riverECHO

How did I forgot to include this short story in the last blog about our eventful drive down to Taos? Jean quickly reminded me after reading it that I left out one of the funniest parts of the day. It wasn’t so funny at the time. We pulled into the only gas station between Laramie and Cheyenne in a small town called Buford. The signs posted 85: $3.25/gallon — “not to bad,” I thought. I jumped out of the car into the piercing rain and chilling wind, claiming “I’ve got this one,” and BJ headed in to the bathroom as Jean took the dogs on a short walk. I finished fueling, jumped back in the car, and my head immediately started to spin. Not from nausea, but from stupidity. A few four letter words began escaping my mouth as I studied the pump (from left to right and expensive to cheap: diesel-$4.29, 89-$3.79, 87-$3.69, E-85-$3.19) for more clues about what “E-85″ truly was. BJ returned and I quickly asked him if he knew what the E stood for in E-85 . . . “Economy, right? Because it’s the cheapest one?” I said. He didn’t seem to know either but quickly busted out his data phone to get some real answers. Then Jean hopped in the car and saw my distraught did-I-just-ruin-the-car and are-we-ever-going-to-make-it-to-Taos-now face. None of us had any answers, but we agreed on one thing–I better go in and fess up to the clerk before we start driving and blow up on our way to Cheyenne. BJ joined me in telling the clerk “Um, I think I may have just put the wrong type of gas in my car.” She smiled, as did one of the customers in the store, and both assured us, in a tone that was much less demeaning than I expected or deserved, “Nah, don’t worry, just fill up with regular gas next time. It’ll just affect your gas mileage a little bit.” We laughed as we walked back to the car in the now pouring rain, shared our story with Jean, and got on the road. No harm done but lesson learned.

BJ, Jean, her two dogs Barkley and Scooter, and I loaded the car and began our drive to Taos, NM at 5:30am on Saturday morning. We had over 14 hours to drive and we wanted to arrive to our rental Airstream Trailer (more on that later) with enough time to enjoy a good soak in the hot tub. But just south of Jackson as the sun began to rise behind the cloudy skies, it began to snow and the number of cars that were already off the road started to increase as we headed further south. We quickly realized that our 14 hour drive may take longer than expected. BJ and I took turns fighting the wind and rain that was at our back for the entire drive until we hit a monsoon and lightning in El Raton in northern New Mexico at around 8pm and decided to get a hotel room for the night. We didn’t realize we had turned off at the Taos exit because all the highway signs had been blown down and as Jean put it, “those are bad signs,” no pun intended. So we called it a night and found a clean hotel room in Raton for the night.

After our fix of cable tv, continental breakfast, and weak coffee, we loaded the doggies and pointed the car west to Taos, just a short 2 hour drive. Taos greeted us with cloudy but warm skies, more galleries than we could count, and many small pot-holed side streets that made us feel like we were truely in Mexico. We followed our directions out of town and down a long dirt road to arrive at, by far, the quaintest accommodation in Taos–our very own Airstream trailer, complete with patio, grill, hot tub, and of course, the World Wide Web. It’s cozy with the 5 of us, but we’re excited to call it home for the week. We lunched in town at an Italian restaurant (I know, I know, we were looking for chile rellenos), and then quickly came back home to relax and read our stack of New Mexico travel guides. We have a small list of must-sees this week like the Taos Pueblo, the High Road to Santa Fe, eating lots of chile rellenos, and, most importantly, RELAXING at our house in Taos.