Friday, February 7, 2014: Denver to Taos

Pearl spent last week trying on hats.  Twisting back and forth, she closely examines herself in mirror.  She’s a bit vain, desiring the hat that best accentuates her positive features.  At long last, she chose the medium Thule.  Our cars all talk exclusively to Bear who then reports what they’ve said.

We leave Denver Colorado somewhat promptly at 10:15AM, driving off into the proverbial sunset, except that it is morning and we’re headed south, not west.  Details!  Reality forever messes with my great expansive ideas. 

Unfortunately, our departure isn't all that prompt as we stop at the bank and the eyeglass store.  Although Louisiana lies 1,600 miles in our future, Bloodroot has forgotten to pick up his distance glasses.  Why would we need to see where we’re going?  Why start now when we’ve paid scant attention to direction most of our lives?  Wisdom prevails.  How boring!  Equipped with money and vision, we depart Denver only a wee bit later.

We’ve packed Pearl and her hat to the gills.  The full family of mobility devices accompanies us.  Besides the three of us, Sven, Sven’s charger, Bess and Tinky join us for the ride.  Around all this we fit our clothes, camping stove, cooler and boxes of cooking equipment.  When we stop, if I exit the vehicle, we move anything sitting on the van floor.  Sven needs the room to spin in a circle carrying both himself and me down Pearl’s ramp. Throughout our trip, with every driving pause, we reorganize, repack and reconfigure.

Cruising down I-25, we again reacquaint ourselves with Colorado.  To the east, the browns of winter cling to the plains as far as the eye can see to the east.  South and west Pike’s Peak pops up while ever so slowly the mountains near.  I claim to see Katherine Lee Bates[1] sitting atop Pike’s Peak.  The boys don’t believe me.

We turn west on 160 at Walsenburg.  We stop for a cup of tea at the Alpine Rose Café, primarily, I humbly confess, to use the restroom.  The smell from the street should have put us off, but somehow clarity of thought escapes us.

Undeterred by our noses, we enter.  Sven terrifies the other diners, zooming around their table to the restroom.  We crash into the bathroom door.  Sven can go no further.  Bloodroot carries me the final few feet to the toilet. 

Our logic eludes me here, as we carry water, pans, a camping stove, tea and milk in the cooler.  We had eaten at this café years ago when we returned home from Santa Fe during an Easter blizzard.  We were hungry enough that the food didn’t seem all that bad. 

Relieved, and having used their bathroom, we order coffee and tea.  The server brings us lukewarm water with tea bags.  I request milk for my tea, forgetting that in greasy spoon establishments, one must always request and pay for a glass of milk.   I liberally pour the proffered “milk” into my cup.  The resultant tepid creamer slurry is undrinkable.  A gas station would have been cheaper and cleaner.

Piling back into the van, we head west toward the Donner Pass.[2]  Just kidding – the Donner Pass is in California.  Don’t worry!  The aroma arising from the Alpine Rose Café has turned our stomachs.  We won’t be hungry for days, trapped in snow on the La Veta mountain pass or not. 

Cruising through bright sunshine, we head toward a gathering storm.  The scenery changes from high plains desert scrub to forested foothills.  Pearl greets the mountains, purring, rising slowly with the road.  The exuberance of youth upon her, she knows that she can take them.  “Bring them on,” she says.  Pearl sniffs, eagerly anticipating a fierce storm, her first, which never materializes. Disappointed, she turns south on 159 toward Taos.  Leaving the realm of Walsenburg and noxious odors, our stomachs settle.  Keith feeds us chicken salad wrapped in lettuce.  He’d made the salad before we left home.  We drive south in the broad valley keeping the Sangre de Cristo Mountains[3] to the left and the San Juan Mountains to the right.  

