Our week in Taos over, now on to Albuquerque

We had a nice visit with Tom and Karen, one of Jan's sisters, who is building a house in Taos, NM.  We had stopped in the spring with the grandkids and can certainly report that a lot has been happening since then.  It is an almost finished house now.  

Quite a view from the upstairs porch

Jan and I needed to find something to do while Karen and Tom were tied up, so we decided to go way up a dirt road that they had used to go horseback riding last year.  We went past where they had mounted up and encountered a few ruins of a long time ago gold mining town along Bitter Creek that was active in 1899.  It only ran for 18 days until a flood ruined it.  I guess the gold take wasn't much.  We learned that they would lay dynamite in the ground and blow holes to determine what the soil and rock were comprised of so they knew whether to dig there or not.  We had never heard of that before, but the area was filled with many, many test holes.

This is an example of just one

Anchor Cabin was built in 1895 overlooking many of the placer mines and remnants of it are still present today.

What's left of Anchor Cabin

Then on the way back out the road, we went in about 30 miles, we found another mine opening, but we were both chicken to actually go in:-)

Would you go in?

But we did find a nice peaceful place for coffee.

Another day we went to a tiny little town about 40 miles away that Tom had discovered, that was reported to have the very best Mexican food in the whole state.  So we figured we had to go see.  The 4 of us loaded up in the truck and took off.  The town is El Rito, NM, population 800.  It is also the site of the Mars Polar Lander.

The whole town with the Mars Polar Lander in the foreground :)

The restaurant is a tiny hole in the wall called El Farolito.  

I said it was tiny

We were amazed, it was absolutely delicious!

Inside shot

Together we ran the menu, we had chili rellenos, tacos, enchiladas, burrito, tamale, and killer sopapillas!  It was awesome.

The tamale and burrito

The sopapillas were fantastic with warmed honey!

 It was absolutely worth the drive.  We love these out of the way hole in the wall finds.

The weather was quite good, 60's in the day, down to the 30's at night, but a bit windy, which is kind of normal for the Southwest.  But it did yield some pretty sunsets.

Sunset in our campground in Taos

We had a wonderful visit, but Karen mentioned that she had discovered a new restaurant in town, Jalapeno's Tacos and Beer, a simple small joint with really good food, in fact we all went there twice while in town.

Crispy crab tacos

The awesome fish street tacos

And delicious lamb street tacos

Yeah, I know, back to food for awhile:)  We also had a nice surprise when Walker, Tom and Karen's son, our nephew dropped in.  We had a short but nice visit with him and enjoyed a nice breakfast at yet another restaurant, don't worry, no pictures.  So with quite a bit of time spent up at the house project and lots of visiting, our week in Taos came to an end, and we have moved down to Albuquerque to visit Jan's other sister, and to celebrate her mother Viv's, 95th year birthday!