Arid, ah yes!

Today was different from the past two days in that we didn't pack up camp and drive for 9 hours. Instead we woke up to the doves calling and had a slow start. We ate the last dozen eggs from our chickens, which now belong to our neighbor in Belfast, Alex. They were quite yummy, and it was nice to get the space in the fridge for other things. Sorrel had his first interaction with the less-inviting insects of the southwest, introduced by an ant bite on his shoulder. It must have crawled under his shirt from a stick he was playing with. There was a really cute little dog that lived next to our site, his one-armed owner could not keep up with him to get him behind the fence and just left for the morning. The dog got a riot out of playing with River and Pia, it was about 1/10 the size of River, and the two dogs played really great together. But, River got over the dog's high energy real quick and went in the van to get away. Pia had a competitor for the stick, which was being thrown endlessly by Ru and another little girl that lives in the RV Park.

After all of the dog excitement we drove a short distance to the dinosaur museum. It was actually really well done and quite interesting. The kids found it real exciting as well, that is until Parula decided that asking for food was the next thing to focus on. Each kid got to pick out a dinosaur from the gift shop, Parula got a Euoplocephalus, which is an armored dinosaur with a club-like tail. Sorrel got a Tylosoraus, which looks like a cross between a fish, snake, and crocodile. It has paddle-like flippers and a long tail, clearly a water creature. They played with them the rest of the day in the car, and unfortunately Sorrel discovered his dinosaur's long tail can make a great weapon to reach his sister in the next seat over..... oops.

After all of the museum excitement ended, we hit the road to Taos. We only had to drive on the interstate for about 30 minutes, the other 4 hours was on smaller roads and part of the "Santa Fe Trail" which is the same route the settlers in covered wagons took a couple hundred years ago when leaving the plains to come to the mountains of northern New Mexico ( I think they were traveling from North to South at first though). It was an amazing drive! We went from grassland and sparse shrubs to short tree woodland (Junipers) to mixes with riparian areas lined with Cottonwoods and then higher in elevation into the Ponderosa Pines and scrub oak, all the way into the snow SNOW which was so beautiful with the huge pines, then sagebrush started to come back once we passed on the other side of the mountains and saw the most amazing site- the Sangre de Cristo Mountains- which reach over 13,000 feet in elevation! It was spectacular! Taos is located in a valley between the smaller mountain range we passed over, which is part of the Carson National Forest, and the Sangre de Cristo mountains, which are part of the Rocky Mountain formation and share their dynamic vistas with Colorado as well. I have driven through Taos before, on my way from Boulder, CO to Prescott, AZ, but did not remember much of the town. I do remember how beautiful the mountains here are, but was still in awe of their beauty today, as if it were the first time I'd seen this place. We will stay here a couple of days and check things out.

We found a great natural food store in town (again thanks to the help of "Healthy Highways"), and then got to the campground, which is definitely a huge step above the past 2 we have stayed in. It is really nice to have some "home" (van?) cooked meals at the end of a long day, we had some nice veggies and polenta tonight. I have been using a single burner induction stove that we got for this trip. It plugs into our van, works perfectly, as we are plugged into 30 amp service at the campsite, otherwise we would drain our battery. Water boils in a couple of minutes, and food cooks fast, almost too fast for me to keep up with sometimes. It is small and stores away easily. Bedtime has still been a bit tricky, as Sorrel has been WIRED recently, not wanting to go to sleep, but wanting to undress his doll, stick his fingers down the holes from the pop-top were they sleep, and play with buttons and zippers. Ah, but thus is life as a 2 year old!

We need to take the van into a mechanic tomorrow, there are some funny rattling noises coming out of the car, and the A/C doesn't work. Hopefully it will be nothing major, as this is not only our mode of transport, but our home, so we will be S.O.L if it is going to take a while to fix. I am keeping my fingers crossed though. We will try to post more pictures of the last few days of the trip, there are some great pictures from the Mississippi River site as well as many others, so keep checking in on the picture posting at the top of the blog!