|
The storm was long gone by the time I woke up this morning, so I hit the road fairly early and made good time to Amarillo, where I stopped for breakfast. It was cool enough out that I started the ride with the knee vents in my riding pants closed, for the first time this trip!
On the way out of Amarillo, I visited "Cadillac Ranch", a classic roadside attraction, consisting of a bunch of cars stuck face first into the ground. I wasn't expecting much from it, but I thought it was a pretty neat sculpture when I actually got close enough to get an interesting perspective on it.
Texas went by pretty quickly. Mostly dull, flat farmland, with the occasional small town. Then, fifteen miles from the border, I blinked and was suddenly in the southwest: gorges, mesas, and scrub brush.
Once across into New Mexico, I decided that I wanted a break from the I-40/RT66 routine, and headed towards Las Vegas (NM) on an almost-deserted state highway. It was a nice ride through a scenic nowhere, across a low scrubby plain, up the side of a cliff (with lots of switchbacks), and then over a high grassy plain. The only snag came when I realized that the road was headed directly into another lightning storm, and this time I was 30 miles from the nearest town. Fortuitously, the road turned just before I reached the storm, and I got just a sprinkling of rain.
From Las Vegas, it was a pretty quick ride down to Santa Fe. Favorite road sign: Gusty Winds May Exist.
My friends Rusty and Merin happen to be in Santa Fe right now, for a family reunion, so we met up in the afternoon and took a drive out to try to photograph a canyon in the golden hour.
|