Taos at the beginning of October

Last month we went to Taos for a few days. Has it only been a month? A lot has happened since then, but I thought you’d like to hear about the trip. We got some nice pictures. Our goal was to get into the mountains to see the fall color – in this case, yellow aspen. We do have some red maple in one or two forests in New Mexico, but for the most part our fall color is aspen in the mountains, as well as cottonwoods along the river.

We were lucky we got out to the mountains to see the aspen this year, because the fall color never got good along the river. That’s because shortly after our trip to the mountains, Albuquerque had an early hard freeze and a snowstorm only a week into October. A lot of the leaves down in the valley just went directly from green to dead.

We loved our vacation rental in Arroyo Seco, just north of Taos. The casita was walking distance from central Arroyo Seco (all block or two of it), yet still out in the country.

It was just a 1-bedroom cottage, but it was very spacious. It had a wonderful patio and lots of New Mexican charm.

Here’s the patio, very quiet and peaceful, nothing nearby.

Lots of wood and adobe details in the casita.

This quaint church was near our casita, along our walk into town.

On one of the days we drove into Taos. Here are photos from a very large Mexican furniture store we briefly went into, but we were reluctant to linger or go into any smaller shops because of covid. This was shortly before New Mexico’s covid rates started to skyrocket. After the rates got so bad, I stopped going into stores altogether. But as you can see, it wasn’t crowded (except crowded with stuff, lol).

That was a fun place to wander around in, but if you actually want to buy furniture in Taos, I recommend Antigua de Mexico Imports instead. We’ve purchased from them before, and have gotten to be friends with the owners, Gonzalo and Blanca. They import some of their furniture, but they also make a lot of their own furniture themselves and will make to your custom measurements if you want. They also have much better prices than that other store we checked out.

I was too busy buying stuff to take very many photos at Antigua. Just this chair – we bought 6 of them and Gonzalo made us a table to match.

He managed to get the table done just in time to take to Tucson with us. Everything we’ve purchased from Gonzalo we’ve taken down to Tucson.

Here’s a little side road in Taos we walked while waiting for our take-out food to be ready.

Unfortunately, the food was terrible. We didn’t even eat it, it was that bad! After that day, we decided we’d seen enough of Taos and stayed in Arroyo Seco for the rest of the weekend. Arroyo Seco has a few small galleries and a great cafe, https://solfoodnm.com/sol-food-cafe/, all within walking distance of our casita. I could eat at Sol Food every day and never get tired of them!

Here’s a Greek salad with hummus and dolmas. It would be even prettier if it wasn’t in a take-out box, lol.

Here’s a sweet little place to sit among the cosmos and hollyhocks, and a statue of the Greek God Pan, in “downtown” Arroyo Seco:

Right near there I bought earrings directly from the artist who made them. She said they represented “strength.”

I figured we could all use a little strength nowadays.

The hiking trails are closer to Arroyo Seco than Taos – just a short drive from the casita. Because I’m still low in energy, we only hiked a mile or so on the most level trail we could find, but it was still steep, and a challenge for me. We went on the same trail two different times, because I didn’t want to try anything steeper. Luckily it was beautiful both times!

It wasn’t crowded but there were enough people that we wore our masks (mandatory in New Mexico anyway). Mine is in my hand, just off for the photo. And don’t worry, John usually wears his mask right. That “fake beard” look was just for the photo, so we could see how happy he was 🙂

We went up there to see the trees and wow, we got trees!

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