8/6/03 Wednesday -- Day for the Taos Pueblo. I had breakfast at The Bean, a trendy coffee place in a strip mall on one of the main drags, had a veggie omelets, then to the nearby Wal-Mart (same one) for supplies including a cheap Rand McNally atlas to help me get back to Colorado when I leave on Friday for Durango.

The Taos Pueblo is a living native community for approx. 1000 years and is awesome. I wasn't aware that the north pueblo is one of the most photographed Indian dwellings. Anyway, I took a short walking tour with an 18 yr. old native who speaks the language and is going to college, University of New Mexico. I then walked around and took pix of many of the buildings, bought a lovely t-shirt, a booklet about the Pueblo plus a CD of an interesting artist, the best selling native Indian artist, Robert Mirabal, called Indians Indians. I also purchased postcards in various little stores around the pueblo. They take credit cards the old fashioned way with those manual machines you slide over the credit card and receipt to make the imprint. That's because they choose to live without electricity or running water. You are encouraged to buy stuff because they're basically poor people. However, I really enjoyed it and was definitely a highlight of my trip.

I then drove to the town center, parked and walked around. It was refreshing to walk! So many art galleries, curio and tourist shops. How do they all stay in business? It was getting late, 3:30 pm so I thought I should return but I was a little hungry and trying to find some healthy eats, not stuff with cheese and burritos. I finally found a cute coffee house right near the house on US 68 (Kit Carson Road) called Cafe Tazza where I had some green vegetarian chile. There was a woman playing new age piano pieces from a book. A mesa rat was also there, dirty, dreadlocked, pretty amazing.

I then went back to the house and here I am! Marc cooked some filet mignon and made a nice salad. I bought some beer and wine. Jen came home after 9:30pm. We watched Jay Leno as Arnold Schwartzenegger announced his candidacy for Calif. governor.