Our
preferred plan was to loop southwest from Springer to Taos and than
angle north for the Colorado mountains. However, the weather
forecast was for 4” of snow in Ouray where we had planned to stay.
The alternate route I had selected a little farther west was almost
as bad. There was no way to make either route by motorcycle. So we
decided to travel as planned as far as Chama, NM, and they head west
to Farmington, NM.
The
next morning dawned clear and cool with no hint of bad weather. We
had a beautiful mountain ride down to Taos where we went into town
and found a Walmart with the help of Sam’s new GPS. In spite of
the present good weather we knew it would not hold and I needed some
rain gear to replace my lost jacket liner. I got a $10 rain suit and
we were on our way again.
From
where Hwy 64 crossed Hwy 285 about 30 miles northwest of Taos we had
some of the most fantastic riding of the whole trip. This was
beautiful National Forest with twisting roads going over a high
mountain pass. This great stretch extended for almost 50 miles to
Tierra Amanilla. We picked up caches along the way for Taos and Rio
Arriba counties.
 |
| Lonesome Sam |
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| Where's the key? |
Probably
the funniest incident of the trip occurred near the end of this
stretch of road. We were going through a town and I was ahead of Sam
with some traffic in between us. After making a left turn on the
highway I didn’t see Sam anymore. I didn’t think much of it
because I knew I’d be stopping soon for a cache. So I stopped for
the cache which was on a fence to a gated field. Afterwords I just
waited there as it was usually only a minute or two until Sam would
arrive. After about fifteen minutes when I was unable to reach him
by phone I was just about to head back to look for him. Then I saw
this motorcycle coming across the field on the dirt road. I thought,
“Boy, that looks like Sam’s bike”. Well, it seems Sam’s GPS
had indeed taken him on the shortest route to the cache. He was
gracious enough to laugh along with me. Of course, he had to go all
the way back because there was no way to get by the gate and fence.
We
got into Farmington earlier than anticipated so after gassing up we
decided to go on to Blanding, UT. We chose a bock roads route which
was Hwy 41 in NM and Hwy 262 in UT. We soon got into high winds and
threatening skys. I put my raincoat on and Sam
put
on his heated vest as it was getting colder. Not long after we got
into Utah we encountered about the most miserable motorcycling
weather I’ve ever encountered. The high wind turned to blowing
rain and then blowing snow. By the time we approached Blanding it
was almost impossible to keep my helmet visor free of ice. We
finally made the Quality Inn in Blanding and we were so frozen the
motel employees felt sorry for us and helped us carry in our gear.
The wind had torn the back completely out of my rain coat. The motel
had a hot tub that was extremely welcome. Thus ended a 428 mile day
with 7 geocache finds. |
| Quality Inn - ice on windshield |
 |
| Back Blown Out |
Our
way north was still blocked by snow so we decided to swing south into
AZ through Monument Valley and then head west over to Ivins, UT, just
west of St. George, where my brother-in-law lives. For this trip I
had purchased a tablet sized laptop computer so that I could upload
my caches to the geocaching website each day. That also allowed me
to download new caches to my GPS which came in handy in this
situation where we were taking an unplanned route.
About
three days before a tooth had begun hurting. I had had this same
problem a few weeks before and the dentist had not been able to find
the problem. He prescribed an antibiotic and after a few days the
problem dissipated. At this point it was absolutely killing me. Sam
said one hurt should cancel out the other which I thought as well but
that wasn’t the case. At least my tendon only hurt when I walked.
I contacted Kathy who in turn arranged for a prescription to be sent
to my brother-in-law’s pharmacy of choice in Ivins. Meanwhile it
was Motrin to keep the throb somewhat under control.
Sam
had described Monument Valley as similar to the ship shaped rock near
Shiprock, NM, except there was a whole fleet. It was a good
description. Had my tooth not been hurting so much I would have
enjoyed it much more. It is quite a sight.
We
arrived in Ivins late afternoon having logged 357 miles, 6 caches and
1 DNF. My brother-in-law, Chuck, took us to an Arctic Circle for
dinner as his wife, Joann was out. We had a good dinner topped off
with ice cream. To be continued.
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