World United States New Mexico Taos

Bill and Helen's Fulltime Travels Here we go again and again

Taos Apr 15, 2009

We were not sure how nice the day would be but from the forecast we decided that yesterday would be the best day to visit Taos. We had been there before but didn’t get a chance to really explore the area and Jan and Jeff had never been there. When we headed out about 10:30 they had two of their three dogs with them so we each drove our won trucks. Taos is only 70 + miles from Santa Fe but it is slow going. Lots of towns and stop signs as well as curves and mountains. It took us a couple of hours to get there. After a stop at the Visitors Center and armed with a bunch of brochures, we headed to our first stop at the Taos Plaza. The Plaza is one of the oldest places in Taos and is now a whole bunch of shops and art gallery’s. Of course Taos is noted for their art and let me tell you, it is great, but there is a whole lot more to Taos then art.

We pulled into the parking lot across the street from the Plaza. The attendant was not there yet and the sign said that if you got here before he did, you got the early bird special of $3.00 for the day and he would collect when we returned. O.K., we crossed the road into the Plaza and went into many of the shops but by now we were quite hungry so we brought the dogs back to the truck and found out that our attendant had arrived. His name was Bill so we knew we could trust his judgment when we asked him the best place to eat. He pointed us to a really nice grill and told us to try the corn chowder with crab. We followed his suggestion and it turned out to be a good one. I had a cup of the chowder while Bill had a bowl and we both shared hot French bread. Jeff and Jan each had salads and they swore it was as great as our soup but we just can’t believe that. This chowder was plum full of crab meat and the only complaint Bill had was the excessive basil that was on top. I loved it. There were so many things on the menu that I wanted to try but the soup was more than enough. Sure wish I could remember the name of the restaurant because I highly recommend it but if you park in the lot right across the street from the Plaza I’m sure Bill will tell you where to go.

After eating it was already about 2:30 and our friends were worried about the dog they left at home. They knew it would take a couple of hours to return so they left us and we continued on our visit of Taos. The first 20 minutes was spent talking to our parking lot attendant. What a guy. It turns out that he was in his 80’s and had been in WW2. Now that’s something you don’t see everyday. Most of the WW2 Vets we know have retired long ago. He had a ton of stories to tell us and we could have talked to him all day.

Next was the Taos Pueblo. For those of you that don’t know (we asked at the visitors center) it means Village. There are many families still living here and they have little shops all around the area. They sell their jewelry and artwork as well as home made breads, pies and cookies. We were a little turned off when we first purchased our tickets to walk through. Seems to me that charging admission to walk thru a place to shop and spend money was a little excessive and when they charged me an extra $5.00 to bring my camera with. But we were there and didn’t want to leave without seeing the place. I did take some great pictures. Hope you enjoy them.

We spent more time then we had planned on so had to skip some of the things we still wanted to see. There is the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge on our list but it was just too far to go there and return home before dark. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Angle’s Fire were places we would have liked to see again but since we had already done that six years ago we opted to stop at the San Francisco de Asis Church on our way out of town. This is not the oldest Church in New Mexico but is considered by many to be the finest example of Spanish Franciscan architecture. It is constructed of tens of thousands of adobes creating massive walls and broad planes, broken only by a single window on either side of the church. When we went inside it was quite dark and we could not take pictures there either.

We made several stops on our way home at some of the pull outs. It was a beautiful drive through the canyon along the Rio Grande. The weather was a beautiful 70 degrees although it was only forcasted to be in the low 60's. What a wonderful day.

Later……………….