrong part. We’ll do some exploring tomorrow and maybe we’ll find more of the mystery I thought we’d find.

Although these guys were right outside our hotel room:

And this was possibly the best meal so far on this trip:

And some things we saw in store windows walking back to our hotel:

And this, just because I thought it was pretty:

More tomorrow!!

Santa Fe

Santa Fe, August 25, 2007

We arrived in Santa Fe Friday night, and spent all day Saturday there too. What a wonderful city! Well, the plaza part, which is where we spent our time. It’s just what I thought it would be, just oozing creativity and art. Tons of shops selling jewelry, pottery, paintings, sculptures, clothing, souvenirs… And lots of food. Hoo boy, the food!!!

We arrived in time for the wonderful sunset light. So I saw this:



which looked like this the next morning:



I had lots of fun taking more abstract photos rather than scenics. Like these:

And this one, I couldn’t decide whether I liked it better this way, which is what it really looked like:



Or this:

What do you think?

On our way out of Santa Fe, we took a scenic road that had lots of wildflowers and pretty houses, but we didn’t stop there. But I did see this nice gate:



And these mailboxes:



We still saw rain in the distance



But only got splattered with a few drops. The landscape changed as we drove toward Taos.

Turquoise Trail

We left Mountainair in the morning and continued along the Turquoise Trail. I think this store was Mountainair. I love buildings like this.

We found more ruins. These are the Quarai Ruins, an abandoned Tiwa Pueblo Indian village from about 1200 to the 1670s.







It was pretty dry inside the ruins, but there were some dehydrated flowers

and of course…

Bugs!!!

We drove through more desert

to the town of Madrid, which has some old-time charm. My pictures weren’t very good though. These are the ones I like:

And finally…

Santa Fe!

Silver City to Mountainair

After we left Silver City, we drove. We drove through San Juan on Highway 152, where there was some interesting landscaping:

The scenery along the highway was pretty deserty:

And even the flowers were deserty:

Have you noticed I like bugs? Well, taking pictures of them anyway. Otherwise, not so much. This guy was pretty cool though – and pretty patient:

And on we drove…

… to the town of Hillsboro, New Mexico. I think it’s a fairly touristy town, but it’s very cute. A lot of artists there.

You can’t really take photos of people’s work, but I was allowed to take a picture of this quilt, which I really liked:

From Hillsboro we drove on I-25. We stopped for lunch in the town of Elephant Butte. Really.

We visited a little art gallery with a cute welcoming committee:

There was a storm up ahead



That we drove into

We saw lightning over the mountains so we stopped for a while to try to get photos. These were the best ones I could get:

Once the lightning stopped, the clouds were still very dramatic:

At sunset we arrived at the Abo Ruins, which are the remains of a Spanish mission.

When it got dark we drove into Mountainair

where the hotel had a pretty window

and