We're on our first day of a quick, 2-day trip into New Mexico. We live only 2 miles north of New Mexico in southwestern Colorado, and decided to ride through the mountains in the Taos area, hoping to see some aspens starting to change colors.
This is such a fun ride - twisting, winding, climbing 2-lane paved highway with almost no traffic. We rode through the Kit Carson National Forest which covers 1.5 million acres in northern New Mexico with parts of the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan Mountains and the San Juan Basin.
US 64 goes past the Taos Earthships, 600 acres of off-the-grid homes built into the earth that use solar, wind, recycled water, old tires, car batteries, glass bottles, and every type of technology available.
There is a circular route in the Taos area that winds through the Sangre de Cristo mountains, part of the Rocky Mountain range. We planned to ride part of the route each day, and today rode on US 64 East into Angel Fire, catching glimpses of colorful aspens along the way.
We stopped in Angel Fire, a small town at the base of a ski area east of Taos, for lunch and then continued south on NM 434 through a beautiful valley. Riding at about 8500' elevation, the mountains around us don't look very tall, but they're all over 10,000'.
The skies were cloudy and threatening rain all day, and as soon as we turned northwest onto NM 518 toward Taos, we stopped to put on rain gear. It was a great decision because about 5 minutes later it started to rain, and rained the next hour until we got to our hotel in Taos. The temperature dropped to 48 degrees at the highest elevation but we were prepared.
Tomorrow we'll ride through more of the mountains in the Taos area before we head north and back home. The weather is promising sunny skies - a perfect motorcycle day.
