Day 13 (Sat, 29 Mar)

I rode from Socorro, NM to Albuquerque, NM today.  A relaxing ride following the Rio Grande River valley north.  The ride was 75 miles with 1,263 ft of climbing starting at an elevation of about 4,500 ft and ending at about 5,000 ft.

Weather:  The weather was nice; a bit warmer than the past few days when I was riding at much higher elevations.  It was mostly sunny throughout the day with temps in the 40s in the morning climbing to the 60s in the afternoon.  There was a mild 5-10 mph wind for much of the day starting as a head wind out of the North and then flipping around to be a South, tail wind.

The Roads: After searching for alternatives, I decided to use I-25 for about 25 miles going north out of Socorro.  As noted earlier, in the west where there are no alternatives, cycling on the interstate is legal; it’s also safe, with a wide riding lane.  The only negative sometimes is the huge amount of debris along interstates that are huge hazards to bike tires, but in this case it looked like the break down lane had recently been cleaned – great to cycle on!  At the US 60 junction (which heads East), I hopped on Hwy 116 for about 15 miles, Hwy 314 for about 20 miles, then switched over to Hwy 47 (crossing the Rio Grande to get there) and rode that up into Albuquerque.

You’ll see from the pictures that compared to the last few days, the landscape is again much drier, browner but still many mountains in the area albeit further off from me given that I was riding within a few miles of the Rio Grande for the entire ride.

On to the pictures!

Mountains west of Socorro (I rode down out of those yesterday).

I-25 looking north.

Small mountain range east of I-25 (I passed 2 of them on the ride north).

Nice riding lane and clean - just like they intended it to be for us cyclists!!!  You can see a haze in the distance (looking north) - more on that in a minute...

Pretty dry landscape just a couple of miles from the Rio Grande river.

Some of the first hardwood trees I've seen since the San Diego area.  For the most part, no leaves on the trees yet, at this time of year.

There were fewer farms along the river than I thought there would be, but there were a few right along the river and the fields of crops are intensely green against the backdrop of all the dirt in this area.

Old Rusty Stuff - an old wagon maybe?

There was a wildfire that had started Friday, made the local news this morning, and was still burning as I passed it.  I saw many firetrucks in the area and while the fire was still burning, they seemed to have it under control, which for the sake of those homes, I hope it was.

Neat looking train station in Los Lunas, NM.  There appears to be a commuter rail that goes up and down the river valley, that I saw cruise past me earlier in the ride.

Famous Spanish explorer, Coronado, who led an expedition of about 2,000 men from northern Mexico through what is now the Southwest U.S., in the early 1540's.  He was in search of the "the seven golden cities" including Cibola.  He never found that but did create quite a historically notable trip.  A good write-up on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Vásquez_de_Coronado.

Canals along the Rio Grande.

A small town, right along the Rio Grande, that I passed through.  Sometimes its an island, depending on how high the river is...

Crossing the Rio Grande.  Water in it this year (there was none last year in February when I crossed its dry river bed down in Las Cruces).

Cool!  After 4,000 miles of riding this/last year I finally found an old portion of U.S. 66!  More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_66.  The highway was established in 1926, ran from Chicago to Santa Monica, CA, and was formally decommissioned in 1985 (replaced by our interstate system).  It was the first highway in the U.S. to be completely paved (in 1938).  Even though its no longer a formal highway, it was so famous, that it still exists as state highways in some places, and there are plenty of signs like this one showing it where had passed.

Finally starting to see some horse ranches in NM.  It is pretty cool - typically if you stop for a few minutes near horses they'll trot over to check you out.  The 3 in this picture eventually all gathered at the fence to check out the weird Red creature standing on the road...

Home for the night!

Back by popular demand - "the Map" - my ride thus far.  860 miles of riding and over 35,000 ft of climbing through the mountains of CA, AZ, and NM!