Guess where I was this weekend?

I think you could spin me around in the world and drop me off in Taos, New Mexico and I could tell where I was by the flat sage brush plateau, distance mountains and well, the "old hippies".
We gleefully drove there in rain, past Pagosa Springs, the smoke of three wildfires in the distance around Wolf Creek Pass, praying the rain was reaching them, through Chama, New Mexico and continued east where arroyos were starting to flood until we reached their destination, the spectacular Rio Grande Gorge...

where we could have ducked into this blue bus coffee shop above, but instead braved the rain to go walk out over the gorge...

 

Getting back in the car wet, we headed towards the misty Taos Mountains and getting checked in to the hotel, waited in the rain again at Orlando's Mexican Café for a table...

but it was well worth it...

Still light and happily satisfied on chips and fresh salsa, blue corn tacos, burritos and posole- a lime soaked  dried corn soup with chilies and oregano unique to Northern New Mexico, we drove through Taos towards the mountain to Rancho De Taos, to photograph the San Francisco de Asis Mission Church...

Made famous by the likes of Ansel Adams and George O'Keeffe photographing it and painting it from the backside. Here it is from the front...

First built in 1772, a plaza surrounds it, once for defense and commerce, now some parts well tended...

and some in disrepair...

and some crumbling...

Everything in New Mexico has a story to tell, much of it long before the US was even a nation!

Happy Independence Day!