A low flying bird swoops down over Pearl.  The boys cower, fearing an encounter with the terrifying anal probe bird.  Pearl snaps at the bird, veering off of the road in her zeal to defend us.  Bloodroot recovers the steering.  “On to Taos and safety,” they urge Pearl.  The boys argue for the next three days as to who is the bird’s intended victim.  I turn up the sound system.  We’re listening to Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy.  Despite my interest in the book, I settle in for a long nap.

In midafternoon, we drive into Taos, finding an entire town built of adobe houses.  OK, mostly fake adobe made from cement, but Taos still looks cool.  We later learn that real adobe, made from mud, has visible straw.    We find our first stop, the Fechin House and Museum.  Arriving in style, Bloodroot motors up the exit drive marked “Do Not Enter”.  He ignores our parking advice proffered repeatedly then more forcefully, finally parking in some trees.  Keith refuses to exit Pearl, fearing the trees will give him a piney headbuff as he leaves the vehicle. After a bit parental squawking, Bloodroot moves Pearl over a couple of feet and extends the ramp.  Sven and I exit, running smack into a fence.  We extract the Sven from the mud and fencing and enter the house, only a bit disheveled.

The Fechin House, on winter hours, closes at 4PM.  As we haven’t much time, the staff lets us in for free.  The museum opens the fire doors allowing Sven to enter.  Using a running start, we ram the one step up into the living room. 

Nicolai Fechin, a Russian artist and woodcarver, moved to Taos in the 1920s.  He built the adobe Fechin house, filling it with his portraits and woodcarving.  Fechin painted portraits of local indigenous people as he had previously in Siberia.  The portraits capture each subject’s essence; their eyes look out at you through the years, their personalities revealed by portraiture.  He refused to alter people, never using props or dressing up the Indians as so many others did.  The museum houses many other early Taos artists.  Along with the paintings, we enjoy Fechin’s wood carving decorating every cabinet, window and door.  Bear loves the house, roaming, exploring and dreaming of bear caves.

The museum closes, an ever present theme in our lives.  We head over to our Airbnb casita (little house).  Our host built the little house in back of her house for when her children visit.  Our casita has heated floors, a kitchen and spectacular views.

Despite hauling half of our kitchen with us, we decide to eat out our first night.  We’re on vacation, right?  Relying on positive recommendations from both our host and our guidebook, we decide upon the Taos Inn.  The narrow sidewalks surrounding the Inn scare both Sven and I.  Our sight clouds with apocalyptic visions of toppling into the street where traffic smashes us like bugs.  Although quaking with fear, we pause and admire the Inn’s old 1940s neon sign.  Hopefully it’s not the last thing we see!

Breathing a large sigh of relief, we enter the eatery to find a set of three steps barring our way.  Shit!  Never fear, the enterprising staff removes the center stair rail.  With obvious pride, they bring out their shiny new ramp for Sven to climb.  Unfortunately, each time Sven approaches the ramp, he just pushes it out of the way.  Bummer!  They tried so hard!  We so applaud effort.  At long last, sighing, the staff lead us out a back door, through a maze of courtyards, back in through the kitchen and out above the steps. 

A local pioneer, Doc Martin, bought the original adobe house.  His widow later bought the surrounding block and opened the hotel.  The adobe walls smell of history.  One night, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips founded the Taos Society of Artists over dinner.  Everyone in town hung out here.  Unfortunately, the restaurant is far bigger on history than on food, my food being mediocre at best.  During dinner, seriously atonal jazz competes with a mariachi band playing the Frito Bandito song.  (Ay, ay, ay, ay! bong)  We enjoy our unique surroundings, imagining ourselves in the old Taos.  We look for famous people but see only each other.  We play with our food, pack up and head to the casita for the night.

---

[1] Bates climbed Pike’s Peak in 1895, becoming so enraptured that she penned America the Beautiful.  And yes, she’s dead.

[2] In 1847, the California bound Donner wagon train became stuck in early winter snows in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.  Trapped and starving, the survivors resored to cannibalism, hence the infamous Donner Pass.

[3] Blood of Christ