Friendly New Mexico

We have an old friend from Indiana -- Mary Jo -- that now lives in New Mexico with her husband, Dick. They have a lovely home surrounded by the pines and cliffs in the forest near Ramah. We were glad to have a chance to visit last weekend. Besides, MJ usually conjures up a plan for your visit. Her schemes might include a little trip, or a new restaurant, or some good food she whips together. Well, this time she did all that.
One of the "highpoints" of our visit was when MJ decided to offer to take us to the top of Mount Taylor. "I haven't been to the top yet and I would like to find the trail all the way up." Of course, our reply was, "Let's go for it." Oh, did I mention that we were using MJ's Dodge dually truck? She might want to come back with the horse trailer and needed to see what it was like. It was a beautiful day for a ride. We set out on the forest trail that seemed to take us to the towers that we could see across a few ridges. We worked our way up, winding and riding the trail, through some washed out sections and many large boulders. At several points we all considered turning around because it was hard to tell if the path we were taking would turn into a walking path or deadend without room for us to turn around.

Luckily, we chose a trail that led to the towers at the top, 10,440 feet. Spectacular, 360 degrees of mountains and valleys!!

Now, how to get back down? Our road up took too long. We saw a road that seemed to lead down the other side along the edge of the mountain. But we couldn't see for sure where it went.




Low and behold, there came a vehicle up that road. So we waited. Good, the driver had news about that road down. It was easy going. But he also wanted to know how we got up to this point. When we pointed to the trail we had used to get there he replied with surprise, "You did what? I thought that was a goat path." We laughed and got back in the truck. The other driver seemed a little puzzled when Mary Jo got into the driver's seat, with Jerry riding along in the back.


All I can say is that there were many beautiful views all along the route and , especially at the top of Mt. Taylor. And there were laughs and excitement all the way.