Taos, New Mexico, The High Road to Taos - Oct 27th

Friday, our last day here in Taos, we decided to take "The High Road to Taos", starting down Highway 518 and going through the mountains over to Highway 76 and do a bit of a circle tour cutting back to Espanola and back up to Taos on Highway 68. Definitely a "picture tour" for Ray. We were out the door and fueled up by 8:15 am.

The first part of Highway 518 is really windy with steep corners up the mountain.

Esponola Badlands, coming down the mountain.

Espanola Badlands showing the expanse.

Penasco after coming down the mountain.

San Jose de la Garcia Church circa 1706. They were doing some maintence to the exterior of the church.

Further down the road we turned up to Nambe Pueblo. This was a very small community. I talked to a gentleman whose wife makes fresh torilla's to order. Unfortunately it would take an hour so we had to decline.

Back on the road to the town of Pojoaque with a museum and a replica of old dwellings. We drove round and round trying to find this place. Google showed it under the highway! Ray finally said to go to the hotel/casino and ask. Turned out to be right down the road. lol

They have horno's here too.

Back in the car and starting back home. Ray wanted to see the Santa Clara Pueblo. Google shows pictures of ancient ruins. We drove around and around where Google maps places it. We finally went to the band office and found out the ruins were actually called the Puye Cliff Dwellings.  If have such a hard time remembering how to pronouce it ... POO YEAH lol Ray calls up Google images as a standard pratice. The names don't always coincide with the picture. One needs to "visit" the picture and do some reading.

We drove the 7 miles up the mountain road to the Visitor's Centre. Wow what amazing cliff dwellings. Apparently the only tour available today came with a 30 minute wait and then it's an hour tour. We didn't have the appropriate footwear with us. The staff drive you up to the top of the mesa and then you work your way down with some ladders. At the top of the mesa there is another huge city of ruins before you come down to the cliff dwellings. Maybe we can come back from Bandelier to see this as it looks awesome. Ray managed to take some pictures of the cliff dwellings before we left.

Here is a picture from Google of the Mesa Dwelling ruins.

You can tell this was a huge community 1000 or more years ago.

After we left here, we went back to Espanola and Ray found a barbecue place so bought a "picnic" lunch to eat along the Rio Grande River. There are quite a few "fishing/boat in" spots accessible along the highway.  The BBQ meats were delicious, some of the best we've had.

We took a few pictures along the river. Ray managed to capture a couple of boats on the river.

See the kayaker on the right?

Fisherman

The yellow kayak again.

Cheese!

I happened to catch this rafting crew while driving, so we pulled over for Ray to take the picture.

Time to go home. We really enjoyed our drive today.

We've found Taos to be a very interesting and photogenic place. A lot of the  buildings are adobe style with the logs going through them for support, especially in the Historic Downtown area. This is quite an artists community for many years, showcasing many mediums including Native American beadwork, silverwork and pottery. The streets and highways are all free of garbage. I may have seen 3 pieces of trash along the highway in the 5 days we have been here. I've only saw two homeless people pushing their carts downtown, but no sign of tents or garbage that we've learned to associate with them. Everyone we dealt with is extremely friendly and the food at the different restuarants we visited is always top notch. 

Once we were in for the night and after contemplating the weather change to possible "SNOW", we decided to omit going to Bandelier National Monument and the Puye Cliff Dwellings until another time. No point on dry camping in the snow/rain for 3 days and not see what we planned to see as the monument will probably close the trails. Off to Santa Fe tomorrow, 3 days early :)

Taos, New Mexico - Taos Pueblo, Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and the Earthship Community - Oct 26

Thursday morning, not as cold outside. Today we're finally getting to go to the Taos Pueblo, our reason for coming here lol. Ray is feeling fine this morning so maybe just some altitude sickness?

We arrived just as they opened.  Admission is $22 each (seniors price) and tour their grounds. The tour started at 9:30 am and is quite interesting. Amazing that these dwellings are over 1200 years old. They maintain them twice a year with some new plaster to keep them from crumbling. The same house gets handed down by each family for generations. There are about 15 families that still live here full-time equating to 50 people. They live without power or water and their only heat source is wood or propane heaters. Their outhouses are outside the walled town to prevent contaminating their drinking water from the Red Willow Creek.

