Same-old same-old in the morning.

Then, time for art.

Reviewing the pieces we wanted.  Discussing options.  Considering.  Being offered deals.  Being offered good deals.  Reconsidering.  Re-reconsidering.  Dithering. Deciding.

And ... walking out having committed to buying more than I'd thought we would when we came here (by, oh, a factor of ten), but being pretty pleased nonetheless. Heirloom stuff here.

I won't go into the details, both out of a sense of minor embarrassment ("You spent how much?") and so as to surprise our visitors.

Aaaaand ... I blame it all on Margie, who managed to seduce me into buying so much art, with her womanly wiles and ...

Yeah.  She got that same look on her face when I framed it all that way.

Afterwards, we went up to Shidoni Foundry, a cool metalworking and bronze casting facility about ten, fifteen minutes north on Bishops Lodge Rd.  They have a couple of huge sculpture gardens, a small gallery at the foundry, the foundry itself (open to wander through a few times a day, with actual pourings on Saturday afternoons), and a "fine arts" gallery.  Some very nice stuff, though nothing that made me regret our own purchases.

Right next door is Tesuque Glass, a glassworks and gallery.  Also very fun (and blowing is going on there all the time).

From there, we decided it would be fun to head off to Taos, maybe take in some of the scenery up there.

A nasty construction-related traffic jam revised those plans, and we ended up in Espanola (where we ate lunch at a Sonic), then driving some fun back roads to Chimayo, Cordova, and Truchas.  Went to some small, fun galleries in Truchas, then headed back ...

(Truchas, we later determined, was our infamous "side road" incident last visit down here.  We decided to take the scenic "High Road to Taos" on the way back home, and some bored kids in Truchas -- like, what's there to do there if you're a kid -- decided to remove the signs for the left-hand turn in the middle of town.  We -- and quite a number of cars ahead and behind us -- kept driving straight as the road got narrower, lost its dividing paint, lost its asphalt, lost its gravel ...

Yeah, real cut-ups, those Truchas kids.)

The road back had some marvelous vistas of distant thunderstorms as we wove our way through brushy mesas amid twists and turns.  Very nice.  Returned to the Inn around 5, relaxed, etc., then headed off to dinner at 6.

And rolled back to the hotel at about 9:30-10, full if not fully satisfied.  Mmmmm.  Sleeeepy ...

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If you can take a couple of hours, and you haven't already, I heartily encourage running out to the Anasazi ruins outside Sante Fe. Marvelous side trip.

Alas, just got home. But I will make a note of that for next time.

Margie reminds me that, last time down, we actually did do this (up in Bandolier). Very cool, as I (belatedly) recall.

It is. The ones we went to, in contrast to a lot of "historical" sites, actually let you go inside the ruins and touch things. It's an eerie place, but very cool indeed.