We left Ruidoso early in the morning as it began to drizzle ... we did a beautiful ride into the woods to get us going ... steep hills, rocky, pine trees ... all was good with the world!
The bulk of today was spent crossing the White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was detonated ... this is huge area of ... nothing! Easy to imagine how this could have been the bottom of an ocean a long time ago ... lots of sand, small brush, lots of rabbits and some private ranches we had to go through ... we even saw a thundercloud in the horizon dumping lots of rain that looked like a mushroom cloud ... eerie ... I wonder how much radiation we got exposed to today : )
We went through Elephant Butte Dam which was the largest irrigation damn in the world in 1916. This is part of the Rio Grande - just realized that the Rio Grande actually heads north around El Paso. We made it to Truth or Consequences late in the afternoon ... and beaten to a pulp. Two days of non-stop hard dirt riding is taking its toll so we decided to ditch camping and find a hotel ... especially when we heard that there are hot springs everywhere ... so our leg muscles may recover after all : )
We did spend some time at the hot springs next to the river soaking our tired bones ... and meeting all kinds of people. A good way to end the day.
Apparently, tomorrow is the hardest day of the trip ... somebody said we need to cross a river 100 times?!?? Tomorrow we are definitely camping somewhere up there.
No comments:
Post a Comment