my travels in pixels

We booked the Taos Valley RV park which Tom Tom found extremely hard to find. We gave up and looked it up on Google Maps. The RV park is very nice and the staff are helpful in giving you suggestions of what to see in the area. The first afternoon we just spent walking around the shops in the city centre.  The second day we went to the Taos Peublo – the oldest living Peublo in the country. We took the walking tour with one of the local students and learnt a little about everything around us. They don’t like to give away much about their culture as it has been used against them, so they don’t even write anything down and never will. Their traditional values are guarded as sacred. The town doesn’t use electricity or running water, lights are propane.   Some houses use wood stoves while others still use the fireplaces to cook. The adobe buildings are made from earth, straw and water, and sometimes stones or rocks. Bricks are made and baked in the sun to make them waterproof...

An hour and a half north west of Santa Fe is the Bandelier National Monument. There are walking trails that take you to the Ancestral Pueblo villages dating back to the 13 th Century. Most of the dwellings are now in ruin but you still see the outline of many of them and see that the small rooms were for storing food, other rooms were bedrooms and the Kiva’s for meeting places.  The visitor centre hosts a talk and movie about the park to give people a better understanding of how they lived their lives. A class from one of the local schools was there and the kids really knew their history and we able to answer all the ranger’s questions. There are a number of cliff dwellings along the main trail, then another trail leads to the Alcove house which is reached by climbing four wooden ladders that span 140 feet to the top. Alcove House (inside) Looking down from Alcove house

The oldest house in America A leisurely one hour drive brought us to the lovely city of Santa Fe. There are a lot of adobe style buildings and trees and gardens! They had a light sprinkling of snow a few days before we got here and it has rained every night, but the days are clear and a bit chilly.  We stayed at the Trailer Ranch RV Resort where they have nice large, clean sites, with trees! We took the bus into the city so that we didn’t have to worry about parking, walked around the shops, saw a museum and a few churches including the one with the famous spiral staircase.  The Upper Crust pizza restaurant had been recommended to us and when we saw it near the oldest house in America we decided to have one for lunch. It would have to be the best pizza we have both ever eaten. The crust is left to rise three times over a couple of days so that it is like Italian Ciabatta bread, so it’s firm on the bottom, but soft and sponge like above the base.  It’s Ea...