Taos NM Revisited - Part 2

The Saturday morning Farmer's Market is lots of fun with beautiful vegetables and lots of baked goods - guess which booths Sandy likes best?

I loved this little shopper in her boots.

Did you ever see a dragon fruit?  Absolutely beautiful but not much flavor.


Our next adventure was to drive the Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway, an 83-mile loop that passes through Angel Fire, Eagle Nest, Red River, Taos Ski Valley and Questa, and then returns to Taos.

Our first stop was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park.  It was constructed from 1968-1971 and was the first major Vietnam memorial in the US.  Doc and Jeanne Westphall built the chapel in honor of their son, 1st Lt. David Westphall, one of 16 Marines killed in an ambush in Con Thien, Vietnam in l968. It sits high on a hill overlooking beautiful views and was fairly recently made a State Park.

 

Outside the visitor's center is the Viking Surprise, a Huey aircraft that was instrumental in saving many lives.  It was installed with a smoke apparatus that produced smoke from a ring of nozzles around the turbine exhaust using a reservoir of oil.  Smokeships were used to provide cover for ground operations.  In one battle, it had 135 bullet holes, six of which had gone through the pilot's compartment.  It was repaired and returned to duty.  

This is a beautiful garden and fountain honoring our Veterans.

This statue of a soldier writing home is next to the plaque below.

The chapel below displays 16 photographs of Vietnam veterans.  They are displayed on a rotating basis, with David Westphall always in the center.  The number 16 is in honor of the 16 Marines who died in the ambush with him.

 

Although it was beautiful here, it was very difficult to read the displays and see all the pictures.  More than a few tears were shed by us on this visit.  One quote that particularly stuck with me was:

"Vietnam is a country, not a war."

Taos Revisited - Part 3

Continuing on around the Enchanted Circle, we stopped in Eagle Next and Red River, and here are a few fun pictures we took along the way.

Sign on an outdoor patio at a restaurant.

A homey-looking chair and Alan's legs.

The next few shots are from Red's Texas Steakhouse in Red River.  Good food and you even throw your peanut shells on the floor.

Back outside, obviously. 

These cute little "cars" are for rent in Red River for $30/half hour.  We took photos for free but I am sure they were fun to drive around.

New Mexico must have more hollyhocks than anywhere in the world.  They are everywhere and so pretty.

Back to Taos.

We have seen so many beautiful weavings done on looms like this.

The door on a "country" furniture store.

Outside the Hummingbird Bead Store.

One thing we have been very successful at in Taos is eating out lots and finding wonderful food.  If you are ever here, check out the stuffed sopapillas at Michael's Kitchen.

Our newest fun thing is the Bento Box at Yu Garden Asian Cuisine, a tiny place just a few minutes from the RV Park.  The internet tells me that a Bento Box is a packed lunch or box lunch that originated in Japan in the 5th century.  Originally, they were lacquered wood and usually contained dried rice balls.  In the 1920's, there were aluminum Bento Boxes and they were a sign of wealth since they were silver color.  Cheryl, Sandy's daughter, tells us that they are used for meals on the Japanese bullet train.  In modern times, they are used like school lunch boxes and are sold at train stations and theaters.  There are even prepared and frozen Bento Boxes, kind of like Japanese Lean Cuisine!

However, this picture shows our lunch Bento Boxes.  Yum.

Soup to start, then lemon chicken, salad with a citrus dressing, fried rice, tempora vegetables and fried bread for dessert.  There are other main dishes, but this was mine and I ate almost all of it!

Taos has the most amazing clouds as evidenced below.

The new crop of  Hatch chiles are in, and this is the line at Albertson's this morning.  The people in the line are waiting to have their chiles roasted in the big cookers.  Chiles are purchased in big gunny sacks as shown below.  Kind of an amazing sight.  Betti and I were definitely tourists taking these pictures.

Taos NM Revisited - Part 1

We returned to a different RV park in Taos in mid-July for a month, determined to have a better visit than when we had our electrical/microwave problems.  Taos Valley RV Park is in town and, although it is not nearly as scenic, it does have good power.  Ken and Betti Hendrickson joined us here also.  We are in spaces 80 and 81, but guess what?  They ARE NOT together.  We have been getting lots of exercise walking back and forth.

Sandy's sister and her husband, Dottie and Jerry, arrived for 8 nights in their new trailer.  We had such fun touring with them, and our first adventure was to see the Rio Grande River Gorge.  It is much prettier in person, but this will  give you the idea.

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A food vendor at the Gorge.  Somehow, we avoided a morning snack here.

Alan, Sandy, Dottie and Jerry.

 

One of several vendors selling all kinds of goods.  This fellow had part of a tree stuck in the guardrail and he called it his "branch office!"

 

Our next stop was to visit the earthship houses, a community of passive solar homes designed and marketed by Earthship Biotecture outside of Taos.  They are built mostly out of recycled/reused items and use very little (if any) power or water that they do not generate themselves.  Most of the food consumed is grown in the home in a greenhouse type area or in various parts of the water recycling system.  As a visitor, we could not drive through the area, but toured the visitor's center to learn about the community.

 

 

 

The base of this wall outside the visitor's center is constructed of "pounded tires," used tires that are filled with dirt and pounded.  Each tire weighs between 700 - 800 pounds and is most often used to build the walls of the homes and then covered with adobe.  Much of a home like this is built underground with the exposed part facing the sun.  The wall construction keeps the heat in during the winter and keeps the house cool in the summer.  The bottles in the wall above are not necessary to the structure but are used for decorative purposes.  In homes, walls with bottles in them let in light.

Visitor's center building.  Notice the "greenhouse" on the left.



Pounded tires.

 

 

 Visitor's center building from a distance.

 

 

 A house under construction.  Note the funny-looking top to the turret on the left!???

To me, this looked like Tune Town at Disneyland.  All curvy walls.

An administration building under construction.

 

 

Just in case you might think these homes are inexpensive to build, several are for sale in the high $300,000's. 

 

In some ways, it is not too different than living in an RV - having to manage your power, etc. but as soon as I learned managing their limited water (collected off the roof) meant not showering every day, I knew it wasn't for me!