August 17, 2021: Santa Fe Trip Day 2
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On this first page, you'll find our travel to Santa Fe, a couple of stops we made in Santa Fe and Taos, and a tour of our accommodations for this first night- the original Earthship that has been turned into an AirBnB.

Getting to Albuquerque, New Mexico (August 15th)

Fred and I left Dallas on Sunday, August 15th for the all-day drive out to Albuquerque. Fred had booked an Earthship on AirBnB (actually the first one built) for Monday night, so we would stay Sunday night down in Albuquerque.

We are used to long drives; we routinely drive about 700 miles on our first day of driving when we head to Florida, so getting an early start and driving the 600+ miles out to Albuquerque wasn't anything special. We did know that it would be late when we got there, so trying to find the Earthship up by Taos would be a bit much, so we booked a Fairfield Inn just on the north side of Albuquerque, and we had a nice supper at Cheddar's right next door.

Getting to Taos, New Mexico (August 16th)

The Fairfield Inn was a pretty nice place, although Fred thought he'd been making a reservation at one we'd stayed at with Guy a couple of years earlier. Little did he know that there were a couple of them in Albuquerque, so when we got to the front desk of the first one was when we found out that our reservation was a few miles north off I-25. No problem; we just had to drive a few more minutes to get there.

On Monday morning, we got away from the Fairfield Inn fairly early, hopped back onto I-25 north towards Santa Fe.

We were pretty familiar with the route around Santa Fe; we didn't need to go into town as we would be staying there beginning Tuesday night anyway. Our route around Santa Fe was on US Highway 285, which we picked up about 25 miles north of Albuquerque.

We stayed on US Highway 285 into Espanola, and then we angled off northeast towards Taos on New Mexico Highway 68 towards Taos.

The scenery along US Highway 285 was pretty neat, and as I drove, Fred was able to get some good pictures:

Just past Pilar, we came alongside the Rio Grande River, and we found signs for a Visitor Center for the Rio Grande Gorge, so we stopped in. The Rio Grande Gorge Visitor Center provided information and interpretive exhibits about the wild and scenic Rio Grande and surrounding countryside. Here are some of those exhibits:

In the center's bookstore, operated by the nonprofit Public Lands Interpretive Association, we found books, maps, and educational gifts and toys. Commercial outfitters use the visitor center and its parking lot as a staging area for daytrips down the Lower Gorge of the Rio Grande. The building and its veranda overlook the river and provides a convenient spot for watching rafts, canoes, and kayaks floating downstream.

Standing on the verandah and just admiring the scenery across the highway was pretty neat. I took a number of pictures and a movie or two, and the best of these are below:

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Finally, before we left and headed up to Taos, I took a series of four pictures of the view across the road, and put them together into this panoramic view:

Lunch

Fred has done a lot of planning for this trip (wanting to make sure that Guy had a good time), and one of the things he'd investigated were some places in the Taos area to eat.

Fred's attention had been caught online by a place called the Farmhouse Cafe and Bakery, located maybe five miles north of downtown Taos. Not only did the restaurant sound interesting, but it was apparently located in a little complex along with an artist studio, a store selling sheepskin products, and a furniture store featuring local handmade pieces.

Since we couldn't get into the Earthship until about two in the afternoon, we headed through Taos and north to the Farmhouse Cafe complex.

We found a charming little restaurant that was quite busy. The cafe is a farm-to-table eatery that sources almost all of its foodstuffs from 20 local farmers and ranchers. As the menu said: "We strive to provide healthy choices featuring fresh fruits and vegetables in season!"

We had to put our name down and wait about twenty minutes to get an inside table (as there were some showers around) and so we had time to wander around the complex for a while.

One interesting thing we found was that there was a group of artists out in the courtyard painting "en plein air"; watching them work was intriguing.

Something else interesting was a car belonging to one of the artists- the car had more bumper stickers on it than just about any car I'd ever seen (and it would seem the owner was "sympatico"):

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We had a nice lunch at the restaurant, and then when we were done we went into the sheepskin store for a bit; the furniture store was closed as the sign said they were out on a delivery. Here are some of the better pictures we took as we wandered around the area:

The Farmhouse Cafe

Our Earthship Accommodations

After lunch, it was time for us to go check in at our AirBnB. Fred had the address, but the navigation got a little confused but we found it with little problem.

The Earthship was on Witt Road, which was one block south of the main drag. We came towards the house from the north, and from that direction it was hidden in the trees, so we went past it. But a quick turnaround brought us back to the driveway to it. Fred has wanted to stay in an "earthship" ever since we toured our first one many years ago in an earthship community not far northwest of here. You may already have seen pictures from that tour; if not, I will open the album page on which they appear in a new tab if you click HERE. (Just scroll down a bit until you find them.)

