For many years we have heard reports about how fantastic Taos is and how the area has many creative artists and unique art forms. We decided to devote our day today to visiting the area.
We started by attempting to find cheap diesel in Santa Fe and we were successful. Then the long drive toward Taos began with about 20 miles of driving on non-limited access roads with signals that seem designed to make sure all traffic is required to stop at every light. Progress was slow until the budget for signals was exhausted and we were allowed to continue on highways through rural areas that have citizens bright enough to utilize roads without requiring traffic lights at every intersection.
After leaving Santa Fe, the rest of the route (US-285/84 and NM-68) was very scenic passing through prairie and canyon country unlike anywhere else. There are quite a few grubby little estates with extensive rusty car collections along the sides of the road but every so often there are beautiful houses with classic southwestern architecture of flat roofs, exposed ends of roof joists and earth tone paint. They look like they were deliberately designed to blend in with the surrounding terrain and, in most cases, they were successful.
We crested one ridge near Taos and were rewarded with an absolutely spectacular view of the Rio Grande River Gorge which is a giant, jagged gash through a basically flat high prairie. It is massive. We continued into Taos after agreeing to drive over to the Gorge once we got closer and could find an access road.
Upon entering Taos, we stopped at the visitor info center for town where the staff generously gave us two almost completely worthless maps that could have been useful if they were accurate, to scale or actually had the names and approximate locations of the city streets. Despite the crummy maps, we soon arrived at a restaurant called Michael’s where we had a superb breakfast and also took a cinnamon roll away that was only about the size of a mature desert tortoise. It was very tasty when we finally got down to eating it later in the day.
I am sure that Taos is a very historic area with many interesting attractions but we were not too successful at finding them. First, we didn’t find Kit Carson’s house. Then we went to the Governor Bent (was he?) house and museum which seemed to be one room and a gift shop. Maybe he wasn’t a very interesting guy. Then we took a stroll through the alleged “historic area” that had some dead giveaways about whether it is historic; all the buildings have contemporary construction with artificially spalled and repaired exterior plaster, continuously extruded rain gutters and concrete fountains with modern plumbing and pumps. This section of town must be modern historic. There were many upscale, Beverly Hills-type boutiques and shops with prices that may correlate with the high shop rents.
There are some free and cheap pay parking lots downtown so parking was not a problem for us. We left our paid parking spot and exited Taos going northwest on US-64 through stunning prairie and canyons again until we reached the bridge spanning the Rio Grande River. The bridge is a steel truss unit which crosses over the river at an elevation of about 600 or 700 feet (I’m guessing) and the walls of the gorge are so steep that you need to get right up to the edge to see the river at the bottom unless you could see it through the handrails on the bridge. This is a truly impressive gorge through flat land that you cannot see if you are a half mile away. We stopped in the rest area that NM has astutely placed right where the bridge crosses the gorge and ate some of the Michael’s cinnamon roll.
From the Gorge, we continued on US-64 and came across a large area where it appears there are a bunch of old cheap hippie types that have built solar houses and other sorts of sustainable technologies like buried stacked tires for house walls. The place had a cornball name like Utopia Quest or Biopolygon Acres but the variety of unfettered architectural styles were very interesting even if they did look structurally unsound. These free-thinking souls apparently do not think much of folks getting a close-up view of their creations because all the access roads are posted and gated. We continued northwest on 64 until we hit US-285 where we turned south back toward Santa Fe. The ride down 285 is also gorgeous with amazing rock formations and mountain ranges on both sides of the road. We made one side-trip to look at the Santa Fe Opera facility which is an architectural confection visible from the highway. We only got a look at the exterior because there is reconstruction in progress but the facility was impressive looking.