Hey hey USA - 31st October - the Enchanted Circle and a Vietnam Memorial

 

The Enchanted Circle is a tourist driving route of 84 miles starting and ending in Taos, and it runs around some spectacular mountain scenery. We started out from Taos in the morning. The sky was incredibly blue and there were still small patches of snow on the ground which was dry and yellowing. 

We decided to drive anti-clockwise and the first thing we came across, before we got the Angel Fire, was the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. An unlikely thing to see at 9000ft in the middle of nowhere. It turned out that the memorial was built by Dr Victor Westphall to commemorate his son and others who had died in an ambush in Con Thien, Vietnam in May 1968. Dr Westphall and his wife had already purchased land near Angle Fire, intending to build a resort, but instead used their son's life insurance money to create the chapel. This building was the first memorial chapel to be built in the US to commemorate those lost in Vietnam and served as a model for the Washington Vietnam Veterans Memorial. As well as a chapel the building holds a sizeable museum. The website tells me there are 45000 visitors a year, but there were few people when we were there. The building itself had an impressive design and a garden with statues and a Huey helicopter.

In the chapel 

The surrounding grassland was full of prairie dog burrows and I watched them for some time.

We had lunch in a café in Angel Fire where I was amused to see a group of ladies, rather past their prime, all dressed as characters from Wizard of Oz. Of course it was hallowe'en!