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Just a few memories from BJ’s birthday night . . .

Since BJ had to work for most of the day yesterday, we went all out for the evening. We spent about three hours at a swanky restaurant in town called the Botswana Butchery. It started off with exotic cocktails and venison Carpaccio, followed by a bottle of wine and two entrees . . . BJ ordered seared tuna and I ordered the duck . . . yummy. The dishes looked so tiny when they arrived but we were plenty full by the time we had finished and especially after our chocolate tart for dessert. The waiter, who happened to be from Vancouver, Canada, came over by himself with a candle in the dessert and sang a very quiet happy birthday to BJ. But the best part about the song was that our waiter didn’t know BJ’s name so when it came time for the part in the happy birthday song he just filled it in with “Happy birthday to the guy with the shirt.” Classic!

It was then off to Pog Mahones, a local Irish pub that was partying the night away for St. Patty’s day. We made our way to the front of the dance floor to see one of our favorite local cover bands . . . the GC’s . . . and stayed there for the rest of the night. We didn’t realize what time we came home last night (or, more accurately, this morning) until our roommate Ali told us she heard us come in at 4am! I can’t remember that last time I was out that late. Needless to say, we have wasted today (BJ’s birthday back in the states) away with a little work, lots of coffee and a few naps. Our roomies have invited us to our living room for an evening of watching as many episodes as possible from the latest season of Heroes . . . I can’t think of anything I’d rather do . . . sometimes you just need a good session of crap tv.

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.