Valentiniversary 2013

I am firmly against first dates happening on Valentine's Day.  I think it is an awkwardly horrible idea.  Due to this fact, the first date I went on with Josh happened to be February 17th.  So for the last few years we've combined Valentine's Day and the anniversary of our first date into one.

We had originally planned to go camping somewhere pretty this year for our Anniversintine, but the weather made that a very un-enticing prospect.  Instead, we decided to head north.  (And conveniently, Monday was president's day so we had a long weekend to take advantage of.)  Josh had never been up to the Taos area, and neither of us had ever visited the famous Ojo Caliente hot springs, so we decided to check a couple of places off of our New Mexico bucket list.

We drove up to Taos Saturday morning.  Had there been more snow, we probably would have skiied or snowshoed, but since the weather was sunny and we were in full-fledged relax mode, we spent the day wandering around town being tourists.  We checked out the local shops, I drooled over rugs that I couldn't afford, we visited a wine tasting room for a local winery, we drove out to stand over the Rio Grande Gorge, and we topped the night off with a fantastic dinner on the plaza.  Unfortunately, Taos Pueblo is closed during the month of February so we couldn't tour the pueblo on this trip.

Sunday morning we left Taos and drove down to Ojo Caliente.  Ojo Caliente is a pretty well-known resort and spa that is tucked back in pretty much the middle of nowhere, New Mexico.  I have always heard about this place since I first moved to NM for college, but I'd never been there or really known what it was about.  The hot springs there have been used as long as people have lived in the area, and the first 'bathhouse' was built there almost 150 years ago.  That fact alone makes it pretty awesome.  Today they have a hotel and restaurant and things are pretty modernized... but all of the pools are fed by the natural springs and the surrounding landscape is totally natural and wild.

Josh scored us a sweet deal at the spa that included full access to all of the public pools, hour-long massages for us both, an hour in a private pool at sunset, and a night's stay in the resort.  It. was. amazing.  The massage was the best I've ever had, the private pool included a kiva fireplace and a bottle of wine, and the seafood curry soup at the restaurant was to die for.  This is definitely the kind of place I can justify dropping a few hundred bucks on for a weekend of doing absolutely nothing.  Doing nothing never felt so fantastic.

Of course, no trip would be complete without a little bit of archaeology.  Monday morning we took a nice little hike from the resort up to a pretty amazing ancestral Tewa archaeological site that sits on top of the mesa right above the hot springs.

'Twas a pretty spectacular weekend.  Four years down!