On the road, continued

We arrived in Taos* on Friday the 30th around 4 p.m., and traffic was awful -- far the worst of any we'd seen so far, and reminiscent of our home town on a Saturday morning. We found our accommodations, our second stay with airbnb.com, without too much trouble, and we were very pleased with them (pictures and description are here). We stayed there two nights, ate pretty good dinners at two different restaurants (Lambert's of Taos the second night and, I think, The Trading Post Cafe the first).

There doesn't seem to be much to do in Taos after dinner, so the first night we looked and looked and looked to find a Netflix movie we might like, but failed. The second night we watched Chinatown (the wonderful wife for the first time).

Though there's not much to do after dinner, one thing you can do is look at the sky. I'm pretty sure that when we came back from dinner Friday night we saw the Milky Way for only the second time in our lives. (Saturday night was too cloudy.)

Our only full day in Taos started with a good breakfast at Michael's Kitchen, after which we took in the sights along the main street and Taos Plaza for most of the morning. Later we drove 20 minutes to Arroyo Seco ("a charming little town with excellent shops that most people overlook," according to a couple clerks we spoke to in Taos, and "a dump and a complete waste of time," according to the wonderful wife and me). From there, it was only about 20 minutes farther to Taos Ski Valley, a pretty location, but not really much of anything to do there unless, you know, you ski.

When we got back to our apartment, we asked our host to show us her farmyard. Fortunately, she (and her sweet 3-year-old daughter) were just about to feed the three goats and the dozen or so chickens and collect the eggs the hens had laid; we enjoyed being able to tag along.

Sunday morning began with a very long Palm Sunday mass at the couple-hundred-year-old St. Francis of Assisi Mission Church and was followed by a good breakfast, after which we headed down to Santa Fe.

* Taos, Rancho de Taos, Taos Ski Valley, and Pueblo de Taos are all distinct places. Our apartment was in Rancho de Taos (and we never got to Pueblo de Taos).