Sungod Lodge Taos

We visited the 1000+ year old Navajo Pueblo belonging to the red willow tribe. The day was sunny and very hot with sporadic clouds in the sky. During our visit just after the tour, we were hit by the most powerful thunderstorm that dropped lots of water, extreme lightning, thunder and pea sized hail. Attached are some of the pictures of Taos and the Enchanted Circle drive.<br>We stayed the night in Chama, NM home of the Cumbres &amp; Toltec steam railway.<br>

Ojo Caliente Spa has several springs with different properties; iron, arsenic, mud, soda, etc. We soaked in many on the night we arrived, 4/3/2009. We're spending 3 days relaxing, soaking and getting massaged. You KNOW this is Susan's idea. In fact, Susan is in a yoga class as I type.<br>

... d forgotten to pack my poor old tripod so I had no tripod at all for<br>the big camera. Oh well, I wanted some photos now so shot as many as I could.<br><br>Boy did we work up an appetite by<br>then, plus it was 2pm and we had to eat some "blue corn enchiladas" before<br>checking out by 5pm and hitting the road. So back to the plaza where we did a<br>little more looking for the ...

... We found La Casa Sena next door and had some wonderful mini fish tacos and mini buffalo burgers while sitting in the patio. We went into their wine shop and got some NM wine for our dinner. Then it was on to Taos.<br><br>We set up camp in a campground we&#8217;d stayed in before, right in town but then it was too late to eat dinner. Smith&#8217;s grocery had some great cheeses that went with our wine at the picnic table under the stars.

... Yesterday we went into El Paso. After doing various errands (oil change, drug store etc) and a drive north of the city where we could see the HUGE Mexican flag - a football field huge - waving over the twin city of Juarez, Mexico, we had a lovely visit in El Paso with Helen Dorion and their two kids Toby (3) and Amalia (8 and a Hiver - a camper at Aloha Hive on Lake Fairlee, to the uninitiated!) Mark was away and we didn't get to see him. In the afternoon we had a ...

... in at the hostel in Arroyo Seco was a treat. I made my rounds meeting the work traders, cabin dwellers, and garden tenders. It was a relaxed afternoon which gave me a perfect opprotunity to take things easy and rest on what I'd seen and thought throughout the day. I made a good friend in the person I was sharing the dorm with, he has introduced me to many tools for traveling that will be infinatley useful in the future. A website ...

... and ladders! I started up with Deb following, but with her dislike for ladders and heights, she quickly stopped and went back to the benches at the bottom of the climb to wait for her foolhardy husband to return. The ladders were fairly easy to climb, but a few were quite long and you wondered if you were ever going to get to the top. At the top, there is a ...

... last encountered in Albuquerque). Arrived in Taos to discover that accommodation was scarce - the ski hills in the area had decided to open the hills to snow boarders for the first time and it is winter break in many school/college areas. The shops look interesting but it is obvious that the town has settled in to 'between seasons'. We discovered that the pueblo that we had hoped to visit is closed and will not reopen until late April.

... during the year, and the North and South houses (divided by a sacred stream). This stream provides water for the pueblo (which only allows propane--no electricity or telephone). Teddy Roosevelt had taken away its sacred source, the Blue Lake in the mountains in the early 1900s, and it was restored to the tribe under freedom of religion considerations in 1970. We saw the kivas only by the tops of the ladders. The North and South houses were the big, block, adobe ...

... the National Park System to protect the pueblo's treasures. "That's not real," he said with disgust. "This is real," he said, gesturing to the kiva and dancing grounds. He told us a story about an eagle that landed on the mountain we could see in the distance and how the eagle had created the cleft at the mountain's top. He mentioned that his grandfather had been a inger for the ceremonies, and suddenly Mark launched into a full-throated Pueblo ...