Basically, an Earthship is a style of architecture developed in the late 20th century to early 21st century by architect Michael Reynolds. Earthships are designed to behave as passive solar earth shelters made of both natural and upcycled materials such as earth-packed tires. Earthships may feature a variety of amenities and aesthetics, and are designed to withstand the extreme temperatures of a desert, managing to stay close to 70 °F (21 °C) regardless of outside weather conditions. Earthship communities were originally built northwest of here near the Rio Grande, and the style has spread to small pockets of communities around the globe, in some cases in spite of legal opposition to its construction and adoption.

Reynolds developed the Earthship design after moving to New Mexico and completing his degree in architecture, intending them to be "off-the-grid-ready" homes, with minimal reliance on public utilities and fossil fuels. They are constructed to use available natural resources, getting energy from the sun and water from rain. They are designed with thermal mass construction and natural cross-ventilation to regulate indoor temperature, and the designs are intentionally uncomplicated and mainly single-story, so that people with little building knowledge can construct them. They can be perceived as a realization of the utopia of autonomous housing and sustainable living.

The home we are staying in was Reynolds' prototype, and on the morning of our departure, I took this picture of the EarthShip:

As you will see from the interior pictures, most of the structure is below grade, and this minimizes solar heat gain and maximizes the cooling influence of the earth that is piled around it.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

The south side of the house is a greenhouse, and this side of the house is also where the shower and the commode are located. Window shades keep the area from getting too warm, but the proximity of the plantings to the shower allow for easy re-use of the gray water for the plants. The commode, of course, is on a self-contained septic system.

The best way to show you the pictures that we took inside the EarthShip is via a slideshow, so you can go through the pictures at your own pace without having to open and close one window at a time. Just click on the image at left to begin the slideshow. You can move from one image to another by clicking on the little arrows in the lower corners of each picture, and you can track your progress through the images by referring to the numbers in the upper left.

We hope you enjoy seeing the interior of our EarthShip accommodations!

A Drive Along (and in) the Rio Grande Gorge

After we got settled in at the EarthShip, it was still early enough that we could go and do something else, so we decided to drive out to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge- someplace we'd been before.

I was driving, so on the way through the town of Taos Fred was able to take some pictures including an art gallery right in the center of town. He took the picture at left and those below as well.

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The West Rim Hike

At left is a map of our travels this afternoon. We actually intended to drive out to the bridge and back, but we found a highway that came back south on the west side of the river, so we ended up making a big circle and incorporating a couple of hikes- one at the bridge and one further south.

It was a bit overcast, but it didn't look like rain. On the way out to the bridge, the scenery was very nice.

From Taos, we drove out to the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, going directly across it to the parking area on the west side of the canyon. Here, at the West Rim Trailhead, there were some facilities and a walking trail you could take heading south on top of the west rim.

In an odd coincidence, no sooner had I pulled into a parking space than an almost-identical Hyundai Elantra parked right beside me. The only difference between the two cars was that the other one, which was a rental car driven by some folks from California, was not a "Limited" and so did not have a sunroof. But, other than that, it was an identical year and identical color.

We left the car and headed off south on the trail that you can see in the aerial view at left. This trail stayed well away from any dangerous drop-off, although, as you might expect, we both left the trail occasionally to get a better picture of the bridge or the canyon.

This easy-to-moderate trail is mostly packed dirt and rock with only a couple hundred feet of elevation change if you do the whole hike- which is 8 miles round trip. We weren't planning on doing anything like that distance, but the good thing is that you can turn around whenever you want. The parking area and trailhead are just west of the Taos “High” bridge off of US-64.

We just wanted to go far enough to get some good views of the bridge and also to be able to look down into the canyon. We'd already done that from the bridge itself years ago, so the hike would offer a different perspective. And it didn't take long for us to get to a point where that "different perspective" became obvious:

My phone does panoramic views, but sometimes I like taking separate shots and putting them together, as I put together the four separate pictures above. This gives me more control over the size of the picture. I also like taking movies, as I think they give you a better appreciation for something than just looking at stills. Here are the two best movies that I took (out of five or six of them) on our hike:

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Of course, there were lots of opportunities for spectacular still pictures as well. Here are two of the best of them, looking upstream and down:

But we took lots of other pictures, most of which had something different about them, or something to recommend them, and even though some of them might seem repetitive, I want to include a bunch of them here.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

So how best to include them here? Obviously, I don't want to give you a matrix of twenty or so thumbnails for you to click on individually; opening and closing so many windows would be a real pain.

