Drive to Taos, NM to Rio Grande Gorge Bridge and Earthship Biotecture

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

We decided today would be our day.  We are going to drive a loop through northern New Mexico.  This was a long drive with lots of beautiful pictures.  I'm breaking this into 2 posts.

This first post will be our drive from Los Alamos to the Earthship Biotecture through Taos.

We drove NM Hwy 68 which followed along side the Rio Grande River for a ways.  Here is one place we stopped.

A little further north on Hwy 68, road construction narrowed the road to one lane.  We saw this beautiful golden tree all by itself while we were stopped.
 

A little further north, we saw this little grove of aspens. 

As the Rio Grande River separated from Hwy 68, you could see this part of the Rio Grande Gorge.  This was before we got to Taos.
 

As we rounded a curve, and almost to Taos, this was our view.  We had to stop and get a picture of the beautiful golden hillsides.

North and west of Taos is the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge.  Isn't it magnificent?!

 This is looking up (north) the Rio Grande River from the middle of the bridge.
 

 This is looking down (south) the Rio Grande River from the middle of the bridge also.

 Here we are standing on the bridge, about the middle.  I thought it was interesting that a "Crisis Hotline" phone was at this viewing point.  See it next to Tic?




From the bridge we headed to the Earthship Biotecture housing area. "An Earthship is a type of passive solar house that is made of both natural and recycled materials (such as earth-filled tires). 
    Earthships are intended to be "off-the-grid ready" homes, with minimal reliance on both public utilities and fossil fuels. Earthships are constructed to use available natural resources, especially energy from the sun. Earthships are designed to use thermal mass construction and natural cross ventilation, assisted by thermal draught (Stack effect), to regulate indoor temperature." Wikipedia.  Check them out at www.earthship.com.

This is the wall around the visitors center.


Those are colored bottles in the concrete wall.

Here's dusty standing at the entrance to the visitors center.

This is the entrance.  There are also glass bottles in this wall.  Pretty door!

Below are pictures of several of the houses including one being built.

This one is still under construction?.

Most of the houses are mostly in the ground.   All very interesting.

Just past the Earthship houses, we saw the Double D Ranch.  Look at the mountains in the background.  What a view they have!

Can you see the reddish on this mountain?  We later learned that is the scrub oak turning colors.  

This is where I am going to stop this post.  Too much to show in one post.