Will we be able to entertain ourselves when all our guests go home?

We have had a great time with guests during our stay in the mountains of New Mexico. Now it is time for Connie and Steven to head home. But we're up early on their last morning so we can take one more ATV ride before they trailer it back to Oklahoma. Steven has done most of the ATV driving, but Denisa has to notice that Mark always seems to have a smile on his face when he is behind the wheel.

Denisa has reluctantly taken the wheel a time or two, and Mark had to snap a picture fast because she won't be there very long. With the red bandanna over her face, she feels a little like she's heading to a bank robbery or a round-up.

We headed up Forest Service Road #437 between Angel Fire and Taos for a morning drive. When we got to an area called "Garcia Park," we took a little hike down a trail.

We have come to love the combination of the ATV and hiking. The ATV does all the work to get us up high in elevation, so we can enjoy the high altitude solitude and views on foot.

We miss the smells and sounds that get drowned out with that powerful gas motor. On a hike we get the smell of the pine trees, the sound of the bird songs, and we can walk right into the middle of an aspen forest to take pictures of those beautiful tall white trunks.

All too soon, it was time for our friends to leave and go back to their real lives and job. We will miss them! We are half-way into our month-long stay in New Mexico, and we have had guests on all but two days. So now it's up to us to find our own fun. Will we be able to do it? Our first effort at finding fun on our own included a trip to Taos for their farmers' market.

New Mexico is still in the first phases of re-opening, and everyone is supposed to be wearing their masks in public places. Chalk arrows were drawn on the sidewalk, and shoppers were all supposed to be moving in the same direction and keeping their six-foot distance. We found the prices quite high here, but Denisa was excited to buy some of the spring peas that she loves!

We also made a stop at the larger grocery store in this larger town. We love our little tourist town of Angel Fire, but it is nice to be in Taos to have the option to buy less expensive food where locals shop. Then we had a hike planned on our way home. We are on the Devisadero Peak Trail, right outside of Taos in the Kit Carson National Forest.

We started this trail at a lower elevation than we have become accustomed to--just 7,150 feet. The Taos Canyon area is desert-like, and we're walking beside lots of cholla cactus that are ready to pop into bloom. As we passed, Denisa commented that these buds would be beautiful flowers in a few more days.

Now that we don't have an ATV to take us up high on the trail, we're having to make the steep ascent the old-fashioned way--with our legs.

This is a loop trail, and we ended up going the direction that gave us the steepest ascent. The good news is that we got some good views up high quickly. While one side of the trail gave us the green views of the rolling mountains of the Kit Carson National Forest,

the other side looked down over the flat plains and the city of Taos.

We had to stop and catch our breath over and over. Sometimes you use the excuse of taking a picture just so you can breathe. This is an Apache Plume bush that was along the trail.

It's hard to see the blooms on the above picture, but the smoke-like appearance is a result of these crazy feathery blooms that cover the  bush. With a google search, we found that this plant is actually in the rose family.

It was a 3-mile hike to get to the summit of Devisadera Peak, and we had to take the appropriate pictures to prove that we made it. Notice that rock "sofa" behind Mark.  

Just like usual, Denisa added another rock to the cairn at the peak. At 8,300 feet in elevation, at this peak we are actually lower than our campground in Angel Fire.

Then we sat down on that rock sofa in the shade for a well-deserved snack. We're not sure if that rock sofa was amazingly comfortable, or if we were just amazingly tired and ready to be off our feet for a while. It's hotter here in Taos, and this was a sunny hike. We're not used to this heat!

From our comfortable seat, we had a perfect view of a butterfly that was also relaxing on the rocks today.

It's a good mountain peak experience when you have a snack, a comfortable seat, and a butterfly show on the rock cairn for entertainment.

The good news about having a steep ascent, is we had a gentle downhill hike to complete our loop.

That gave us time to stop and enjoy the flowers like these purple beauties.

But the real fun for Denisa was taking pictures of the rich pink-colored cactus blooms.

Remember that cholla cactus we saw at the beginning of the hike that was almost in bloom? The sunshine in the three hours that it took us to hike to the top and back, was just the stimulus needed to bring that whole cactus into bloom. We have wandered into another of God's wonders! 

What a beautiful ending to our time on Devisadera Mountain and our hike in the desert! We will have to get into the practice of entertaining ourselves now, but the diversified hikes and trails in this area will help us with that.