New Mexico, Land of Enchantment

Leaving the Taos area, we ride across the Tusas Mountain Range through a couple of National Forests and beautiful mountain lands. After extremely hot weather, we suddenly find ourselves in what feels like freezing cold weather. After 100°+ weather, the drop in temperature catches us by surprise. We're so cold that we need to pull off and layer up. When we stop, there's about 10 other bikers doing the same thing. 

After our incredible Earthship experience, we come upon several ranches made up of very old trailers, dilapidated mobile homes and shacks and it's looks as it people are living in extreme poverty. Quite the contrast to the Earthship community. One very run-down ranch, has an arched entry gate and hanging from the arch is a mannequin with a rope around it's neck. There's a sign that says "we do things the old way".  A strong message for us to continue moving on!

We continue on, riding over over Jawbone Mountain on our way to Chama and it's a beautiful blue-sky day.   We're riding on Highway 64 a gorgeous road, complete wonderful vistas, curves that are sweeping wide and I'm sure because of the high elevation, it's closed in the winter. The speed limit is 50 and I get into a good groove keeping up with Randy. There are virtually no cars on the road and we see a few ranches and cabins as we ride along the Rio Brazos river. The road went up to an elevation of about 10,000 feet, creating a brisk and a wonderful ride! 

At the top of the mountain, we stop at the Brazos Cliff Overlook to warm up and take a photo. The view is amazing and hard to capture the beauty with my camera. The air is cool but the sun feels good.

We continue to Chama and across Chromo Mountain crossing the Continental Divide at an elevation of 7800. On this trip we've crossed the Continental Divide as far south as the Mexico border and on other trips, as far north as Montana. Even though it doesn't traverse Utah, it feels like a little piece of home because we've crossed it so many times on our previous travels.

New Mexico turned out to be a great surprise! Riding through the flat lands of Arizona, Texas and Southern New Mexico we were expecting more of the same as we went north. 

After leaving Roswell and all way to the Northern New Mexico border, we enjoyed great scenic highways and byways with rolling hills, curves and incredibly high elevations with huge pine trees. We also loved the contrast of the gorgeous high desert landscapes against the mountains that were along most of our route.

New Mexico's motto is "Land of Enchantment" and we found New Mexico to be a wonderful place to visit.

I'll say it again, we'll be back to ride New Mexico!