Day 2 (Sunday) started out in the tiny NM town of Las Vegas. No, nothing like the other one. Probably closer to the complete antithesis of the other one. But it was a nice enough place to stay for 10 hours. The El Camino motel was in the middle of a 300 yard stretch of about 8 motels, and was the first of all 8 that we looked at before deciding where to sleep. Typical me.
It must have been about 80 when we pulled in the night before. When we left at about 7 the next morning it was too cold to leave the windows down!
Driving through some incredible mountains on the way to Taos, we decided to stop and take in the view. There were better views, but there's no really safe way to pull over on the edge of a cliff. This was at about 7500 to 8000 ft elevation. Taos is down to the left about 15 miles.
Aren't we cute? Of course, all this is at about 9am, only half an hour after I got a ticket in podunk Mora for 36 in a 25. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was actually getting pulled over. I mean, are you kidding me? That same road earlier had been a 70mph limit. At least it was only $80.
Our first stop in tiny Taos, aside from a quick drive-by of our B&B, Dreamcatcher, was the Taos Art Museum. Russian-born artist Nicolai Fechin basically completely rebuilt this house in the early 20th century, doing all the woodwork himself - structural and furniture - and it's all incredible. There are about 300 other pieces by various other local artists in this cool little house, too, but I was mostly taken by Fechin's rough-hewn woodwork.
Typical view just north of Taos, on our way to Arroyo Seco - a tiny one-street enclave of artists, their galleries, and cute, overpriced little shops.
The Gypsy 360 in Arroyo Seco had really good, really huge omletes - the perfect Sunday brunch. From there we took a fun, winding drive up to the Taos Ski Valley where they get about 300 inches of snow every year, compared to about 30 inches a year only 15 miles away in Taos proper.
From there we drove to the Rio Grande Gorge - a 600 ft deep canyon in the middle of a 20 mile wide flat plain between the mountains. When we got there the wind was probably a steady 15-20 mph, and you could feel the bridge shake whenever a truck went by. Not my most comfortable moments taking some of these pictures, but the view was just amazing. Notice the rain in the background here. You could see the weather coming ten miles away. Just awesome!
Reverse angle.
We then went to see these cool houses called earthships. How incredibly hippy is that? They're completely off the grid - make their own electricity and process their own water/wastewater. The walls are made mostly of old dirt-packed tires covered with an earthy plaster. Neat idea, really, but we were quoted a price of $150 / square foot to build one. That's pretty steep for a dirt and trash house, even if you are saving the environment.
See? Doesn't it look all earthship-y?
Some very yellow shots of the inside of our incredibly cute room, named the Kokopelli, at the Dreamcatcher B&B. I can't say enough good things about this B&B. Pretty much the only thing I didn't like was that there's so much cool stuff to do around Taos, that we really didn't spend much time at Dreamcatcher. Breakfast started both mornings 15 minutes before we had to rush off to either whitewater rafting or ATVing, but was the best food of any of the places we stayed.
Smaller than our other rooms, but cheaper and more comfortable, in my opinion.
The outside common areas of the Dreamcatcher were really great. I don't have a shot of the hot tub, but we did get to enjoy it for a while one night. Their web page linked earlier has a bunch of better photos.
We then walked the ten minutes to the plaza, where an annual spanish festival was wrapping up. Dinner at Eske's Brew Pub just across the street was a nice way to wrap up the day.
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