Ozark Mountains

More Taos, etc..

Departing Taos, balloons filled the air.

We visited a very old church coming down the high road to Taos in Las Trampas.

An old graveyard on the side.

Stopped in Truchas to buy a wind chime from Bill Loyd.

Old ruins surrounding the countryside.

Taos Pueblos

We arrived at the Taos Pueblo in the late afternoon (4pm and it closes to the public at 5pm) and only had one hour to shoot pictures and shop.  Bought some art and jewelry from the pueblo artists. 

Wandering so late in the day when they are about to close the entrance to the public, you almost feel as if you're intruding in their private time.  A lot of cars began to arrive near 4:30 and 5:00, time for them to come home. 

They live and work out of their adobe homes and each room has it's own little adobe fireplace which keeps the little rooms toasty warm.  Most of them have dirt floors but for the living areas in the back, some have laid down pieces of linoleum and/or have hand woven rugs. 

The adobe ovens for baking bread out front of each home in the compound.

We bought a little souvenir gift for our grandson from this nice lady's shop.

Friendly dogs were lazying in the sun or running up to me to be petted.

The High Road To Taos

The weather in Aztec during the daytime was in the 70's, nice and warm.  However, the temperature dropped below freezing at night and was very cold in the early morning hours.  It was 26 degrees the day before yesterday when we took off for Taos.

We drove along Hwy 64 E from Aztec to Taos through the Navajo region, through stately rocks standing sentinel alongside the road in the high desert countryside.  The mountains of rocks, balancing precariously to the left and all manor of scrub brush and cottonwoods with their dark contrasting branches in fall splendor to the right of the roadway a treat for the eyes.

Every couple miles is spotted an oil drill bobbing up and down like a duck in the water.  Hwy 64 E was a good choice to travel on, very little traffic on the road.  The only vehicles we saw are the oil workers in their white trucks that passed by us infrequently.

In Dulce we saw buffalo and an old dilapidated wooden Rio Grande train car.  It's Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation in Dulce.

We discovered an old railroad in Chama and the friendly conductor had just pulled into the train station, with steam still puffing off the big black train and he told us we can wander around and take pictures all we want.

Tickets, please.

More Scenery of Aztec, New Mexico

Someone in town told us about these arched rocks way out in the desert - it's wilderness out there - we never would have found the one shown above if we hadn't run into these people riding around on their quads.  After that, we figured one was good enough, we were afraid of getting lost which would be easy to do if you saw all the little dirt roads that lead off one another and go over these little hills and around bends.