Taos to Farmngton
Yesterday’s travel news was cut short by my brain insisting on sleep. I don’t want the reader to miss seeing Taos and the high mountain road afterward.
For several miles before Taos we were encouraged to stop at pottery galleries, painting galleries or other artists galleries. Homes ranged from upscale homes to shanties leaning against the hill. Steep roads climbed up scree covered hills to old stone and adobe houses. In town, though adobe was the building material of choice.
Definitely a town for the wealthy spender Taos offered every type on art craft from fancy boots to ornate East Indian painted cupboard for $15,000.00 to $15.00 sandwiches.
One large store focused on antiques and furniture brought from India. For a million dollars I could furnish a new house - well at least a room. My favorite item in this store was a giant cloth which would have been used as a covering for a wedding couple at their wedding, or a decorative roof for any celebration. The cloth was made much like Hawaiian applique which involves layering material then cutting our sections of the top layer. The cut edge is then turned under 1/8 inch and sewn in an “invisible” stitch, revieling the layer beneath. Layers are built up for more color, each cut away to reveal the layers beneath it.
The entire cloth was about the size of four full size quilts.
We had lunch at an outdoor cafe. I had whole wheat bread with guacamole, bean sprouts with herbed dressing while Jeff had some sort of turkey wrap.
We took another circle around town, through the plaza, checked out a couple stores and left.
We left Taos, deciding to take the less traveled road. Rather than going the traditional route through Flagstaff and Santa Fe to get to the Grande Canyon, we chose to go through the National Forest taking us through high passes and across mountain meadows over ten thousand feet
There were more deserted ranches and cattle stations.
One view reminded me of a scene on many postcards from Switzerland and in a photograph my sister took on one of her trips to Switzerland. The Swiss photo is of a deep narrow valley with a village at the bottom and a tall-steepled church on the right side of the photo.
All that’s missing from the new Mexico scene is the village with church.
We went by areas that reminded of us Seneca Rocks in West Virginia, just more of it.
The national forest provided more road side stops with views than we had time. We did stop for one of the many beaver dams.
This part of the drive ended at Eagle Nest Lake, a large lake built by Charles Springer about 1919. It now provides irrigation to many farmers in eastern New Mexico. It is now trying to become a vacation destination with land and homes for sale. the basin and meadow area looks much like Canaan Valley in West Virginia and makes me understand the uniqueness of Canaan Valley as a highland mountain meadow, so unique in the east.
I’ll close out this entry with some more photos of the mountains into Eagle Nest.
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| climbing the mountain |
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| Just above rapid mountain stream |
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| You guessed it . . .Mountain stream |
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| Eagle Nest Lake 8132, |
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| Driving down to Eagle Nest Lake and Valley |
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| Far end of Eagle Nest Lake |
The nice thing about reading this blog is that you don't have to appear interested if you are not. You can even fall asleep while reading it and I will never know.
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