Taos Pueblo is a real town where people live and work in old, old houses and allow the tourists to come see during the day. Today was very quiet. It poured rain yesterday and the place was muddy.
Don’t you enjoy the contrast between the historic home and the pickup?
I truly enjoyed the friendliness of the people of Taos Pueblo. They seemed to want me to know and understand about the village. It didn’t feel like a tourist act.
Marilynne
Taos, New Mexico, is my choice for our vacation. (The Carlsbad Caverns were Roy’s.) The road north from White Sands and Alamogordo is long and runs through the desert so there isn’t much to see. There weren’t many towns along the way and those we saw seemed to be returning to the desert dust.
Deep blue sky and puffy white clouds
The closer we got to Taos, the more clouds we saw.
The sun was playing hide and seek, but this cloud gave clues to where it was.
We began to climb into the mountains.
As we began to climb into the mountains, we met the Rio Grande River.
Later, I asked someone if this was the same Rio Grande River that ran between Texas and Mexico. They said it was. I admit to being skeptical. We stopped for a while to stretch our legs.
Where there's water there are fishermen. He never looked away from what he was doing.
Fall has come to the mountains. They’re brightened by these trees with bright yellow leaves.
So pretty.
When we arrived in Taos, the clouds were moving in and it began to rain. Cold rain. It snowed at night in the higher elevations and the wind feels like it was just there at the snow a minute or so ago.
Today has been cold and rainy. I shopped around the square and bought a fashionable new scarf to highlight my dull looking, but very warm, coat. It looks great when I wear jeans.
We drove out to the bridge that spans the Rio Grande Gorge just north of town. The wind was so strong and so icy cold we were afraid we’d be thrown into traffic so we didn’t stay long and I didn’t get a picture.
Tomorrow we leave Taos and drive West, hoping to be at Shiprock or Four Corners before dark.
Marilynne
I can tell this one better with pictures. We drove to White Sands National Monument (and used our Lifetime Passes) because I wanted to see if it was true – that the sands are truly white. Here are pictures to show you.
At first it doesn't look like much.
Where they clear the road it looks like a snow plow has just been there.
We see tracks in the sand, lizards, birds, small animals.
I'm surprised to see people on the dunes. Won't it hurt them? No, the wind will blow the marks away.
Here the dune is clean. No marks, but the ripples made by the wind.
We leave White Sands behind and go to Alamogordo, New Mexico to see the Space Museum. It’s a glass cube situated on the side of a mountain – a desert mountain. I didn’t take pictures there, but I looked at so many. There are the photographs of everyone who made a significant contribution to the goal of outer space. There were lots of photographs, including a lot of photos of people who helped develop missiles. Missiles technology had to mature before we could send men into space.
Marilynne
I couldn’t blog yesterday because I was exhausted! When we first talked about seeing the Carlsbad Caverns I said I wasn’t going to go down. I don’t like to be confined in dark places (or confined anywhere else), I don’t like to go underground, I don’t like caves. You hear it, don’t you? But when I talked to people who had been there they all said to do it. Allow myself to be confined in dark places, go underground, see the cave.
Roy was fulfilling a lifetime dream of seeing the Caverns. He’d always wanted to go. I can make do with pictures, thank you. I knew he wanted me to go with him, but I encouraged him to go by himself. We could stay more than one day if he wanted to. See everything you want to see. See it for the little boy called Donnie. See it for the grown man named Roy. Go see it.
Somewhere in there I decided to at least go down by elevator. I could peek into the cavern and then go back up. I dressed warmly, took my walking stick and went with him down into the cavern. It’s a long, long way down.
I got ready. I peeked into the cavern. I took a few steps and within minutes I was enchanted. If you want to see photos of what I saw, check this photo site. I could never capture the beauty of the caverns by camera myself, though many were trying. The paths were good. Guard rails lined the entire path. We walked slowly, savoring the moment. Roy had rented talking sticks and they really added to what we were seeing. I walked one-mile round trip, but it felt like 10 miles instead. I was really tired when we finished – and starving. I was so glad they served hot food at the top.
On the elevator up, the attendant turned off the lights in the elevator but left the outside lights on so we could see the rock going by. A father told a little boy to look at the rock. “Not rock.” he declared. Not rock no matter what his father said. It was an amusing diversion.
I had intended to take pictures of the new low-profile visitors center, the Indian-cliff-dweller-looking housing for the staff, and the marvelous view from the center, but I was tired down to the last little cell in my body. You will have to take my word for it that it was marvelous. From the top of the mountain you can see clear to Mexico (not so far, but parts of Texas are between you and the border).
An interesting thing is that you drive to the top of a mountain to see the caverns. The caverns are inside that mountain, not down below the flat ground. They told us that the mountain was once an underground reef in which the cavern formed. At one place when we were down in the caverns, they told us that the sloped ceiling we saw was actually the sloped part of the mountain. Oh! My!
I did mention UFOs, didn’t I? Today, when we could finally move enough to drive the car, we went north to Roswell, New Mexico, home of the UFO Museum. In Roswell, an old movie theater has been turned into a museum about UFOs. They have carefully collected information about UFOs from all around the world, but mostly the US. They have newspaper clippings, letters from witnesses certifying to what they know or heard first-hand, and photos, lots of photos.
It was an interesting stop. I bought lots of crazy souvenirs with aliens on them. The aliens look like ghosts with saggy tummies and big dark eyes. It’s a good stop before Halloween.
While in Roswell I saw a tree I would like to grow in my own backyard. If it grows in Roswell, it will grow in my yard. Do you know what it is? If so, please tell me.
Marilynne
Mystery tree
