Day 40

Taos NM to Chama

6-29-14

Day 40

Taos is one of those places you wish you could stay and explore.  It looks like such a happening town to visit. Sadly this is a cross country bicycle trip on a schedule and we only have time for a quick glance at our surroundings. But armed with all these glances we know the good spots to vacation.

Our next port of call is 97 miles away Chama New Mexico. Between Taos and Chama is a couple bumps they call the Rockies. The first climb was a steady 22 mile uphill that took us to 8750 feet. This was followed by a way too short 2 mile downhill.  Gosh, 20 up and 2 down it does not seem fair.

The next part of the climb was 16 miles to a false summit at 10,100 feet.  If you’re not a cyclist I will explain a false summit. A false summit is when you “think” you are at the mountain peak but after a quick downhill you realize the “real” summit is up yet another climb. This second climb was another 6 or so miles of uphill to 10,500 feet. If you look at the photo of the elevation profile our bicycle GPS created you can clearly see the three peaks. All totaled our climbing totaled more than 65 miles.

Of course everyone knows when you travel cross-country east to west as we are, you are always against the prevailing winds. And as usual we had a 15-20 mph head wind trying to push our 75 pound bikes back down the mountain as we were fighting to go up. Another nice feature in the thinning air.

 Now when you are only able to obtain a speed of 5 mph on a climb with the heavy bikes and the wind a 20 miler accent takes 4 hours to complete.  So you can see we spent almost the entire day climbing up hill.

Along the way we past a development of partially underground homes built from as many recycled items as possible.  All of the houses use passive solar and solar panels along with other energy saving items. Most all were unique.

Just out of Taos we past the Rio Grande Gorge cut by the Rio Grand River

About mid-way up the mountain we came upon a cattle rancher herding his cattle along the highway to another pasture.

 We arrived in Chama at 8:00pm after 11 hours on the road beat and thirsty.

 97 Miles

Weather 90 degrees Sun

6015 Feet of Climbing