Day 7 from beginning to end
Trip Start
Apr 09, 2009
1
6
43
Trip End
May 31, 2009
Taos, New Mexico
Saturday, April 18, 2009
I am heading to Taos in my travels today, and will not be particularly affected by the snow and bad weather being experienced in more northern Colorado. I've checked road conditions this morning and travel should be normal.
For those of you who travel with your four-legged children, I found a good website for booking accomodations at BringFIDO.com. Just put in the city in which you expect to stay and a list of pet friendly places will come up so you can choose a place based on amenities and price. It worked great last night for me to book in Taos for tonight.
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And, Good Evening
Well, I got into Taos quite late this evening - about 8:30 MDT after taking a wrong turn that added about 130 miles to my day's journey. I had to retrace that many miles to get back on track, having briefly considered taking a shortcut and deciding against it given the state of the weather and the roads and the fact that the 'short cut' would have been on secondary roads with communities few and far between. Thank goodnes for my Garmin however; I programmed the address in and 'Emily' directed me right here. All I had to do was watch out for traffic and lane changes; it was great for a person driving alone and at night in this very dark town. But, instead of driving about 315 miles as planned, I drove almost 450 miles!
So I will be spending another day here as I am quite tired of driving, and Scooter is tired of sitting in the car. I'll do some laundry, and go to a pharmacy to get some eye drops since my eyes, like the rest of me have really dried out these past three days.
Regardless of what this climate is doing to my skin and mucous membranes, the truck loves it. I can't believe the mileage I'm getting (27 mpg this afternoon and 21.5 yesterday). Apparently the truck really likes 4000 feet plus, and long straight roads, as well as climbing mountains and sliding down the other side.
I left Montrose this morning about 8:30 and figured that I'd stop someplace for lunch on my way to Taos. Silly me! Most of the small communities that I passed are really more inthe line of destination resort places where people have their second homes. These communities do serve local ranches too, but are mostly closed up so far as travellers are concerned until the 1st of May when absentee owners start showing up for summer activities. So I went until almost 2:00 before I got to Creede and found a cute little organic food restaurant. It's owned by a woman named Sharon Brown and the name of her place is called "The MERMAID Cafe" after a 70s song by Joni Mitchell. The food was great and her friendliness was very much appreciated by me. I hope I've talked her into coming and checking out the southern Oregon coast as she said she's looking to get away from the snow in Colorado. Be that as it may, if you ever get to Creede, CO, and "The MERMAID Cafe" is open for business, do stop and have lunch, or dessert or coffee or tea (or all of the aforementioned).
I crossed the Continental Divide today, at an elevation of 10,898 feet; but I actually went over a pass higher than that earlier in the day - 11,750 feet. As I went over that pass, I looked at the trees because I remembered a conversation with the park ranger yesterday where he was telling me about bristlecone pines growing above the 9000 foot level where other trees don't like to grow. But, the trees at the 11,750 foot elevation were not bristlecone pines. Not sure what kind they were though, and there was quite a forest of them too.
Down lower the country reminds me of the eastern slope of the Cascades - high desert with junipers and pines and greasewood and other chapparal plants. Good cow country! I found I didn't take many pictures today - even though everywhere I looked there was beautiful scenery. It's all beginning to look the same to me for the most part. Except for the rock formations of course. But, I must say that I prefer the scenery of Nevada and Utah to the trees of Colorado. After all, I can look at trees til the cows come home right where I live!
I'm looking forward to exploring Taos tomorrow. If any of you have been here and want to write back quickly, I'll take any suggestions as to what's worth looking at under advisement.
