Google Maps is great for finding the shortest route from one place to the next. It's great for telling you when and where to turn from one highway to another to stay on track. What it's not very good at doing is warning you that your route takes you up to over 10,000 feet elevation over some unmarked pass.
 |
| Brazos Summit |
Turns out this is called "Brazos Summit" and tops out at 10,507 feet! Wasn't quite expecting that, and as you can imagine, the roads up at that level take quite a beating from the weather and big temperature swings. I had a balmy 52 degrees, but from all the snow around, I'm sure that it's well below freezing most of the time.
I do have to keep reminding myself that this is an adventure trip and not really a vacation. Only 300 miles for the day, but they were hard fought miles. Coming into Taos, I kept reading the signs as "Tacos" and I knew that I was overdue for some lunch.
 |
| Main Street Taos |
I knew that I'd see a lot of bikes on Memorial Day weekend, but Taos was overrun with Harleys. Turns out that there is a big annual motorcycle rally about 20 miles away in Red River. Not Sturgis size, but 20,000 bikes expected for the weekend. I stayed in a great little place just off the main drag with parking right in front of the room. Half the rooms had motorcycles parked in front of them, so I knew I had chosen well.
 |
| Taos Plaza |
Taos is a wonderful town - very artsy with a lot of great restaurants and galleries, along with enough tourist gift shops to keep the summer crowds happy. I had lunch is a little burger bar and ended up talking with a guy who grew up in Seattle (Mercer Island, WWU in Bellingham) and just bought a place in Taos ($350k for a nice house on 1.5 acres with a sweeping view of the Taos Valley - he showed me pictures). If it weren't for the 4 feet of snow in one picture that he showed me, I'd be tempted.
 |
Memorial Day selfie
|
Walking around in the morning, I stumbled upon the Taos Memorial Day monument. Selfie time!
No comments:
Post a Comment