June 13 Day 17

Where are Tom and Lennie Now? -Click Here For Our Current Location

Phrase for the day - "What a difference a day makes."

Today's ride turned out to be much better than our experience yesterday.  We awoke to cold temperatures (around 50), but the skies were clear and blue.  We packed up the bike and trailer and headed south.

Our plan was to drop back down into New Mexico, and pass through Chama and on towards Taos.  This would take us over a nice mountain pass in New Mexico that crests at a little over 10,000 feet.  This pass is part of the Sangre de Cristo Range, which is the southernmost sub-range of the Rocky Mountains.  The sub-range stretches from southern Colorado into northern New Mexico.  Unlike yesterday, the weather above 10,000 was great today !!!  It dropped into the mid to upper 40's, but the sky was clear and we could actually see where we were driving :)  The pass was interesting and at the upper elevations had some huge meadows.  The meadows were covered with wildflowers and a lot of greenery.  We even saw a couple of cars pulled over in the scenic overlooks, and the passengers had spread out blankets in the meadow area to eat lunch.

You can see the Sangre de Cristo Range in the background of the photo below. 

You can see below, at elevation, there were huge meadows and forested areas.  Much different than the cliffs and rocks we saw on the Million Dollar Highway.

We dropped down from the first mountain pass, and were working our way toward Taos, when we passed through a little town (very little, like one intersection).  There were no gas stations, and no places to eat, except for one entrepreneurial fellow who set up a hot dog vending cart in a dirt area on the side of the road :)  It was too early for lunch at this point so we passed on by.

As we headed into the western edge of Taos, New Mexico, we passed an interesting development that had some strange looking homes.  I saw a sign that said something about Earthships, so I just had to look this up on the internet????

It turns out that Earthship style homes have been around for a while.  These homes are considered off-grid, meaning they have no tie to standard utilities, no electric, no water, etc.  They are extremely energy efficient and are a smart choice for a desert environment.  They are built with a portion of the home embedded into the earth, and the remainder is built with walls made from old tires filled with dirt and then plastered over.  These walls act as a giant thermal mass and retain the daytime heat for use during the night in winter months.  Solar panels and wind supply enough power to run the home, and the home is able to be maintained at 65 degrees year round with no heat and no AC!  Water is collected in giant cisterns, and used multiple times.  It is filtered and used to drink and shower/wash, then filtered again and used for toilets, then filtered again, and the solids go into a septic system, and the liquid is used for a small garden.  I am sure that I do not have all the facts right, so you can read more about Earthship homes here:  Wiki-Earthship Homes.  There is one homeowner in this Taos development that owns two of these homes, they live in one, and rent the other home for vacationers visiting Taos.  You can see below, they are kind of funky looking.

Just before entering into Taos, we crossed a bridge over the Rio Grande.  The photo is not the best, but it was taken from the back seat of a moving bike :)

The actual town of Taos was pretty quaint.  All of the shops were small adobe type buildings.  They had a number of restaurants, art galleries, etc.  The mix and type of shops, kind of reminded me of Sedona, Arizona.

We also travelled through Las Vegas today !!!!  Well, it wasn't Nevada, it was Las Vegas, New Mexico :)  Lennie and I expected to see some themes that play on the Vegas name, but in fact, the town was pretty much a dump.  We cruised right on through, dissapointed.

So, that sort of wraps up the fun part of this trip.  We are now in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and tomorrow we start the three day slog back home.  The next three days will take us through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and back into Ohio.  The three days will be mostly highway miles with gas and food stops, and cover between 1550-1600 miles, pretty boring.  Hopefully we will have good weather on the way.

Below is our route from today, we covered 290 miles, bringing our current trip total to 4809 miles.