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 :)