Northern New Mexico
Today was set aside for conferees to do some sightseeing so we had nothing scheduled for the whole day. Dave, an English professor at Georgia Southern Unversity who is in the workshop on fiction writing, and I headed out at 6:30 a.m. for (of course) Starbucks to make sure we started our day off properly. Then we headed west to Bandelier National Monument about ah hour drive away. This park is where the Anasazi, ancestors to the Pueblo Indians, built their homes in the side of cliffs. We arrived as the park opened and virtually no tourists present. We spent about 2 1/2 hours going through the trails and climbing up wooden ladders to explore their dwellings. It was very interesting and the vistas were beautiful.
From there we passed through Los Alamos. It feels a little bizarre because some of the street names are named after locations where nuclear weapons were first exploded. For example we drove on Trinity Rd. and passed Bikini Atoll. In any case, we were heading northeast to visit Taos. We missed a turn that we needed to make and so took a small state road to get us to where we wanted to go. But what we didn't know is that this road took us to the 650 foot gorge that the Rio Grande River has made in the plateau. So as we approached the gorge, the road changed to dirt, and became a narrow, windy road with no side rails that took us to the bottom. Then we drove for several miles next to the Rio Grande. The view was magnificent, because there were cliffs on either side and they were a purple color. We finally made it to the main highway that took us to Taos. We were both disappointed by it: I was expecting this charming little town (the population is a about 6500) but it felt like a big tourist trap. We passed through to visit the Taos Pueblo Indian Reservation. It was poor, but in comparison to Pine Ridge in South Dakota, the Lakota reservation to which we have had several mission trips, it was wealthy. One thing that stood out was how clean the reservation was. Also, many of the Pueblo had shops that they sold jewelry, pottery, and other items that they made. I experienced a much more positive feeling about the well-being of the Pueblo than the Lakota in Pine Ridge. After leaving Taos Pueblo, we took a three hour circular trip around Mount Wheeler, the tallest mountain in New Mexico. It is over 13,000 feet. The highest elevation we reached was at Bobcat Pass at 9820 feet. We saw some breathtaking scenery. At last we took the "High Road" back to Santa Fe which took us on back roads through some tiny villages with gorgeous views and we arrived back at St. John's College 13 hours and about 350 miles after we had left. Dave and I were going to go into town after cleaning up, but we were so tired, we decided to collapse here. It was an incredible day, we saw some magnificent things, and I have to say God is an incredible artist!
