Day Nine

We got a good start on a beautiful day today. On the road just a few minutes after 7:00 AM and we're just 70 or so miles from the NM border. It's going to be a lot of interstate today, but we do have one promising road along the way. On I-40 in Amarillo, right when we get on, there's a military convoy that, coupled with a construction zone slows things up a bit, but we're soon out of town, past the convoy and the speed limit is up to 75 MPH. The skies are perfectly clear for a change and the temp was 68 when we left the hotel, but falling slightly as we head west. Larry had the forethought to don a long sleeve liner, but I am "roughing it" with just my mesh jacket over a short sleeve shirt. I am right on the borderline of being chilly but its tolerable and I do expect the temps to increase soon.

Day Nine Track

We make the NM border in an hour and ten minutes, and the temp is holding at 66. Larry reminds me that we are at 4000 ft of elevation so that is why the temp isn't increasing very fast. We have another 41 miles to Tucumcari where we get off the interstate so I am thinking I'll see what the temp is doing then. We also change time zones here so it is now 5 minutes before we left this morning! We make Tucumcari at 8:45 AM and is has warmed back up to 68 so I don't bother with making any gear change. We are getting onto NM-104 for no other reason than it's not interstate and is going in the general direction we want to go. Well, that and Larry just can't resist ANY squiggly lines on the map ;-)

This NM-104 is 107 miles from Tucumcari to Las Vegas (NM, not the "big one"). It runs out a man made lake held back by the Army Corp of Engineers Conchas Dam. It may look like this would be some kind of tourist destination, and there may be a few - VERY FEW - from what we saw when we got out there, but as we head out of Tucumcari the road appears to be deserted. We didn't see another car for quite a long while and over the entire length I'd say we saw maybe 10 other cars on the road - if that. I ran a search for coffee shops along the way and for the first time ever it came back and said NONE! The posted speed limit was a paltry 55 MPH which I really did try to stay at but I couldn't stand that for long. We slowly inched up to 60, then 65 and eventually were maintaining close to 70 much of the way. It turned out to be a really fun motorcycle road. No traffic, a good amount of twists and turns and a lot of elevation changes all combined to make it a definite smile maker. The elevation undulated as I mentioned, but is was also gently climbing from our start at 4000 ft to about 5000 ft at the 75 mile mark. It was here that it got even better, because in the next 25 miles we climbed from 5000 to 7000 ft. In doing so we got much tighter and steeper turns to make the climb, with the only downside that there was a lot of falling rocks very near the side of the road so we had to maintain a margin of sfety watching out for that. At one point I spotted what I would estimate to be at least a 3 ton boulder that looked as if it fell within the last day or so sitting right on the very edge of the road! We also passed several "communities" - a term which I use lightly because most looked like if they had 30 people that was being optimistic. The scenery all along the was was stunning.- rough and tumble scrub brush over soaring mesas and wind and water cut arroyos with all kinds of stunning rock formations. I am sure there is an interesting story behind the geology of this area.

We eventually reach the town of Las Vegas NM where we have a fuel stop planned and then we ae looking for coffee. I run another GPS search and what pops up - another Daylight Donuts! Its about a mile and a half off our route but we've just made a 220 mile run with no stops so feel like we deserve it. After a few donuts and some coffee we are ready to hit the road again. We are back in the interstate now - I-25, but it gets really scenic soon as we head northwards up through the Santa Fe National Forest. The road climbs and dips and wends its wal around, all at a posted speed limit of 75 MPH so it makes for a decent ride up into Santa Fe.

Once off the highway we have another  3 to 4 miles of city streets at mostly 25 MPH to get to the post office. Then, just as we are within a half mile, a police car pulls out in front of the line of traffic we are in to block traffic for some sort of PARADE! We sit there for a few unbelieving minutes and then Larry spots a passerby and asks whats going on and is ther a way around. The gentleman tells us exactly how to work round so we make a u-turn and follow the directions an get to the post office in another 5 minutes of so. So by now you know we are looking for signs that list the City and State names for our location photos. So what do we find here?

Partially obstructed signage at Santa Fe NM

Larry's wasn't much better -

We aren't happy with these so we run some GPS searches for a police station - they usually have the city and state on their sign right? Well, the first one we go to is a police substation - and it says simply Santa Fe Police. So I run another search and it lists the main police station as just a block off our route so off we go.

Here's the results there:

What is it with no STATE???

Well, we decide this will have to do so we decide to head on up the road. We thought about lunch since it is now noon (local time), but Larry is still so full from donuts we put lunch off for now. So its back onto the interstate heading for Albuquerque. We make that in 40 more minutes and decide to stop at a MacDonalds for a quick light lunch. That's about it for the day. We pull into Grants NM 75 miles later at 2:30 PM local time. We had booked this hotel yesterday and though we could have gone further it was getting into the 90's and we did cover 420+ miles already today. This will give us time for the blog and some errands we want to get caught up on.

Stats for today: 432.6 in 8:37 elapsed time, 6:47 saddle time.