Sounds like a Disney movie, doesn't it? No, the Enchanted Circle is a drive that takes you around Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico. It takes you through some mountain communities, like Questa, Eagle Nest, Red River, and Angel Fire. The highest elevation on the road is 9820 feet at Bobcat Pass.
It was a pretty drive, and quite pleasant in the Elantra rental car. It doesn't sit high like in the SUVs we are used to, but it seemed to be a solid car with good road manners.
I shot video along the way, with the DJI Action 4 camera on a small tripod on the dash. I may do something with that at some point, but the audio is not good (didn't use the DJI Mic2); I also shot some stills and video with the Panasonic Lumix ZS100 that I haven't used in a long while... and it was all soft on the focus. (I did a factory reset on that when we got home and will try it again sometime in the future.) So, I have some stills from the Action 4 and one from the Inst360 X4, from the perspective of the windshield...
Some scenery above, and from the perspective of the 360 camera below.
Driving through the community of Eagle Nest - you can see the ski area at the far right in the photo below...
Road construction after leaving Angle Fire...
There was a time that we would have been interested in those ski areas... a long, long time ago. Still, it was interesting to drive through and see what they look like in the off season. There were quite a few RV parks near each of the communities, most pretty occupied. Joan asked me if I thought they might stay there during the ski season... "Sure wouldn't be anything I'd want to do - I would consider that barely survivable conditions." We stayed at an RV park outside of Park City, Utah, once during the winter - it wasn't my idea of fun... we were on our way to Las Vegas, Laughlin, and Palm Springs. Ah, memories.
We got back mid-afternoon, stopped at the motorhome, and re-grouped. Joan wanted to go check out the Indian casino on the outskirts of Taos, Taos Mountain Casino. "Yes, ma'am." It isn't all that far away... and it quite small. They advertise "the casino with smiling staff." Yep, they seemed pretty smiley. We sat down to play for a bit... before long, Joan came to find me (it wasn't hard, did I mention that this place is small?) - that usually isn't a good sign. In this case, she was up $65 in a couple minutes and decided to call it good. I took a couple moments to get myself back to even (yes, really), and we headed out. Perhaps our shortest visit to a casino.
We celebrated afterwards with ice cream - no downside to that! :-)
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Nothing fancy, just some car-ride video...
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