Scenic drive to Taos

We have wanted to visit Taos for years, and now we are only 80 miles south of Taos, so we decided to drive up there on our last day in the Santa Fe area. Our intent was to spend 5, or 6 hours walking around Taos taking in all the sites and sounds. As it turned out our "plan" was pre-empted by the scenic drive to and from Taos. Normally it would take a little over an our to drive directly to Taos, but we decided to take the scenic routes to and from. The scenery, and historical sites along the way were so interesting it took us over 3 hours to get there. By the time we walked around the "plaza" area, taken the tour of the Kit Carson home, and eaten lunch it was after 3:30pm. If we wanted to get home before dark we needed to be moving along. On our return trip we decided to do the "Angel Fire" scenic drive, and it was well worth it. We arrived home around 6:45pm just as it was getting dark.

Our drive up to Taos took us north from Santa Fe on US285 to NM68, and then NM75 up to Taos. Our drive back took us east from Taos on NM64 to 434 where we drove south NM 518, and the town of Mora. Mora has special meaning to me because I have read a lot of Louis L'Amour's westerns and many of them revolve around Mora where a couple of his fictional Sackett families settled in the 1800's.

Here are some of the pictures of our day.