Taos NM at last! A 2-day post.

We brushed by Taos on Saturday, and returned for a town and area tour yesterday. Lots of pictures in here this time. Taos isn't quite what we expected, but maybe better. The yellow leaves in the pictures are aspen fall colours, something we've always wanted to see in real life. 

When we left the Storrie Lake state park Sunday morning we took a scenic route back to the north to get to Taos.  

The sign indicates the type of roads ahead. More than these 4 miles.

The upper yellow back is Aspen trees

The yellowish line is our route, and high elevation!

Lots of Aspen interspersed with the evergreens

A very nice-looking ranch house

Outbuilding for the rancho above

Notice the snow fence near the road. The weather is not always this nice here.

A nice little aspen

See, they do have winter

 

Later in the day we arrived in Taos, found a place to park and had brunch in a cafe:

Cathie's hot tamale brunch

The view from our brunch seats - nice little pedestrian mall

 

At the tourist info center we discovered there was a wool show on nearby, and today was the last day. So...

Do you think Cathie is pleased to be here?

A large yarn bowl for knitting

 

We also roamed around some more of Taos. The historical area is just a few blocks square, and very walkable. Town building codes require the adobe look be maintained in the historical areas:

Even the Walmart looks different than most. RV parking is allowed. 

After our tour we headed south of town to a BLM area that we weretold has camping. The camping area has a number of developed rustic campgrounds, so we stayed there overnight and will be there tonight too. One of the 7 campgrounds has showers, but you can access them from any of the other 6 campgrounds, lucky since the shower campground was full.

Even though our campground has no showers, it does have heated washrooms with flush toilets, way better than last night's state park. Here's our tenting spot. Each shelter has a metal roof and sunshade side, and a concrete floor. $7/night for unserviced sites like ours. Showers are $1 though.

The atmosphere of this place reminded us of Big Bend in Texas, and Sunny Flat campground in Arizona. They all have big rocks, and there is a hushed atmosphere from all the fellow campers.  

Here's a map of yesterday's travels. Today's will continue after the map. I know this is already long but we have no wifi at or near our overnite site.

 

And then Monday's trips.....



Monday was another touring day, lots more pictures. We did a short circle route, just over 50 miles in total, and it took us about 5 hours.


On the way north to Taos, we couldn't resist some more aspen pictures in the morning light:

Trees growing right in the storm drainage channels

First stop in Taos was to get our 11 lb propane bottle filled. It lasted for 3 years running our van stove plus some heat once in a while, not bad.


Then a stop at historic San Francisco de Asis Church:

Old adobe church

Genuine adobe, you can see the straws in the mix

Then we headed to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. There is a huge canyon around here, with the quite tiny Rio Grande at the bottom:

This large plain borders on the town of Taos.

A span of about 1280 ft across

The Rio Grande, some 600 ft down

After the bridge, we visited the Taos location of  Earth Ship homes. If you haven't read or seen much about these, they are all unique, made from salvaged materials, and as close to energy self-sufficient as possible:

Lots of empty bottles used, encapsulated in Adobe

This one is relatively huge, 2 stories high

Lots more bottles

 

We took the scenic route home, expecting a drive along the Rio Grande Gorge. Well it was, but at one point the "road" dipped down into the canyon right to the river, and we followed along:

After several miles of downhill, we came out to a regular paved road that went to Pilar, where we are camped. This part of the road wasn't nearly as exciting but did have some nice river views:

Here's a map of Monday's tour: