Aug 15: Another sunny warm day. After breakfast we checked out and headed off to Denver.
On the way we went through Santa Fe where we stopped at an Albertson's to pick up some lunch and snack stuff for the road.
We were really enjoying the whole southwestern Mesa style colours and bldg styles.
After Santa Fe, we came across some people rafting down none other than the Rio Grande River. The name brought back a flood of memories of all the westerns we'd seen on TV as kids. Jax, of course, had no idea what we were talking about.
We did stop to take pix. Little more relaxed pace out here, so the winding roads through the hills are more enjoyable.
The Garmin we borrowed from friends really came in handy. Sometimes it was difficult to trust, but it usually picked the right route for us and took us to sights like the Rio Grande and on through a little town called Taos, New Mexico. Very cute, quaint little town. Arlene picked up a newsletter with some history on Taos. According to the newsletter, Taos is one of the country's oldest art colonies, historic trading center, world class skiing destination in winter and summer getaway. For those of you who read, English novelist D.H. Lawrence is quoted as saying, "It was the greatest experience from the outside world that I ever had. It certainly changed me forever." It has a large number of B&B's and is located in a valley ringed by mountains.
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stay there. But, it was certainly one of those spots along the way we marked for the future.
As you can imagine our elevations changed constantly. On this leg we went through a Pass that reached 9413 ft. As we were travelling this stretch our sunny warm day had plunged from 30C down to 13C and poured rain. We later found out these were the same rains that caused a dam to break in the Grand Canyon we'd just left. It was a little eery.
As you can see by the pix we saw the storm coming. There was a lot of lightning, but I couldn't catch any with the camera.
There was a fair bit of road construction so along with the rain it slowed us down. We finally reached our hotel around 8 pm. We stayed at a La Quinta hotel. Nice room. We were bushed so we just stayed in and listened to the pounding rain.
Again, if you click on the title of this chapter, you'll be taken to the pix we took.
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