A Road Trip to Taos - New Mexico...

After a few days to settle into Denver life, Auntie Nic was keen to take a road trip so we decided to head for Tao's in New Mexico. We were all looking forward to getting on the road and exploring new places. A very scenic five hour drive led us to the extremely picturesque town of Tao's.

On the drive we passed many beautiful sights including mountains and pastures with abandoned farm houses.

We were all happy to get out of the car and were really impressed with the beautiful two bedroom Casita we had booked for our accommodation.

The photo below is the entrance to the hot tub and has the very distinctive rows of dries chillies suspended. Everywhere we went in Tao's we saw red chillies hanging.

We spent the first day exploring the main street of Tao's and visiting the local church. Our preference was to go straight to the Pueblo, unfortunately it was closed due to a funeral.

So the St. Francis of Assisi, Ranchos De Tao's was to be our first destination. This Spanish colonial church built with thick, organic curving walls has been used as a model by many New Mexico artists. It's most famous depiction is in paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, see below.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Rancho de Taos Church, 1934

It was beautiful and a pleasure to photograph - in fact I could have spent the day just watching, photographing and waiting for the light to change. As you can imagine many images were taken - a select few are below.

Outside the church their were a number of souvenir shops selling religious artifacts, jewelry, art and other souvenirs. It will come as a surprise but we all avoided a single purchase.

We spent the rest of the day exploring the town - what a great day!