Sat Sep 16, 2017 - Cortez CO to Taos NM

♭♭♭Blue skies, nothing but blue skies...♭♭
Another lovely day with no real plan, other than "start heading east". Hotel was a mob scene this morning. The angry English lady was still angry and I am sure she was shooting darts at us since we walked in with no reservations and got a room and she and her friends had to wait last night. It pays not to plan ahead. You know we have been doing this too long when I wander off into hotel continental breakfast room drama.
The long term, or rather middle term plan is to go to Wichita Kansas and go to a museum there on Tuesday. That gives us three relaxing days (250 miles per day each or so). So we decided to swing south a bit and go to the land of Red & Green chili peppers, New Mexico. First we go east to Pagosa Springs (remember that old song Wolfcreek Pass?). Traffic was not too busy. Stop for coffee and then south on Rt 84. It is at this point I would like to point out that "Mr. Prepared" missed the turn to Rt 84 and I caught it (which is more incredible). We were heading north east to Denver, and remember I lost my compass ball so..
After pointing out his error (several times) we went south and very soon were in New Mexico.

New Mexico has the coolest state flag (Zia) and it took me back to the many years of visiting Jake (my boy) when he was in school there (just last year).
The New Mexico roads are not in as good shape as Colorado and we noticed it right away. Not as bad as Vermont roads mind you, but not that great. Of course the roads we were on had no people travelling on them so I'm sure they are not a priority. We saw more of the Black Billed Magpie birds (my on staff ornithologist looked them up) that are beautiful black birds with a long tail and perfect white patches on either wing. We also saw a fox trot across the road in front of us with some kind of lunch in his/her mouth. And cattle were everywhere as these lonely mountains are open range which means the cattle just roam around munching whatever they can find all summer and magically turn into hamburgers come winter I suppose. One particularly serious looking one with big horns gave me the stink-eye as I crept by it.

We climbed over 10,000 ft and got magnificent views all around and one valley seemed overcast or hazy and we then saw a forest fire burning many miles to the west. We saw a couple tiny prairie dog looking things a couple days ago and still are not sure what they were. Too small for a squirrel and to short for a prairie dog. Yesterday we saw a marmot scampering down a street in one of the small towns we went through.
This part of New Mexico is grassier and more rolling than Colorado (hence the cattle) and lots of fence and big trucks and even saw a bunch of cowboys (riding Dodge Ram pickups) standing in a parking lot comparing belt buckles.

OK back to the route, Rt 160 west to Pagosa Springs, then Rt 84 south into New Mexico, then Rt 64 south at Tierra Amarilla, over a high pass (San Juan National Forest) and then down the other side. Now it gets interesting as we go across a large flat valley with at first lots of run down places way out in the sagebrush and lots of junk cars all over (old junk cars so they have been there a while). The other end of the valley is covered with "Earth ships" which are hippy dippy looking earth houses built in the ground with soda bottles for windows. I have been here before but the solar panels and satellite dishes are newer additions (high tech hippies). We then crossed the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge which goes over a very very deep gorge. I'll bet those pioneers used colorful language when they ran into this 150 years ago. That sucker is deep.
Then on into Taos, which has gotten really fancy schmancy since the last time I was here. And the hotels have Moab-itis with crazy high prices. We did find something "reasonable". I hate it when a town gets "discovered" and then gets ruined.
Another nice day not at work..