We awoke this morning to stunning views of the mountains encircling Santa Fe. All the mountains are now white due to last night’s storm. After breakfast, we went to Capitol Ford to pick up our truck after the week-long period required to replace the engine which failed due to a seized lifter. $21,650 bit the dust. We also returned our old person torturing Camry to the rental agency and another $200 went away. Other than buying a new car or a house, I don’t recall ever spending more in such a short period of time.
On the way back to our RV park, we stopped by a place called La Puerta where they have an imaginative collection of large yard art. There was a big cast roadrunner killing a snake and a colorful hummingbird and other neat stuff. Working in metal must be practiced by lots of folks in our hood because our RV park owner also fancies himself an artist and he seems to be right. He has installed many metal sculptures around the park and they are good.
We arrived back at the trailer just in time to find out the Trumpcare bill had been pulled because nobody liked it. Maybe government by the people does work. It only took a few minutes for us to figure out we did not wish to spend the day in the trailer so we decided to take Charlotte, with her new motor, out for a spin.
This time we made a small loop through the country south and east of Santa Fe. South of town there is mostly junipers and sage scrub with southwestern style houses scattered through the brush. The roads (NM-14 and CR-42) offer great views both ways of canyons, rock ledges and distant mountains, some of them covered with snow. The air is pristine. Not long after passing through the tiny town of Galisteo, we picked up US-285 north and then turned north on I-25. We pulled off at the ramp for Pecos, NM, where we found there is something called Pecos National Historical Park. Curiosity got the better of us and we had to go look.
Pecos NHP is composed of some ancient adobe and stone masonry buildings that are in pretty good shape. The best part about the site is the terrific view of the mountains behind the big brown ruins unless you are an archaeologist. We spotted a couple mountain bluebirds here exhibiting some amazing colors. The park was closing not long after we arrived so we exited after about half an hour and retraced our route back into the town of Pecos.
The town sits beside the East Pecos River and above the town the river passes through some beautiful gorges through the surrounding pinon forest. There is a nice masonry Catholic church in town and Peg had me pull over so she could scope it out. The church appears to be the nicest building in town. A Civil War battle called Glorieta Pass happened nearby. The Confederacy lost this one and shortly thereafter abandoned New Mexico altogether. We finally turned back toward Santa Fe on I-25 which passes through some steep, rocky canyons on the way to town. This is a very pretty part of the world. The sunsets are tip-top, too.
We took some pictures while on our spin today. You can see some of them if you click here