After a great breakfast at Harry’s Roadhouse — chili’d up burrito and a lemon buttered poppy seed Belgian waffle with raspberries and blackberries on top — we visited one last aunt on our way to Pagosa Springs Colorado via Taos New Mexico. She was a fountain of info, life, and family stories as she fed us toast, juice, and homemade salsa which she had prepared the night before for an after-funeral meal she would attend later that morning. We also met her son who lives just down the street.

We took the old two-lane High Road to Taos. Superb: multiple villages, climates, valleys, vistas, and sacred places. One village, Las Truchas, was reminiscent of a Swiss or Austrian alpine settlement with its architecture, vegetation, and big sky. A pleasant surprise here in northern New Mexico.

In Taos, on the recommendation of a local Harley rider at our Taos gas station stop, we lunched at a local diner. Great enchiladas and killer sopapillas!

To the north of Taos on US-64, we stopped at and crossed on foot the gorge and bridge across the Rio Grande. Second highest bridge on the US highway system — 600 feet above the gorge floor.

Our ride to and through southern Colorado was bee-oooo-ti-ful.

Before entering Colorado, we pulled off at a heavily snowed scenic spot for photos. What we found was a plump German female tourist’s rental car, stuck on top of a two-foot tall snow bank. From what we observed, it looked like road clearing crews used these pull offs to plow snow into from both directions, leaving large dirty mounds to melt throughout the spring.

In this instance, the mound had shrunk to a little over two feet with a six-inch base of rock hard ice upon which her car teetered. Trapped for over four hours, she claimed, which earned her a sizeable band of would-be rescuers. An old rusty pickup truck was present. Another audience member offered up an old pair of jumper cables as a tow rope. Several attempts proved unsuccessful with the cheesy cables slipping off the stuck rental car’s bumper.

Along with several slightly built 60ish and 70ish helpers, Steve and I put our shoulders to use after securely looping the cables to the stuck car’s front drive axle. Successful without expletives or hernias. Much whooping and high fiving ensued to cover up the spreading shortnesses of breath. The truck driver was a retired “educator” from Santa Fe. Upon introducing ourselves and her recognizing Steve’s last name, she admitted that she knew Steve’s aunt and grandmother, a NM education legend who had had a great deal of influence on her and his aunt’s careers almost 40 years ago. Damn small world, eh?

Pagosa Springs: small, quaint, an on-the-rise tourist town. Big game hunting, trophy quality fishing, and sitting in dank smelling hot springs are the foundations. Once just the quiet preserves of locals from New Mexico. Now being transformed by high-dollar’d folks from Texas and Oklahoma — the Bass brothers from Texas have a $20 million estate there. It’s now being morphed by $500K McMansions and manufactured $50K double wide trailers.

Patchwork quilt of zoning laws in evidence mitigated by the one acre lots’ minimum size. Everyone has a great view regardless of net worth. The west is certainly a land of equal opportunity. If you’re willing to live with its eccentricities.

Cousins to the Sena family, Joyce and Rich Beaudry, were our hosts. Retirees from New Mexico. He served 30+ years as a Fish and Wildlife Law Officer with stories aplenty about the rich, famous, Hollywood and LA pro sports types he dealt with and some he befriended. He had many tales of law officer encounters with drunken armed hunters of danger he faced. They still had their hands busy with local housing fishing license inspector and hunting and fishing technique pamphlets author (him) and property manager (her). But best of all were the products of their divine wild mushroom gathering that they shared with us along with a home-cooked meal sourced in part from their own garden — along with friendly conversation, a roof over our heads and a rack, these are the best gifts a road tripper can receive.

Day 6 Miscellany and counts:

Daily Windshield Bug Smash Bingo Game winners: white.

Query count as of the end of Day 6:
Where’re you going? – 7
What’s that? (Steve’s Valkyrie) – 3
Damsels in distress? – 5

Select photos from Day 6