Mary Panttaja

Yesterday I had the bright idea to spend the day touring the Taos area. See the Taos Pueblo, the DH Lawrence ranch, maybe spin by Los Alamos. I made several mistakes, one of them thinking that it would be a brisk two hour drive to Taos.

Well, it was four hours there (some of it from goofs of my own, some from traffic, some from road work) and two hours forty-five back (for the return I figure out what “Santa Fe Relief Road” meant). It was a beautiful drive most of the way. (Though I cannot recommend Espanola or Santa Fe from the road.) Much of the drive follows the Rio Grande, some of it in a narrow canyon. The clouds were majestic over the desert bluffs and canyons. There is some beautiful country east of Santa Fe—a thick forest of pinyon and pine with few man-made landmarks. (How I should come to be east of Santa Fe on a route to Taos may come into question. Needless to say there are very long stretches of road that direction without any freeway exits (13 miles in one particular case.))

Taos itself I just drove through; it seemed very busy and touristy, though on another day might very well be interesting. I spent an hour walking the Taos Pueblo. It is very ancient and beautiful, though fairly brushed up and clean. The claim is that it has been steadily occupied for 1000 years. Quite an accomplishment on this continent.

So, a tiring day on the road with not much to show for it. I will calculate more carefully next time.

PS. All would have been made easier with use of some of the vast technology we own. But I didn’t take the GPS, I discovered 20 miles up the road that I  had only 20% charge on my phone (so I couldn’t use its mapping tools; just enough to SMS with Jim all day if I shut it off in between), and I didn’t take my computer. Of course, if I had read the map correctly (old fashioned technology), that would have solved some of my problems.