Today I have cooking duty with Alisha. She suggested we do spaghetti which seemed like a good idea to me. Unfortunately the nearest store to camp is in Hatch some 20 miles prior to where we camp so we will need to coordinate buying and transporting groceries.
List was made, volunteers took responsibility for obtaining certain items and we are set. I think.
Since it is a long day and the last time we had a 70 mile day I had a great deal of difficulty completing the ride due to a heavy head wind I'm planning on an early exit.
Rather than move my tent last night to avoid the goat heads I put a layer of clothes and other miscellaneous articles under my mattress in case I missed some when I was setting up my tent. Turns out that worked well.
As camp sites go this one was good. The only negative was the less than ideal surface for a tent.
According to plan I arose early and packed my stuff. Then got breakfast and snagged some food for the road and took off a little before dawn.
Here we see the sun rising over the ridge of mountains that we will cross today.
It turns out that the road from Deming to Hatch is one of the best roads we have ridden. A wide relatively clean smooth shoulder most of the way and while there was some climbing, it was mostly very slight so the ride went fast. I arrived in Hatch about 1/2 an hour before Mitch showed up. I checked out the first food store and found that it appeared to have everything that we needed.
For anyone considering an alternative route to avoid the normal pass this is a good option.
When Mitch arrived we decide that since it was about noon that we would go down to Sparky's and have lunch. Sparky's was recommend to us by multiple people that we met. Hatch is famous for green chili peppers and Sparky's is famous for their green chili cheeseburger and other things with green chili peppers in them.
I opted for the green chili cheeseburger special with a side of green chili beans. This is not to be missed if you go through Hatch. I was slightly dubious, but the burger was very good.
We happened to arrive just as the live music was setting up and got to eat to some Mississippi blues. I could have stayed there the rest of the afternoon. As soon as Mitch and I had ordered we found that several more our our group had showed up and were in line waiting to eat as well.
Outside at Sparky's. Mitch catching up on ride business.
After lunch we went back to the store and purchased the bits of dinner that we were responsible for, loaded up and headed out for the last 20 miles. Google seemed to think it was all downhill, and indeed it did trend downhill, but there were quite a few rollers. The heat of the day and the long ride wore me down so by the time I got to camp I was pretty tired.
Dinner went off more or less as planned. Nothing spectacular, but it seemed to have satisfied everyone.
The campsite was not the best. It was a pull through for RVs with a large concrete pad, which didn't work all that well for pitching some of the tents. And the gravel was compacted so pitching tents off the pad was also somewhat tedious. While the camp site was OK and the showers were good, this is pretty low on my list of places that I would ever want to go back to.
Sunset from the camp site. This is looking almost directly back toward where the sunrise photo was taken on the other side of the ridge.
After cleaning up after dinner and getting a shower I went to bed. I was thinking that for such a long day it was nice that my legs hadn't cramped up. Then a bit later they did. I probably didn't get enough electrolytes. Tomorrow is another 70+ mile day so I'm planning on doing a better job with the electrolytes.
In the middle of the night two dogs had a bit of a fight right outside of Ron's tent. Not sure whose dogs, but Ron had a few choice words directed at the owners who were likely no where in ear shot.
No comments:
Post a Comment