Rest day! I catch up on some writing, Dave does the shopping and retrieves our last supply box from the post office. He cooks up a storm for dinner: Pad Thai with shrimp and veggies. There’s bike work and laundry and showers to be taken. This rest day is a little busier than our last one by the river in the rain.

We have nine more riding days to go!

76 miles, 6:56/9:15

This is our longest day in both miles and time. We face a headwind almost all day, but at least it has cleared up and it’s a great temperature for riding. The desert is beautiful, with all the colors of grasses and flowers and bushes in this late summer/early autumn time. We roll over hill after hill, noting the few cliffs and features in the landscape. We pass a couple very ugly uranium mines.

We decide to take a rest day here in Grants and the Lavaland RV Park on the edge of town. The people are very nice and there’s wireless internet at the senior center next door.

63 miles, 5:08/7:45

We ride 15 or so miles down into Cuba to find a little grocery and stock up. It’s raining from the moment we get out of our tent and we know once again we’ll have to take an alternate route on pavement from Cuba in order to avoid “wheel sucking mud” on the mesa. We feel like we’re missing out on beautiful country but it’s not worth getting stuck out there for who-knows-how-long. So, once we stock up and get a sandwich at the Subway we head out. In the rain, with huge storms ahead.

We head West toward Chaco Canyon, though we won’t get to see any of the dwellings because it’s too far off the road. There’s 120 miles of highway between Cuba and Grants that we’ll try to get halfway through today, but we’ve already come 15 and wasted some time in Cuba. A couple hours into the highway ride we are seeing huge thunderstorms ahead of us. The sky is grey and purple and black and bolts of lightning are striking down in multiple directions. We’re headed straight for the mesa top and the darkest part of the storm. Maybe not the smartest thing to be doing, but there are other things higher than us.

We put our heads down and pedal as the wind whips our faces and sides. Soon the rain is harder, and then harder still. I’m scared but at the same time it’s very exciting and I’m laughing out loud at this craziness. The storm throws more at us as we descend a little and we’re now in the center of it. We’ve got our rain jackets on but the rest of us is soaked through. It feels like there are several ounces of water squashing in each shoe as I pedal. But before we know it the sky is getting a little lighter. The rain lets up just a little. We are passing through the worst of it, and soon we’re on the other side with only light rain and later just a sprinkle.

As we ride, the heat from our bodies starts to dry our legs. We unzip our jackets and let the air dry us some more. The rest of the day alternates between high clouds and sprinkling rain, and in the late afternoon the sun pokes out and everything sparkles. We’re facing a head wind all day, so by the time we get to a laundromat in the middle of ranch country (nothing else around for miles and miles) we ask if we can camp and they say it’s fine. They offer showers and we take advantage of them, as well as the laundry. It’s actually a quiet night and we get good sleep.

44 miles, 5:16/8:20

Tired and grumpy today.

That is all.

24 miles, 4:07/5:30

Yesterday while debating for some time in the Abiquiu Inn reception area we met Andy, a photographer and cyclist who is riding and making photographs of parts of the Great Divide and other beautiful places. He said he’d like to make our photograph and today, feeling refreshed and clean, we are excited to chat with him some more. After breakfast we see him outside with his tripod and we start talking with him while we go through our slow process of packing everything up. He’s been in Abiquiu for a few days and rode the section we’ll be riding today, so we get very good information from him that even if the rains continue it should be passable, a very nice ride. The book calls it one of the hardest climbs on the route, but he says he’s ridden even Indiana Pass and it’s not that bad. I feel better about it, because knowing how hard it rained yesterday I’m sure there’s mud up there. But no, it’s sandy and slickrock and we should be fine. Andy’s on his way out of town, so he offers us several Cliff bars (which we’re fresh out of) and even pasta and fixings for tonight’s dinner. Since we were going to stop at the store on the way out to buy such things, we thankfully take them off his hands. How nice! I must say, Abiquiu has some of the nicest, most helpful people of our ride so far. Another couple helped us last night in running through our options and offering to drive us places to find a room. And, of course, the people at the Abiquiu Inn made an exceptional offer on their last room just for us. How wonderful!

