Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Day 14 - Three Way to Buckhorn

Today we ride to Buckhorn, New Mexico. A fairly short ride mile wise, but starts with a long hill  with lots of switch backs and then a fair amount of downhill after that.

The notch in the mountains in the center of this photo is where we are headed.


Looking back down on some of the switch backs about 3/4 of the way up the hill.

The day was a good day. I did struggle on the climb in places because it was so long. On the way up Judy and her crew passed me up. They decided to skip riding up the hill. I don't blame them as it was long. Judy offered me a gator aid and candy bar, but I still had a gator aid and was busy eating a cliff bar at the time so I declined. The offer was very appreciated. It is good to have friends on the road. I'm not sure we will see them again, I suspect we will.

At the top. Notice the cow grazing in the background. 193 was her tag number.


After crossing the top at 6295 ft the vegetation changed to forest with a fair amount of what I would characterize as scrawny ponderosa pines. It was really refreshing to be riding in the partial shade. I stopped here to eat lunch.


Then just a few miles later the forest ran out and we entered New Mexico. I'm not a real fan of the terrain in Arizona, although the final  few miles were nice. Then a down hill into Mule Creek.


Somewhere around Mule Creek the vegetation changed to rolling hills and grass land. There were a lot of rolling hills which made this part somewhat more tedious.

At one point we encountered a flooded part of the road. I'm not sure whether to call this a New Mexico Car Wash, or "Bridges, we don't need no stinking bridges". Either way the water wasn't deep enough to cause any problems so I rode right through.


When I got to camp the cooks had managed to flag down a Schwan's truck and were buying frozen food from the driver for dinner and breakfast. The store in town was pretty sparse, so this worked out well.

At bedtime there was a lot of chirping from a variety of insects and some road noise which made it a little hard to get to sleep.

Even though this was a fairly hard day it was a good day with a lot of variety of scenery.


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