Taos, New Mexico
In November 2007 a work friend of Sarahs invited us to her ranch outside of Tulsa for thanksgiving dinner and though we had planned a road trip we thought it would be nice to experience this American Holiday in good company before setting off. We had a fantastic dinner in the most incredible surroundings with the entire family and we loved it.
After dinner I did a little fishing and caught the smallest bass ever seen from a stream in the woods that is part of the ranch, we met the family and explored the ranch before finally setting out on our road trip, waving goodbye to this beautiful property and the great family who live here.
we normally avoid interstates but we needed to make some ground so we drove down the main I44 through to Oklahoma City then on toward Amarillo Texas on I40 until we stopped for the evening in a roadside hotel. In the morning we rose early and continued West toward Albuquerque, New Mexico. I stopped to get fuel and found myself struggling to get out of the car, thinking something was wrong with the lock I clicked the open/close button a few times with no success, I then rammed the hell out of the door with my shoulder and broke out, it turned out that we were frozen in, the spray off the road had made a solid ice sheet along the side of the truck which went half way up the door.
We passed through Albuquerque then turned North toward Santa Fe where we stopped for dinner, a little shopping and a hotel for the evening. The next morning we set off again for the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and a small holiday resort called Taos, along the way I stopped to take a photo of the twisting road through the hills....note the sign on the right.
Not one mile after seeing this sign we went over the rise of a small hill and there it was....standing exactly as the sign specified, he refused to move too until I got out of the truck and walked right up to him.
As you can see behind us in the shot below, a little blue sky then started to form on the horizon and we headed off toward it.
We stopped at a scenic overlook to make a few photos and fortunately another car stopped soon after so the lady did the honours for us and grabbed a lovely shot which we used as our Christmas Card for the year.
we crossed a huge gorge on approach to Taos and stopped to take in the view from the bridge, on getting out of the truck Sarah demonstrates the temperature is quite cooler than she expected. The gorge is the Rio Grande Gorge and the bridge is a big hit with film-makers, it has been used in several Hollywood blockbusters including Terminator Salvation and Natural Born Killers.
looking across the valley toward the town at the end of the Rocky Mountain foothills on a beautiful November day.
After spending a few hours in the beautiful little town shopping and eating we drove home across the pan-handle of Oklahoma making a nice 1500 mile circuit. On the way back we drove for over 5 hours without seeing another soul, Sarah was getting worried until we saw the lights of a small city away in the distance. We drove over and found a dingy motel in Boise City on the western tip of the pan-handle, there was a KFC across the road for supper and the motel, everything else looked like it had been closed for years. As we got our room key and walked back across the car park we heard one of the 4 Mexican youths that were hanging around in the foyer say to the lad behind the counter "and you're the manager of all this, you got it made homes....damn" it was really interesting to hear the measurement of success from the locals; not so many years ago I too may have thought I'd made it in such a position...life is full of surprises.