Taos New Mexico

Sitting in our hotel in Taos. We had many exciting adventures today. Where to begin!? Today we woke up in our hotel in Albuquerque at 5:30am. We headed down to breakfast at 6 and left for the day at 7. Our First stop took us to Santa Fe. The capital of New Mexico. We stopped at a brass sculpture of a wagon that symbolized the Santa Fe trail and how the city came into development. We took our first of many group pictures for the day here.

After some forced hydration we continued our day by travelling down the road a little further to Downtown Santa Fe. We toured the famous Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.  And took yet another group picture.

After checking out the Basilica we made our way down and around the streets of Santa Fe checking our monuments, buildings (such as the capital roundhouse), and other interesting sight seeing locations. Our tour guide Tam then took us into the La Fonda hotel where we learned the history of the adobe and stucco architecture. We then had a little bit of free time to roam around and take a longer look at some of the things in town Tam had showed us. Most of the boys happened to make their way back to the French pastry shop in the Hotel where many purchased either a chocolate croissant, or a french baguette.

No sooner than when we arrived in Santa Fe we were gone making our way up to the Rio Grande river gorge about 20 miles outside of Taos. Here we did a 3 mile hike from the highway up to a beautiful over look of the gorgeat the end of the La Vista Verde Trail! The hike was full of fun things to see like all the geckos and lizards of the desert climate along with ancient petroglyphs carved by the ancient indians of the territory into the volcanic rock. Once all the kids made it to the over look followed ten minutes later by the old men with their oxygen packs we took another group picture. This one has to be my favorite yet.

The scenic views were absolutely amazing along the trail and everyone loved the hike. However, we were all greatly looking forward to the main attraction of the day. White water rafting in the river on two person "Fun-yaks" was a very anticipated part of the trip and not a single scout didn't have a smile on his face the entire five miles down the class 1 2 and 3 rapids. A particularly tricky class three rapid resulted in many of the boys being thrown from the craft. If you look closely at the picture you can see Taylor Weber and Tom Hoy both laughing hysterically as Kevin Bohland and Matt Wachowiak both fall into the Rio Grande!!

After our white water adventure we ventured into Taos where we all settled into our deluxe accommodations at the hotel. After a little much needed rain and some down time we ventured off to dinner down the road at a local Mexican grill. The food was delicious and plentiful at that! many of us enjoyed burritos, quesadillas,  and other Mexican delicacies. After the main course we all had massive servings of deserts in either the deep fried ice cream or chirros! After finding out Kevin Bohland and myself ate tripe food was no longer sounding too good to anyone and we headed back to the hotel for some evening activities. After swimming as much as we could. Or sinking in our case from the weight of the food we ate. We all headed back to each others rooms to hang out and plot some hair cutting schemes! We broke into Tim Knaggs and Adam Woodruffs rooms to give them a nice shave but we couldn't pin Adam down long enough to cut off any substantial amounts of hair! Tim however willingly let Taylor shave his head and the results were stunning!

With a new looking crew we all settled down for the night and prepared ourselves for the 6:30am wake up call with breakfast at 7 and a full day of mountain biking planned ahead. Good bye from Taos for now!

-Crew 201-