Taos, New Mexico

We departed on our summer sojourn on Friday, June, 22.  We are no longer road warriors, so we planned for a stop in Amarillo—about half way to Taos from Denton.  The trip across West Texas was largely uneventful—it was mostly hot and flat, flat and hot.  Before we left home our electric steps weren't functioning normally, but we thought that was from low battery charge.  After driving all day the batteries should have been fully charged, but they weren’t.  Saturday isn’t the best time to need repairs on an RV as most places close their repair shops on the weekend.  Luckily for us, we found one open in Amarillo on Saturday and we took the rig in first thing in the morning.  Turned out the batteries were corroded, but otherwise okay.  The problem with the steps was with the motor.  It needed replacement.  Again, luck was on our side and they had the correct motor in stock.  When was the last time that happened to you?  Lucky Duck!

We were on the road by 1:00 pm, about five hours later than we wanted.  We decided to not to go to Taos on Saturday, but to stop off in Las Vegas instead.  We stayed at a crappy KOA—ok, ok, I admit it, I think all KOAs are crappy, but sometimes there is no other game in town.  We got into Taos around noon the next day with a somewhat adventurous ride through the mountains.  Someone had scheduled triathlon that weekend and the bicycle portion was on NM 518, the very highway we needed to take to Taos.  Well it was touch and go with us dodging gearheads for 10 or 15 miles.  This particular road had wide, smooth shoulders, but most of those yahoos decided to ride right down the middle of the lane…it was like negotiating a slalom run in a 40’ motorhome with another 20’ of Jeep on the back end.  Whew!

The remainder of our trip to Taos went quite smoothly.  We are staying in a park we’ve not stayed in before—Monte Bello RV Park.  It is small and relatively new, but lacks any amenities and is over-priced—so what else is new about Taos?  The state of New Mexico is currently going through a horrendous hot spell.  The temps in Taos the last three days have been in the mid-90s.  To get out of the heat yesterday, we took a hike in the Taos Ski Valley.  It was a four mile round trip to Williams Lake. 

The Williams Lake Trail is arguably the most popular trail in the Taos Ski Valley. Although it officially starts at the ski village, most people access it from the parking area up the road to the south and east of the village. This parking area is at N36 34.7566 W105 26.4008 and 10,191 feet. The Forest Service claims that it is 2 miles to the lake from here—it is actually 1.91 miles. The trail reaches its summit at 11,142 feet about a quarter-mile from the lake. While the trail is regarded as easier than most in the ski valley area, it does climb more than 700 feet per mile. The reason it seems simpler is that although the steep stretches are very steep, the trail is short and there are several nearly level stretches.

.  We started at 10,220’ and went up from there.  It was much cooler up high, but still warmer than one would expect.  Susan did remarkably well.  She was slow, but was just taking it easy.  Went up in an hour and a half and came back in an hour.  Found the elevation gain and altitude somewhat difficult going up, but didn’t even breath heavily coming down.  The lake itself wasn’t much to look a—water level was very low—must have had a dry winter.  The Wheeler Peak (13,110’) trail started at the lake…we decided to skip it.

We briefly toured the village of Arroyo Seco after the hike.  Not much to look at, just a bunch of tourista shops.  Apparently, the village has some historical notoriety in the region, but it was a well-kept secret on curio shop row.  On Monday night, the International Space Station paid us a visit with a fly-by about 9:20 pm.  It was a delightful sight to see.  If you want to find out when it will pass by where you are, go to the NASA web site and search for the ISS fly-by schedule.

Tuesday was spent hoofing it around Taos Plaza, in and out of all of shops and galleries.  We didn’t buy much, but didn’t plan to either.  We had a great lunch at Orlando’s…the same place we had dinner with good friends (Gary & Lian, do you remember?) in 2007 when we were at the Red River Motorcycle Rally.  After lunch, we toured the Millicent Rogers Museum.  It was pretty amazing…well worth the admission fee.  We spent a couple of hours looking at the museum’s beautiful collection consisting of art, jewelry, photos, furniture, and religious relics.  We were home by 4:00 pm…still hotter than Hell…mid 90s; again.

Millicent Rogers 1902 - 1953

 While we had covered much of the Enchanted Circle from Taos to Questa to Red River to Eagle Nest to Angel Fire and back to Taos at different times over the years, Wednesday was the first time we drove the entire 83 miles at once.  We stopped at a small lake outside of Questa for morning tea and then wandered through some shops in Red River—the place was very different than it was when we attended the Red River Rally mentioned above.  The rally had thousands of attendees and there were motorcycles as far as the eye could see.  Eagle Nest amounts to even less than Red River on the urban scale, yet we found an interesting shop that carried some African-made baskets that we decided needed a home—well, one did anyway. 

We hunted for a place for lunch in Angel Fire, but found nothing that appealed to us.  We settled on Graham’s Grille; a very nice restaurant near the plaza in Taos.  Much to our surprise and delight we found Dick Koeppe and his wife, Lou.  Actually, Dick recognized fred and called out a greeting.  Dick was the superintendent of schools in Cherry Creek when fred first went there in 1975 and they worked together for about 12 or 13 years; however, it’s been some 25 years since they’ve seen one another.  What a small world it is!