It’s Dry and Windy, Don’t Freak Out, Jack

Posted from Grants, NM

The blog posts are becoming harder to write as the desert sun and wind desiccates our once juicy brains into dense walnuts. It’s been a long, dry road as of late. The state of Colorado is mostly a desert as far as our trail is concerned, and the camperized sprinter vans run in great herds like antelope, turning every dirt road into a undulating sea of washboard. We learned early on in Colorado that big mountains don’t always mean abundant water, and that we would need to take advantage of every source we could find and haul a few gallons in between. On one particularly heinous day of long miles, washboard road and constant headwind, I passed up a heavily cow impacted culvert running with a trickle of water, on our way up into the tall mountains, assuring Zoey that we would surely find something further ahead. Thankfully Zoey saw right through that empty promise and filled up 3 liters of water as I rode on. We biked well into the night in search of a source of water that wasn’t filtered through cow patties and a campsite. There were neither for many miles and we began stopping random trucks in the dark for water. In asking, we didn’t get any meaningful amount of water for boiling pasta, but did amass a pile of small bottles of water, Gatorade, bubbly water, and beer! Big thanks to the folks who were so generous and didn’t immediately shoot the bedraggled strangers wandering up to them in the dark. After all, it was the first day of hunting season. We heartily drank our collection and settled on making our dinner with the cow water. Since then we’ve been carrying two gallons each most days.

We entered New Mexico a few days ago and the mountains are still huge and there are 90% fewer sprinter vans. The roads are REALLY rough and there is almost zero ground water, but I am appreciating the lack of people and plentiful camping. In between the mountains are wonderful desert landscapes and strong strong headwinds. I sometimes (too often?) find myself yelling profanities into the wind to stave off the mental breakdown that 8 hours of deafening wind will produce. Zoey expressed embarrassment the other day when I witnessed her doing the same thing, after her bike fell over onto her in the howling wind and rain. I reassured her that she was not alone in this practice.

We are about 250 miles from Silver City, NM where we will get a ride (gasp…) to Tucson to catch a flight to a dear friends wedding back in Crested Butte, which we happened to bike by about a week ago. Then, we will continue our ride north back on Western Wildlands towards Salt Lake. Here are a lot of photos!

We also met John in Abiquiu while staying at a sweet setup on the Chama River for hikers and bikers. John is a retired doctor, and is currently working on his eyewear company, a screenplay, and an anti-nuclear war website. He gets a special gallery because he understood the content we really needed. Check out his eyewear website https://www.johnhanseneyewear.com

And more friends!

Also, Zoey’s sleeping pad has been flat for a while now and we couldn’t find the hole, even after submerging it in a beaver pond and looking for bubbles. She’s been sleeping on a pile of our clothing. Here is her setting up a very comfortable mattress. We thankfully got a new one in the mail today.