Enchanted Circle, Sketch - of Sorts.....

We did the Enchanted Circle tour yesterday. What a beautiful drive! We didn't leave until around noon, so we didn't make many stops. In Taos, we just stopped for gasoline, it is about twenty cents a gallon cheaper there. It rained on us there, too.

We stopped along the highway for a nap and pulled over behind a sign for the Carson National Forrest. We saw some of the smallest Prickly Pear Cactus I have ever seen. They looked like baby cactus, but had bloomed at some point.

Napping spot. Highway 522
You can see a pine cone in the lower right to compare size.

On to Questa for a look at the Rio Grande Gorge. There is a State Park there, so nice spots to look at the canyon, picnic and hike. So few people there it was like a private park. Nice.

Looking down in the gorge at Sheep's Crossing Overlook. That must mean there is a trail somewhere around there to take sheep down. Hmmm.

This must have been at the next place we stopped.

At Arsenic Campground we found a couple of plein air painters. I started a conversation and as usual in this small world, one of the artists is good friends with Lou Baggett (Bag Blog) on my posts that lives in Oklahoma. We visited a few minutes and I took their photos. It is a great place to paint.

Marsha Kidd setting up to paint. They had been rained out earlier at another spot.

Evie painting.

Gene had gone down one of the trails so I went back to the car and decided to sketch until he got back. Only about five minutes. Bad sketch, I couldn't even write where we were. My vertigo had worked up and I needed to sit, have some air and something salty. I didn't have my motion pills with me. They sure help. It passed in a few minutes. I'm glad we had seen the pretty views before I got shaky.

Shaky sketch.

On the way back to Questa.

We left Questa and drove to Red River. Lou had told us to eat at the Sundance Restaurant, where we would find Linda Hoag, another of her friends. I looked it up that morning and the ad said to make reservations. That was a surprise, so we called on the road as we left Questa and sure enough there were reservations available at 5 p.m. (which fit perfectly with our schedule) or wait until 7:30 p.m. Busy place. We had a great Mexican dinner and looked at Linda's art. She had left so we didn't get to meet her.



We arrived back in Angel Fire near seven p.m. and crashed. I decided I will make an album on Picassa so you can see more of the great photos from here. I will post the link soon.