{ Monthly Archives }
On our way back to our campsite after a warm-up hike on Friday, we came upon this elk who was oblivious to the traffic jam he had created.
Today we attended an all-day symposium and caught up with some old friends. Tomorrow (Sunday) we head down to the river. We’ll return to the rim on Friday and maybe have some pictures next weekend.
"Nobody told me not to wade with my clothes on".
On Thursday, we returned to Route 66 about where we left off last spring, west of Albuquerque.
Santa Maria de Acoma Church in McCartys, New Mexico
A little further down the road, we went past this lava flow in a land called "malpais".
We came across this gigantic drill bit in Grants, NM. This was used to drill a 10-foot diameter shaft 2,234 feet deep in a uranium mine.
In Gallup, NM, we dropped in at the 1937 El Rancho Hotel, where the rooms are named after movie star guests.
This is the lobby of El Rancho.
We left Taos and traveled south towards Santa Fe this morning (Wednesday). This was one of several overpasses with painted designs.
Santa Fe is the highest state capital at an elevation of almost 7,000 feet. There are lots of historic churches and lots of expensive shops here.
Our fist stop was the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi… and we discovered it has a link to Willa Cather. It was built under the leadership of Archbishop Jean Baptiste Lamy between 1869 and 1886 on the site of an older adobe church. Cather’s novel, Death Comes to the Archbishop, is based on Lamy’s life and career.
Next stop was the Loretto Chapel, home of the Miraculous Stairway.
The stairway makes two complete revolutions with no obvious center support. There’s an interesting article about it here.
Originally, there were no banisters.
We drove by but did not visit the San Miguel Mission Church, one of the country’s oldest churches in continuous use. Built in the early 1600’s, some of the original adobe walls remain despite having been burned during the Pueblo Revolt in 1680.
We arrived in Taos on Monday after a drive through the gorgeous Cimarron Canyon yesterday. The fall colors here are beautiful… lots of yellow, my favorite color.
This morning we drove out to see the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. We were traveling along US 64 on the plateau when suddenly there is the bridge with the Rio Grande flowing some 650 feet below. The bridge, built in 1965, was supposedly known at the time as the "bridge to nowhere" because there was not enough funding to continue the road (US64) on the other side.
The bridge has appeared in a number of movies including Natural Born Killers, Twins, She’s Having a Baby, and, most recently, Wild Hogs.
By the time we got back to town, it had warmed up enough to walk around. We saw several magpies in this courtyard.
We had lunch at Michael’s kitchen… breakfast enchiladas.
This afternoon we visited the St. Francis de Assisi Mission.
Mike checks to see if that’s straw in the stucco.