We start out of town winding up a dry, red rock canyon with a few typical small town New Mexican homes scattered here and there. I’m not talking Santa Fe here, I’m talking real New Mexican homes made from local materials and sometimes pieced together in stages, even added on to old mobile home shells. There are colorful details and things hanging here and there, fences made out of sticks and rocks. After a short while we leave all traces of town behind and we climb on up Polvadera Mesa. It’s not that bad of a climb, but I’m not the one carrying all the water for a dry camp tonight. Dave has probably twenty extra pounds in a water bag bungee corded onto the back of his bike. He’s still climbing faster than me. Guess I shouldn’t expect that to change any time soon.

Near the top of the climb on the mesa we reach our recommended camping spot near the edge of a canyon. We are surrounded by Ponderosas and a few other conifers, and some large rocks that blasted out of some nearby volcano at some point. There are a couple nearly as tall as me arranged in a semi-circle with an old gnarly tree and some down logs with a well built fire ring set up in the middle. I decide we need a fire again tonight! After setting up the tent I start on the fire and Dave gets dinner going.

I have never built a fire out in the woods before. I guess I left that for others to do. But I want to get this fire going and I gather kindling and medium sized wood to go with the large stuff already gathered nearby. But here’s the thing: everything’s damp or wet from yesterday’s downpour. I try a few times to light the small stuff but nothing gets going. Then Dave offers the suggestion of using my knife to shave off some pieces from one of the dryer branches. OK. I have fun with my very dull knife shaving off little pieces and then gather them and put them on the little pile I alread made. They light! Then one by one I add the smallest pieces until a little flame is going well. I blow on it a lot. Then bigger pieces, all the driest stuff I could find, and a few more until there’s a real fire going. Wee! We eat dinner feeling warm and toasty.

75 miles, 5:40/ 8:30

We wake to rain and fog this morning. So much for our morning sun! Dave sets up the rain tarp to cook and eat breakfast under and we discuss today’s ride. We’re in New Mexico now, and the roads here are rugged and isolated. Today and tomorrow’s rides state that if it’s raining we should take the paved highway because of the “wheel sucking” mud. Well, it does certainly look like rain. Guess we’ll take the road. That means a long ride today riding well to the West of our intended route and then South and finally East into Abiquiu.

The ride is absolutely beautiful, lush and green with dramatic dark storm clouds all around us. We get rained on most of the day, but it’s not a super cold rain so we stay pretty comfortable, even drying out between bouts of it. We sail down a few thousand feet and then we’re rolling up and down over and over again. We see several kinds of forests, from aspens and hearty pines to mixed conifer and down to pinyon and juniper and finally grasslands with sage. There are purple and yellow flowers everywhere down low, asters and sunflowers and other yellow flowers I don’t know.

But as the day and the rain go on we are feeling the rolling hills more and more, and by the time we finally make it to Abiquiu we are thoroughly soaked again and this time getting cool too. Then I get a flat, my first of the Divide, from a screw on the shoulder of the road. The one place in town that offers camping, the Abiquiu Inn just a few hundred feet from where I flat, only has RV spots with no restroom or shower facilities. We normally wouldn’t mind too much, but we’re soaked and it sure would be nice to get clean and dry off a bit. Our tent will be wet from this morning’s rain, and that never sounds good to me. So we stand in the lobby and debate and debate what to do. We’ve camped every single night so far and we also have a bit of a budget we’d like to stick to. They have only one room left and it’s their most expensive, a casita with kitchen, fireplace and everything. There are very few places to stay. Uh, what to do? Well, the manager gets off the phone and assesses the situation and offers the casita to us for their cheapest room price. We take it!

The casita smells beautiful the instant I open the door. We don’t want to track in all our mud and muck, so we leave our shoes and stuff outside. There’s a fireplace so I get started on a fire. Dave sets off for groceries after he sees the full kitchen and comes back with a bounty for dinner and breakfast too. The bed is king size and super extra puffy. There’s a covered porch where I set up the tent to dry, along with other various things. I wash clothes in the tub with yummy smelling soap they have on the counter and hang them in front of the fire. We both have huge smiles on our faces as we go through the evening. We take showers and dry with real full-size towels, and it’s warm! Wow. We enjoy everything possible in this beautiful, spacious, spotless place.

