Framedlight

  The High Road to Santa Fé from Taos takes you past the Sangre de Cristo Mountains through several tiny communities. It is 105 miles between the centres of the two towns. We were not in so much of a hurry, driving back to Santa Fé, as when we had set out for Taos so we made more stops on the return journey. From the outset the scenery is pretty fantastic. Our first stop was Peñasco, a small farming community, with its Catholic Church of San Antonio and it's right wing views. There is certainly a lot of money behind the anti-abortion rhetoric in the US which is operating a viscous vendetta against women. The next stop was Las Trampas. Here the church of San José de Gracia was much older, built between 1760 and 1776. Unfortunately it was shut as it contains wall paintings in the nave which would have been worth seeing. The village once had defensive walls around it to protect the Spanish fromNative American raids but now it all looks a little run down. Our last stop was a large lay-

 We packed up and our little house in Taos and headed out, first stopping for a quick look at the Harwood Art Museum. This museum was founded in 1923, when Taos was one of the major centres in the USA for modern art. The collections are mainly from Taos and contain a lot of indigenous art. When we were there, there was a temporary exhibition of black American cowboy photography through time which was interesting. We were heading back south to Santa Fé where I had already booked accommodation for 2 nights. We decided to go back the same way as we had come to Taos, on the High Road route. This took us past the Church of San Francisco de Assis Mission Church. This church was built by the Franciscans between 1813 and 1815 to serve the little community of Rancho de Taos. This was at the time when this area was still under Spanish rule. It has been painted by Georgia O'Keeffe and photographed by Ansel Adams, Paul Strand and many others. Indeed the Taos Chamber of Commerce maintains it is