Taos Vortex

I've decided that Taos has to be on par with the Bermuda Triangle as a inescapable vortex.  We took off down the road and passed by the Earthship Community (something I'll write about shortly), when all of a sudden the gas peddle stopped working.  Trying to be a proper filmmaker I whipped out the video camera in time for Conner to flip his shit.  He shook the steering wheel and yelled, "Fuuuucckkk!"  I got it on film.  In the back, Dan and Kat fussed at me that "now probably isn't a good time to do that".  We pulled off the road and started making plans for Dan and Kat to hitchhike back into Taos to try and find a fuel pump--the thing Conner said was busted and without which we wouldn't make it back to Colorado.  He also was pissed off because he figured we would be stuck on the side of the road, 15 miles outside of Taos, for another week while the correct fuel pump for Breathless came in--it's a small town without much car part variety.  To top it off, it's New Mexico and we didn't have cell phone service.  Once they climbed into some unnamed car we wouldn't know what happened to them unless they came back.  Du-duh-duhnn...

We're going over how much food we have, how little water we have, and how long Conner and I should wait before we start to worry.  I go across the road to take a photo of this amazing light, which I couldn't seem capture on film, and I hear behind me--"Huh, huh, uh guys...nevermind.  I guess I'll check under the hood next time before I freak out.  It's cool...just the air filter fell off because these New Mexico roads are so shitty...I'll just screw it back on and we should be fine." 

We wipe our foreheads and think, sweet, calamity averted.  And yeah, the roads in New Mexico are notoriously shitty.  They're all so full of potholes or badly done patch jobs that it shakes Breathless something aweful--when they're paved.  A lot of the time it's just gravel.  In fact when we tried to find the cool free hot springs, we made it 2 miles down the road (and 20 min later), holding on to the doors for fear that she would rattle apart, before we all decided to bail and turn our backs on the hotsprings.

So we get back on the road, relieved, and singing along to Weezer.

We're in the middle of nowhere, winding our way up the mountain pass right by Tres Piedras, and we run out of gas.  The gas gauge doesn't really work at all-it shows full until the tank is empty and then it only shows half-full.  It's dusk and Dan volunteers to hitchhike into the nearest town; Chama about 1/2 hour away.  Conner starts cooking dinner over the propane stove, and I'm trying to be photo-artsy, when we hear this god-aweful sound.  Kat and I are so freaked out that we freak Conner out who tells us to get in the car-not something you want to hear when you're scared.  We're city girls and we aren't super saavy about the mountain sounds; it all just sounds scary to us.  We ate our rice and beans, played a bit of poker, and counted a total of 5 cars passing by the overlook that we had coasted into after running out of gas. 

Man, it seemed like it took forever for Dan to come back.  He caught a ride with some Texans to the gas station and a ride back with a man named Gus.  He was fine but Kat and I had made ourselves nauseous worrying that he would get eaten by bears...reports of attacks seem to be in the Colorado papers all the time...or something worse.  Since our luck had been so crappy all day long we decided to camp out at the overlook and try to make it back to Colorado again the next morning. 

That was not one of our most graceful days.
Sidenote: The cool free hot springs can be found heading north on 522.  Right before you hit the Rio Grande Gorge, hang a right on the dirt road...there's no sign, just the last dirt road on the right before the gorge.  Drive down the road till you see a bunch of cars parked on the side of the road on the right.  Park and walk down the embankment to the springs.  It's a bit of a hike down but there's a path.