Road Trip to Taos
We just got back from Taos where we stayed in an EARTHSHIP, one of those self-sustainable earth packed places. We walked away impressed wondering why more places and more builders aren’t incorporating the techniques since it has been functionally around since the 70’s. Being off the grid turned out to be very people friendly but it didn’t much cotton to hair dryers. To confess we tried it once for a half of head of hair. We watched the meter drop like crazy! Since then I have used mine sparingly at home, letting my hair air dry until I finish getting dressed and then blowing it dry. Surprisingly it works just as well for me. I say if you want to think GREEN stay in a earthship for a week, it makes you aware of your water, electricity and waste. It was comfortable and fun.
Fun consisted in building a fire in the wood-burner for a couple hours a night (that’s all it took to keep you toasty all night long) and playing board and card games. Kim served as our game concierge. Since there is plenty of land around each earthship we bought a kite sending it soaring with picturesque mountains as a backdrop. Nothing like letting child out to play on a windy March day!
Not that we stayed the entire time in the earthship, all five of us full size adults ( I’m smarter than a fifth grader but maybe not as tall) compacted ourselves into Kim’s fuel saving Honda Accord an toured New Mexico. Nothing like family bonding. We all agreed our favorite day was our trip to Bandelier National Monument near Los Alamos where we walked among the some of the earliest earth homes built by the Pueblo people. Some of us climbed the ladders up into the cliff dwellings. As I have developed pesky vertigo I had to say no to the ladders but watched as the “kids” clambered up the 142 steps to the top kiva.
We had no problem picking where to eat. We all agreed that there would be NO fast food. We had several meals in our cozy little earthship. I liked our breakfast at Michael’s Kitchen in Taos, loved those German lemon pancakes. For elegance we all loved The Artichoke in Albuquerque. I believe Nifer tried out at least three different onion soups (I think she liked the soup from the French Café in Taos. Nifer and Colin fixed some amazing stuff including a salad that taste as good as it looked. Colin made some Rosemary potatoes delish! And Michael’s turkey burger with mushrooms and brie cannot be turned down.
We balanced our trip pretty well with parks, museums, sightseeing with everyone being quite flexible to other’s suggestion and choices. We stopped at the Museum at Los Alamos to learn about the beginning of the Atomic bomb and visited both the Georgia O’Keeffe Art Museum as well as the Fechin House and Taos Museum to get an idea about the artist enclave beginnings in New Mexico.
Now if you love the idea of staying in an Earthship let Tony know you heard it from us!
Click here to see a selection of pictures we took there.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 at 12:06 am and is filed under Art, Photography, Travel. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
