We might have never left our little home away from home in Taos this morning, if not for the damned roosters. It really was an unusually lovely place, so I am including a few photographs of it so that you can see where we were staying and we can remember when we look back. The balance of our day was spent taking a very long drive through an utterly breathtaking part of the country. We drove on fairly empty two lane roads most of the way from Taos, New Mexico to Pueblo, Colorado. Of course, the astounding beauty of these places is not news to anyone who has already had the great joy of settling there or visiting. However, this gorgeous outdoors thing is all above-the-fold, headline news to me. I am by nature an avid indoorswoman. (In my regularly scheduled life, one of my favorite books contains only seating charts for Broadway theaters). My previous exposure to the vast outdoors usually involved John Wayne, Jason Robards, Lee Marvin or Clint Eastwood and concluded with movie credits after about two hours. The views I am seeing with Mariah during our cross-country drive have been eye-opening for both of us. The plants that are growing wild by the side of the road are beyond cool. The animals in the fields that look at us with sympathy because we are not able to take the time to graze alongside them are captivating. The forests, rock formations, mountains, plains and fields are more beautiful than anything John Ford, Sam Peckinpah or Sergio Leone ever captured on film.  We appear to be onto something.