Sun, April 25, 2010

The motorcyclists had tales to tell at the continental breakfast this morning. There were a lot of riders staying at our motel and most left Saturday as we did to ride down to the Big Bend area.  It is about an 80 mile drive from Alpine to the Big Bend entrance and most cyclists make a stop for coffee and to gas up in Study Butte (pronounced Stewdee Beaut).  Although we would not need gas we did stop to get a cup of coffee only to find that the power was off in the area.  This meant no gas for the motorcycle riders.  Also going against them was a very stiff wind which meant they used more gas than usual getting there.  So on Sunday morning everyone was telling their adventures… but we gave first prize to a neat lady who was a veteran rider logging more than 250,000 miles on her Honda Trike.  She is in the process of making a loop around the US now by herself.  I was impressed.  She left Saturday morning and battled the wind arriving in Study Butte only to find she could not get gas.  She was already tired from battling the wind so made the decision to forego the trip into Big Bend and just head back up to Alpine.  The headwind she encountered must have played havoc with her mileage because she ran out of gas just five miles outside Alpine.  If you’re not familiar with the area, when you leave the city limits of Alpine there is virtually nothing on the road to study Butte except some large ranches and a few “villages” of eccentric folk who don’t particularly want to be bothered.  She pushed her trike out of the highway and sat for some time in the howling wind until another motorcyclist with a 1 gallon stash of gas  on his bike was kind enough to give it to her and help her restart her trike.  She was quite an interesting person and I’m sure had many tales of her adventures traveling the US alone on a motorcycle.  She rode off just as we were loading up our Jeep.  I hope she had a better day today than yesterday.

Today, we planned to make the drive from Alpine via El Paso then Las Cruces NM head northwest and stay in one of our favorite places, the Bear Creek Cabins in Pinos Altos, NM.   In El Paso, since it was Sunday morning and the traffic was light, we opted to take the Scenic Rim Drive that is carved into the Franklin Mountains overlooking downtown El Paso and its Mexican sister city of Juarez.  The road was built in 1920 and it was a really neat drive with a small park at the highest point (around 4,200’) with a view that was quite impressive.

From El Paso it was on to New Mexico and the Bear Creek Cabins. There are about fifteen cabins and each is unique so we picked a different cabin from our last trip.  They are built in a pine forest and only trees that absolutely had to be cut were downed.  As a result there are trees growing thru the porches of every cabin and the upstairs bedrooms are nestled among the tree tops.  Pinos Altos is just south of the Gila Cliff Dwellings  National Monument and we had just enough time to make the extremely curvy one-way drive.  Unfortunately, after making this roller coaster drive we arrived at the visitor center only to find out that the road that would take us to the dwellings was closed and it would require a three mile hike (one-way) to get to the ancient dwellings.  We simply didn’t have time to get in and out before dark.  It was very disappointing and a little confusing as to why they didn’t have some mention of this closure farther down the mountain.  But those are the breaks so we had puppy play time beside the Gila river and then made the drive back out to our cabin. 

Back at the cabin we built a fire, fixed ourselves a light supper and made a big pot of coffee.  We read, discussed possible upcoming routes to take over the next few days and thoroughly enjoyed relaxing in front of a fireplace again before heading off to bed among the tree tops. It was a great ending to the day despite the disappointment of not being able to see the Gila Cliff dwellings.

Hope you all are well.

Peace,

Donna, Charles, Paris & Dodger

Comments

[Dottie]

Wonderful human interest story. Sounds like a very gutsy individual.