Road Trip Journal: Writing in Taos, Driving to Estes Park

I was going to do a blog post every day during my Epic July Road Trip, but when I hit Estes Park, Colorado, I ended up at a resort with no Internet. Or to be specific, there was no Internet in my cabin. The Wi-fi was fine in the office, and the manager/owner was baffled, simply baffled, that this did not mean it automatically reached to all corners of the property.

So now I’m behind, and have to catch up. Oh well, it was a very nice place otherwise. There are picture below. Meanwhile, here’s the entry I wanted to post back on July 12:

The Writer’s Path at SMU-in-Taos, July 7-12

The Writer’s Path is where I learned to write (though it didn’t have that catchy name when I first started). Since getting my first novel out, I’ve been an instructor with the program as well, though I was neither teaching nor taking any classes in Taos— I was just there for the retreat.

The annual summer retreat to SMU’s Taos campus is a wonderful experience. You get out of the Dallas summer heat to a beautiful setting, and spend the days in undisturbed writing (unless you choose to disturb yourself by doing other stuff) along with a group of fellow writers all sharing the same experience.

I posted a couple of pictures of the campus in the previous entry. Here are some more:

	Accomodations are in “Casitas,” standalone buildings with several dorm rooms around a central common area. This is where I stayed this time around.
The rooms are meant to sleep three college kids while summer classes are in session on the campus. We important writers got one each to ourselves.
Common area of the Casita I was in.	Here’s the dining hall where (surprisingly excellent) breakfast, lunch and dinner were served. It’s under construction— they’re adding a new student center— but was open all the same.

In between mealtimes, everyone spent most of their time writing in their Casitas, but I preferred going down to the classrooms to do my writing. I posted a picture of Fort Burgwin, where the classrooms are, in the last entry. The Casita area and the fort are separated by a short nature walk, that looks like this:

Some people drove to the classrooms down a road on the other side of the campus, though for the life of me I can’t understand why.

After trying a couple of places during the first day, I decided my favorite spot to write was the computer lab. The chairs were adjustable.

Around half the group on the retreat took a class— Chapters, taught by Dan Hale— the other half, like me, were just there for the retreat.

Pizza party, Thursday night

Final night celebration

Mostly everyone was on their own, except during classtime for those taking Chapters, but we had two official gatherings of the group: the pizza party one evening, and then at the end of the final day of the Retreat, a celebration where those who wanted to read their latest writing to the group, and everyone told jokes, and things got very silly.

The morning after the party, it was time to bid a sad farewell to SMU-in-Taos, and head off on the next leg of my trip: next stop, Estes Park, CO.

Driving to Estes Park, July 12

Today’s drive passed from the beautiful mountains around Taos, out into the flat part of Colorado, through Denver, and then back into the mountains on the way to Estes Park, just outside Rocky Mountain National Park.

Parts of the drive were quite scenic, parts weren’t. I didn’t really take any pictures, since I was driving and had a vested interest in keeping control of the car, and normal roads don’t have as many scenic pullouts as National Park Roads.

I did get to play with this toy:

This is a little oven that runs off a car’s 12v power outlet.

And this is homemade beef stew for lunch, at a roadside picnic area.

This was a trick I learned from watching Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt.

Finally my destination was near.
I had a nice little cabin in a resort on the road to the National Park	Although the mountain might be just a little close to the cabin.

So, major driving day done, and I’m ready for the next stage of my Epic July Road Trip.

Next: Rocky Mountain National Park