38 miles, 4:35/6:00

We skirt the Cruces Basin Wilderness today, with spectacular views of naked, rocky Brazos Ridge from all directions. There are parklike areas of tall golden grass swirling with the breeze contrasted with short, dark pines in clumps of twos and threes that looks too tidy and perfect to be natural.

We finish the day on pavement and end at Hopewell Lake. The campground is near the lake but not on it. We cruise around the entire place and there is no one there. The trash cans are all overflowing, the outhouses lack TP. The sign at the front has an old price of $5 replaced with shiny new numbers indicating $10 now, with another notice saying this campground is now maintained by some corporation out of Utah. Maintained, huh? We’ve found that many of the Forest Service campgrounds all the way down the Divide are “maintained” by different companies. Sometimes that means very clean and tidy camps, with friendly hosts that like to chat and pass on good information, like the friendly guy at Big Springs campground in Idaho. Others, like this, seem to be an excuse to charge more for lower quality services. On principal (and being a bit grossed out on my part) we decide to ride into the forest and free camp on our own. What we find is that everyone else had the same idea. As Dave says, “Hopewell Lake: where more people camp outside the campground than in it!”

We find a nice spot next to a stand of aspens, on a slope facing East so we’ll have good morning sun. We’ve been in the high elevations with aspen for days now, and it’s beautiful to be watching autumn in action. However, the mornings can be very chilly at this elevation in mid-September, so now instead of looking for evening sun to dry our clothes, we look for camp spots with morning sun to warm our toes. (That was nifty rhyming there, eh?)

37 miles, 5:32/8:15

We ride through the town of Horca this morning, hoping for groceries, but the one building that seems to constitute town besides cabins is closed. We’re definitely well into the off season. We ride on and climb La Manga Pass on pavement, and elevation of 10,230. There’s a restaurant symbol on our map just over the pass, but when we get there it’s a bar and saloon that is only open Wednesday through Sunday starting at 4:00 PM. We’d been hoping for some french fries or something yummy after a few days eating our same camp food. Oh well.

We keep riding and see the Cumbres & Toltec narrow-gauge steam-powered train rumble by. It appears to be working on its track during this off-season, as it’s carrying only cars full of gravel. It’s a coal-powered steam engine that puffs out plenty of smoke and has that nifty old whistle. We wave and the conductor waves back. As we climb further we see it come around to fill up with water from the big tank along the track.

We climb back into aspens and pines to find our campground late in the afternoon. There is only one other family there, hunters out looking for elk. The dad tells Dave that the “Little Guy is out shooting squirrel,” and that he’ll “make sure he doesn’t screw up,” meaning he’ll tell him not to shoot in our direction.

Uh, that’s nice. Thank you.

We wake to rain pouring down in sheets on our tent in the night. Into the morning it is still sprinkling. We sleep in and enjoy the smell of rain and sound of the river. Dave had already set up the rain tarp last night to cook dinner and it’s a good thing he left it up. We eat pancakes under the tarp and enjoy more rain and the view of the rushing river and green forest.

After breakfast we retire to the tent to read and nap. What a great rest day! The sun pokes out just a couple times throughout the day, and each time we rush to hang up things to dry, from our clothes that we washed last night in the river to rain pants and jackets and even the sleeping bags which soak up a bit of water from the dew on the tent. Everything gets nicely dried by the end of the day and we get plenty of rest. This is our last night in Colorado.

25 miles, 2:47/4:00

Today is a short day in miles, but the rough rocky road and rolling hills make up for the lack of miles some. At the top of a big climb we stop to read the information sign that tells us about the geology and mining in the area, and that the naturally exposed rocky layers in the mountain we’re looking at is responsible for much of the heavy metals in the river, and that mining only added a small amount to that. While we’re reading a truck and trailer stop in the pullout and a friendly couple greet us. The man said that back in ’58 when he graduated from high school he and a buddy rode Hercules 3-speed bikes from Del Norte to Denver. He’s a fan of bicycles and touring and chats it up with us a bit, telling us he admires us.

We find a beautiful campground along the river but it’s closed, I guess for the season. So we tromp around it and camp just outside its fence right on the river. We have decided tomorrow is going to be a rest day and we want a really good spot to hang out for a day. This is it. Because the campground is closed there are very few people around. We only see one fisherman. Across the river is wilderness, so we won’t be seeing or hearing any cars on that side. We set up camp as it threatens to rain.