Get the Picture: Day 2

Hey guys! Today was the second day (of four) of my Get the Picture adventure. Today was a pretty long day but it totally paid off at the end! We started in Farmington. We figured we would eat breakfast at the hotel and be out of the hotel by 8:30. As some of you reading this may know, my mom and I can't eat gluten. For those if you who didn't know that, we can't. For those of you who don't know what gluten is, it's a protein in wheat, rye, barley, and spelt. So we can't eat any of those things. The biggest thing is wheat since wheat is in everything. Hotel's usually serve eggs, sausage, fruit, yogurt, cereal, waffles, and bagels. We can usually eat eggs, sausage, fruit, and yogurt. At the hotel we stayed at, the only things we could eat were fruit and yogurt. I tried some orange juice, but it sorta tasted like cardboard. We had a very insubstantial breakfast and then headed off to Aztec to see the Aztec Ruins.


There weren't any pictures of the Aztec Ruins that I needed to get but it was soooo cool! There was a trail to follow and numbers along the trail where we could stop and read cool things in the guide book. It was really interesting to see how the Pueblo people used to live. Basically, they built their community around a central plaza. The plaza was composed of a huge communal Kiva, or place for religious services and celebrations. There are several smaller Kivas surrounding the plaza used for private or family use. Kivas are built in a circle and are covered completely except for some windows and a place for a ladder to go so people and get to the bottom. Near the back of the dwellings, (the part furthest away from the plaza) the rooms were three stories high. The amount of stories reduce as you come closer to the plaza. The doorways that open to the plaza were T-shaped. No one is entirely sure why the doors were T-shaped. There are a lot of unknown things about the Pueblo people and their community but it's amazing how much had been excavated and figured out.


After an hour of looking at the Aztec Ruins, we headed down to Chama to eat lunch and take a picture. We had some very good meal at Foster's Hotel, Restaurant, and Saloon, the oldest building still standing in Chama. My mom says "Maybe there are other buildings but they don't stand anymore!" There was a picture of a bear hunter with five bears that he had killed. I noted that it was a bit creepy. My mom pointed directly above my head and said "And that's not creepier?" I look up to where she's pointed and nearly scream; there's a bear on the wall, it's mouth wide open and glass eyes staring straight at me. Picture of it above^. After my encounter with the bear, we headed to Tierra Amarilla (a small town near Chama with basically nothing there) to take a picture. We sort of got a little bit lost but found our way out and headed down to Abiquiu.


We went to a very small village in Abiquiu to take a picture and learned more about it. The village we visited is where Georgia O'Keeffe's house was. We talked to a man who had worked for her for over 40 years. It was very interesting to learn about their little village and everything he did for O'Keeffe. After Abiquiu, we were on our way to Ojo Caliente (FINALLY!). Ojo was soooo beautiful. The hotel is different than anything you would ever imagine. The rooms have actual keys (you know, like keys, not those rip-off plastic rectangles..). Since the Historic Hotel (where my room is) was built in the early 1900s, the doors have transoms (window's at the top of the door that you can open to keep the heat moving). The bathroom is a half bathroom with just a toilet and a sink. There is no T.V. and it feels more like a home than a normal hotel. The springs are incredible. There are 5 different springs and a normal pool. Each spring has a different mineral in it and each of them do different things for your body. There are also two saunas, a dry one and a wet one. My mom and I went into the dry one. It was very interesting. It was like summer. In one room. 60 degrees hotter. It was weird, but it felt really nice. The springs were really relaxing and now I'm ready for a good night of sleep.


Tomorrow we are soaking in the springs one more time and then heading Rancho de Taos and then to Taos. We only have one hour of driving tomorrow so I'm very excited about that. I still don't have my watermarked pictures (Jeremy hasn't gotten to them yet, but I totally understand, he's a busy man!) but I should have some by tomorrow! Love you!!


--Tauby :D