Our week thus far......

Ghost Ranch...what can I say. I thought waiting a few days would give me insight into how I could possibly find the words to describe the beauty of this landscape, but it hasn't happened yet. I haven't even looked at the pictures. I will try to do that before leaving Abiquiu at the end of the week.



We hiked (yup, got back up on that horse) up most of the way to Chimney Rock. It was not a bad climb, but it did get pretty hot, and we eventually felt that we'd done enough. I guess we did about 3 miles round trip.



There are many multi-million dollar dwellings around here, but we have also seen more graffiti than we have since last seeing Brooklyn.

Yesterday we drove to Santa Clara and San Ildefonso Pueblos and shopped around for pottery. We didn't really see anything we were willing to dish out hundreds for, but we did have a fabulous lunch at El Parasol in Espanola. This was a New Mexican restaurant in a very charming old building surrounding a huge cottonwood tree. Hence, "El Parasol??"

Today we drove to Taos. I think we might have been more impressed if we were art lovers and/or experts. As it was, it was really a bit on the tourist-y side for us.

We drove a few miles from the main plaza and had lunch at Orlando's. It was great and a GREAT deal of food. We brought leftovers home with us.

After lunch we drove up to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. Having been to the Grand Canyon a couple of times, you'd think this would not have fazed me, but standing in the middle and feeling the vibration from traffic while looking down into the Rio Grande was a little dizzying.

Then we stopped at Rancho de Taos, which is the old part of Taos. The church of San Francisco de Asisi was gorgeous (some of you will recognize the church when I post the photos - O'Keeffe liked to paint it), and we found a beautiful carved wooden cross in the church gift shop for my sis and bro in law's 50th next month.

The casita is great. It is very quiet and the owners/hosts pretty much leave us to ourselves. I do think we will be just as glad to leave on Friday, however, and head home.

Home is sounding pretty good to me right now.