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On Wedneday morning (14 Jan), I said my goodbyes to Brad and the city of Boulder. I decided to head south on I-25. I stopped for lunch at Rosie’s Diner in Monument, and a car wash in Pueblo. I took a detour off the Interstate further south, I drove through the Spanish Peaks wilderness area in order to head towards Taos, New Mexico.

When I got to Taos after dark, I found a cheap room at the Best Western, then went into town and found the local microbrewery for a cheeseburger and a couple of stouts.

It had been a light snow year so far in the Southern Rockies; there was no snow to be seen around the town of Taos. I headed up to the ski area Thursday morning. There was decent snow on most of the marked trails and slopes where they had snowmaking, but most of the terrain that Taos is famous for was roped off. I get in a few hours of skiing before I got bored, then headed back to town, and got some lunch to go from Wendy’s before hitting the road again.

I drove on the Enchanted Circle, which is the name given to the highway connecting Taos to some of the other mountain towns in the region, including Eagle’s Nest and Angel Fire. As I left the Enchanted Circle and Cimmaron Canyon, I came to the town of Cimmaron. Here the land flattened out abruptly. High plains and buttes continued for a little while as the mountains gave way to the Great Plains. The final few photos in the gallery are pretty much the view I had for the next couple of hundred miles. It was the flattest terrain I had ever seen, even more so than Kansas, or as I would later learn, Texas and Oklahoma.

I continued driving into the evening, and got a room at a Motel 6 in Amarillo, Texas.