The next morning, we got a relatively early start, since this was going to be a long day. If I haven’t said this already, I should have had a bigger gas tank. I had the smallest of the three bikes, at 4.3 gallons, which gives me about 125 miles to reserve, then another 40 or 50 miles to empty. However, I had scoped out where gas would be a problem, and had made a list of detours away from the route that I would have to take to go get gas to stay out of trouble. For some reason, I was in a hurry and neglected to check the route for the day, instead relying on memory where my gas stop escape route was.
We started out on dirt roads right outside of town, climbing towards Summitville. We passed a sign that listed a closed road somewhere ahead, but didn't stop to read it, didn't recognize the road number, and kept on trucking. We were mostly on national forest land, lots of trees, good dirt road, high speed. Got high enough where there was some snow on the side of the road, stopped and played in the snow.
Gary stuck his bike in the mud bank in front of the glacier.
It fell over after a few minutes, then it took all of us to pick it up, turn it around and get him pointed back to the road.
This is what a stupid grin looks like.
Wrote a sign in the snow to the biker chicks, to let them know we were thinking about them. I was pooped out after scratching “TINA” into the ice, so I had to abbreviate “Cricket”.
Got rolling again, rolled another 20 miles uphill, and hit a road closed sign, with a chain across the road.
GPS shows we're within smelling distance of Summitville (the peak). We went around the chain to see what we could see. There were a dozen or so guys working with heavy equipment installing culverts under the road, and then a lot more activity adjacent to the road where they were remediating some water that was contaminated with cyanide from mining activity. We could see where the road picked up again not more than 2 tenths of a mile from where we had to stop. One of the crew came over and made it clear that there was no ******* way we were getting through.
Carl consulted the maps. I should have done more of this.
He told us to detour back towards South Fork, then take Park Creek Road to Summitville, he said about a 20 mile detour. To make a long story short, it was a 60 mile detour. Scenic, but still a detour, and we were already on a long day. The good news was that we got gas near South Fork at an RV park. The bad news was that I had only burned 1.5 gallons at that point, so I wasn't in the clear for the day.
Scenery along the detour.
Picked up the route again and continued on. Good roads, lots of scenery. Passed through an area with mining legacy.
Hit highway 17, turned south on dirt roads and crossed the narrow gauge railroad. This was where I screwed up, because I needed to run hiway 17 west to Chama for gas. I mistakenly thought the side trip for gas was from hiway 64. We continued to the Co/NM border, stopped for a granola break.
Continued south into NM, the road suddenly got insane. Went through several miles of very difficult terrain, baby heads, shale, steep sections, washouts. I was in heaven after all the jeep roads we'd been running. Sorry, no pics, hanging on for dear life.
The only problem was that this slowed us way down, we were going to run out of daylight. The going got easier after a while, running a high ridge which dropped down into forested valleys then climbed up again. Switchbacks, some wildlife, very scenic overlooks.
More scenery:
Hit hiway 64 and looked at the map for my gas stop, and realized I'm screwed. It was a little after 3 PM. We assessed the situation. Carl was convinced that if we continued on south on the route towards Abiquiu, that there was no gas. Only choice was 40 miles on the hiway to Chama. I told the guys to continue on the route, and I'd meet them in Cuba by riding the highway. They said, no, we'll stick together.
So we made the very scenic run into Chama, but I felt like an idiot. Got to the gas station, we were all beat, mentally and physically. Carl suggested sleeping in Chama instead of pressing on to Cuba, and Gary and I agreed. We made a lap around the town, Carl picked a hotel, we checked in. Drove around back to our room, and there was Floyd's pickup truck, he had picked the same town and the same hotel on the same night, purely by coincidence. I was going to volunteer to sleep in Floyd's room to get away from Gary's snoring, but Carl beat me to it.
After we got checked in and fed, we started thinking about the biker chicks again, and how that 60-mile detour would probably cost them the better part of a day. So we called the hotel in Del Norte, and told the receptionist that we needed to get a message to the two women who were riding bicycles. To my surprise, she rung their room, and Cricket answered. We told them were the roadblock was, and suggested they ride the highway to South Fork to detour. They were grateful to avoid such a long detour.
We had a few (fewer than the night before) adult beverages and hit the sack.
Floyd and feline companion after unloading the Duc for the next morning's ride.
Stats: Del Norte to Chama - 236 miles, 9 hours. 7400 to 11,900'
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This was a section of Wyoming that was vacant, as in, the last person left and turned out the lights.......The horizon went on as far as the eye could see..........There were Prong horned antelope, rattle snakes, scorpions, and 4 spiders.........
........We are above the clouds in a lite cold drizzle. Being supper careful to not over shoot a slippery cliff corner.......Thank goodness for good knobbies..........