First up is the St. Jerome Church. 

This church was build as a replacement in 1850 as the previous one built in 1619 was destroyed during the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the church was destroyed in an effort to remove Spanish reign from the territory. The revolt included all the nineteen pueblos in New Mexico except for 2. 

In 1847, during the US War with Mexico, the USArmy attacked Taos Pueblo in retalliation to the murder of Taos governer Charles Bent. It was believved the Taos Indians participated in the murderous act that was led by revolutionaries looking to overthrow US Government in a town where Spanish rule predated the existing command. During the dispute, sanctuary was sought inside the church by men, women and children of the pueblo, about 150 people, only to result in the total destruction of the church and the people inside. The bell tower is what still stands today and the courtyard became a place of buriel thereafter.

Being a World Unesco Heritage Site, they are not able to rebuild or change any window, door etc without Unesco's permission which seems to take about 10 years. This is why they maintain them twice a year as to not have to go through all that paperwork. The upside though is during Covid they were given funds towards the maintenance as no visitors were allowed in for 2 years.

North House

Hlaumma ranges from 1-5 stories high. Taos Pueblo is known to have inspired what is now known as southwestern architecture. Each door is a entrance to a privately owned home.

The lady tucked into the corner by the blue window on the left, made fresh pies in her horno this morning so we bought a piece of blueberry and cherry to try tonight.

Pueblo Plaza

This is the area between the north buildings and the south buildings with the Red Willow Creek in between.

This area is used for gatherings through the year, the biggest one September 30th, the San Geronimo, which celebrates the end of the harvest season. There is traditional foot races, feasting, pole climbing and an all day arts and crafts fair. The general public is welcome to attend.

The structures in front of the dwellings are corn drying racks. 

There is a wall around the whole pueblo, although broken down a bit and much shorter than the original. This used to be 6 feet high with watch towers on all 4 corners to alert if another tribe on it's way to raid. There houses were only accessed through their roofs and they would pull their ladders up as well as everything they could manage before they were attacked.

Red Willow Creek

This is the source of the drinking water for the Pueblo coming from their sacred Blue Lake located high in the mountains above the pueblo. Only these people are allowed to go to the lake where they hold religious ceremonies in August of every year. They were also called the Red Willow People due to this creek.

The pole on the left in the distance, is for pole climbing during the festivities on September 30th every year.

South House

Hlaukwima is the same as the north house structure with 3-4 stories. The first "apartment" buildings. The also have kiva's here, but not open to the public. We actually saw what we think is the entrance to one. Our guide says that where the meetings area held in the winter as opposed to the plaza in the summer.

The families choose whether they want a red door or a blue door to chase away bad spirits.

KIVA - You can see the circle of sticks with a ladder in the centre.

Our guide is a pediatric nursing student who has to go to Albuqueque soon to finish up her last semesters for her degree and then wants to come back to the Pueblo to work for her people.

Here is a short video Ray took to show how extensive the North House is.

Our guide left us at this point and we went back and stopped at the various artisan shops that were open checking out their wares on both sides of the creek. Some very nice pieces with very expensive prices. Other than a couple of horse hair pottery Christmas ornaments, and 2 pieces of pie that had been baked outside in their Horno ovens I left all the fabulous jewellry there. :) There were also a lot of gorgeous paintings that we had no room for.

These Horno ovens were made with the same material as their houses, first bricks made from the dirt, dried in the sun for one to two weeks and then a layer of plaster made from dirt, hay and water. Only cedar wood is used to heat up these ovens. These ideas for these ovens were brought by the Spanish in the 1600's.

The old folks cannot climb a ladder anymore to their dwelling so some people have made stairs.

After an enjoyable couple of hours we headed back to our car and went north on Hwy 64 to see the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. On the other side is a rest area you can walk trails to get a better view and then walk out onto the bridge to look below.

Looking below from the bridge.

Looking below in the other direction. Very deep canyon.

Just a little further down the road is the Earthship Community. You couldn't drive around the houses and some of them are for AirB&B, but we were able to take some pictures from the highway.

Pretty funky houses. It's going on 1 pm, so time for lunch. Back home we worked on the blog and at 1:30 pm, I headed back to town for my monthly pedicure. Another great day. Tomorrow off to drive "The High Road to Taos".