We started off about a week earlier and flew into Albaquerque, rented a car and drove to Santa Fe and Taos and then back - taking about a week for this 500 mile roundtrip.

Roseanne made all the arrangements. We saw lots of indian pottery, rugs, and jewelry in the various "Old Towns" and marketplaces. We visited vast numbers of museums, we ate lots of authentic new mexico chile dishes.

They put chile in almost anything and seemed to think that its macho to eat the hottest possible chile. I found chile (the spice) on barbecue, in lasagne, and in pizza... They also have chile jelly, chile flavored pastachios, and chile peanut brittle. The newstands are covered with magazines that tell you how to cook chiles, prepare chiles and present them so they are attractive! All along the highway every little store has strings of chiles out for sale.

The tour guides told us the tourism was the major business of New Mexico with government a distant second and manufacting essentially nonexistant. I believe it. Every pueblo seem to have its masses of tourist shops, and its hornos to bake indian bread.

Taos and Santa Fe were beautiful places to live. Sun 300 days of the year, 12 inches of rainfall, and mild temperature most of the time. Santa Fe was supposed to be the third most expensive city in US, behind only SF and NY. I guess it was all of those million dollar houses on five acres of sagebrush.

One bit of excitement. While we were in Taos, they had a baloon meet and we were able to watch, close up, the assembly, set up, operation and flying of very colorful baloons.

The trip was great fun and I was also glad to get back to my comfortable home and engrossing computer.