So a slideshow it is. At left, you'll see an image that you can click on to initiate the slideshow. Once it opens, you can zip through the pictures as fast as you wish- looking at all of them or just some of them. Use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to another, backward or forward. You can tell how many pictures are in the group, and which one you are currently looking at, by referring to the index number in the upper left corner of each image.

So if you would like to see more of the High Bridge and the Rio Grande Canyon, by all means take a look at the pictures in the show. Just close the slideshow window when you're done.

Finally, before we return to the car, I have another panoramic image to show you. This one is wide enough that I've put it in a scrollable window, and that window is below. (As usual, if the image in the window doesn't appear to fill the space allowed for it, just click on the picture and it will expand.

The Drive South Atop the West Rim

We eventually returned to the car, and instead of going back the way we'd come, I saw a route down the west rim that seemed to lead back to a point near the Rio Grande Gorge Visitor Center. The road was pretty bleak, but we did pass a couple of local residents out for a stroll:

The road was pretty much straight as an arrow while it was up on the plateau, but eventually the road came to the edge of the canyon and began descending into it.

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I could see that the gravel road down into the canyon was going to be interesting, so I held my phone up in front of me as I coasted down the road and made a movie of what it was like.

Oh, I know the movie isn't anything special, but I always think that video is often the best way to show something; words and still pictures are often totally inadequate.

So have a look at the movie at left, and you'll see what I mean.

The La Vista Verde Hike

Once the road had descended into the canyon (it was still a hundred feet or so above the river, and didn't actually get down to the water level until it crossed a bridge a few miles further on) we found the sign for a trailhead off to our left, so we pulled into the parking area for it.

According to the posted trail guide, the La Vista Verde Trail was a 2.3-mile out-and-back trail, usually taking about an hour to complete. Generally considered an easy route, the trail is popular for hiking and mountain biking, but with ours being the only car in the parking lot, we were pretty sure we wouldn't have to contend with a bunch of yahoos.

There were supposed to be some benches at strategic points where there are views of the Rio Grande below.

The hike was billed as getting us to a point where we would have good views down to the river itself at the bottom of the gorge, and we were not disappointed.

As we started out, I began with a movie, and you can use the player below to watch it:

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At the furthest point on the trail, we did indeed come to a promontory with a bench- and the view was of the Rio Grande itself, looking north:

I want to include some additional pictures here that we took along the hike on the plateau about a hundred feet above the river itself. There was a lot to see on the hike, and the desolate beauty of the surrounding landscape figured into every view we got:

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A Scramble Down to the River

We were on the way back on the hike, and the trail was closer to the dropoff down to the river. We came to a place that seem to offer easy access to scramble down the rocks to the water's edge. I saw some evidence that other people had come this way before, so Fred decided to wait for me at the trail while I went down to the river.

There was a little spur trail that went over towards the river, and when I went to see where it led, I found it led toa section of the canyon wall where numerous boulder slides had made a relatively easy access to get down to the river. I had Fred take a picture of me as I was heading down, although I am just a few feet below him. That's the picture at left.

Then I turned around and started down, when Fred snapped the picture below:

As I descended, Fred took a number of pictures of my progress, while I was taking a few of the river as I descended.

From a short ways down the hillside, I got a nice view looking upriver to the north.

Meanwhile, I have almost disappeared from Fred's view being the blue dot in the center of the picture.

When I got down to the waterside, it was as if I were in a different world. The sound of the rushing water and the vegetation all around me were a much different experience than up on the plateau. I took a nice picture of the Rio Grande looking upriver, and below you an see a panoramic view of the river passing in front of me and heading south:

Once again, movies are the way to really express what a place is like, and while I making my movie at the river's edge, Fred was filming me way down below. He also took a zoom picture of me as I was filming.

The Rio Grande (Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible)

Me at the River's Edge (Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible)

I spent a few more minutes at the water's edge before heading back up, and Fred got a nice picture of of me reaching the plateau.

Scrambling down to the river was neat; it reminded me of bouldering at Mt. Scott in the Wichita Mountains. But it was getting late, so we returned to the car and continued on down the gravel road to the south.

The road stayed level for a while, but then began a final descent down to the level of the river. Eventually, we crossed the Rio Grande on the Texas Junction Bridge, and on the east side of the bridge we were on pavement again.

From there back to the highway and the Visitor Center we'd stopped at earlier, we stayed down by the river, and there were numerous campgrounds and picnic areas and, when we got a bit closer to the highway, a number of residences.

It was a very nice, leisurely drive in the late afternoon's fading light.

It was just before eight o'clock when we got back to Taos, and we were lucky to just get in under the wire and find a Mexican restaurant that was still open.

Then it was back to the EarthShip after a long and interesting day.

You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	August 17, 2021: Santa Fe Trip Day 2
	Return to the Index for Our Santa Fe Trip