A pueblo and a painting

I'm back in the plaza for this morning's blogging. It's quiet and peaceful here today -- looks like a lot of the tourists who were here over the weekend have gone home.

Yesterday we took a roadtrip to Taos, driving up and back along the lower road, which hugs the Rio Grande. (I had wanted to take the high road through the mountains for one leg of the journey, but the others outvoted me.) The scenery was incredible -- rolling hills covered with pinon and juniper bushes, jagged outcrops of rock, mountain peaks, and the river, sometimes rushing right next to the road and other times unseen at the bottom of a canyon.

Our first stop was Taos Pueblo, which claims to be the oldest continuous settlement in North America, dating from 900 A.D. We wandered around on our own, all of us too cheap to spring for the guided tour (this was probably a mistake). I loved the architecture -- the adobe with bits of straw sticking out, the shadows cast by the vigas and ladders, and the bright blue paint on doors and window frames.

After lunch in Taos, I set out on my mission. There are hundreds of galleries to browse, but I headed straight for Wilder Nightingale Fine Art where I knew there would be paintings by Tom Noble, a favorite of Spooner's. When I had looked up this gallery online last week, I saw works by another artist that looked interesting. Her name is Michelle Chrisman; she's a plein air painter who uses her pallet knife to apply globs of vibrant colors (a Fauve-like pallet). The upshot of this story is that I bought one of her paintings. It's a landscape of the scenery we passed on our drive, with the mountains and the river canyon.

Tuesday's stats:
14600 steps (5.5 miles)
Expenses: 
$1.73 bagel for breakfast
$15 admission to Pueblo Taos
$12 lunch in Taos
$14.02 stuffed jackalope
$21 drinks and dinner
Not telling what I spent on the painting