Making A Short Day Longer
On our second day of the OFMC trip we were looking at a short ride, just 96 miles south on US 285 from Alamosa to Espanola, New Mexico. That was just not going to happen.
We only added 50 miles to the ride going this way but these were nice miles.
But things got interesting before that happened. Looking at the map I saw that if we took a right turn onto US 64 where it intersects 522, and then very quickly take a left onto what I now see listed as Blueberry Hill Road, we could bypass Taos entirely. We’ve been to Taos plenty of times and we know the traffic it entails. Plus, there were signs warning of road construction in Taos, so all the more reason to bypass.
And Blueberry Hill Road was really nice. It follows the ridge line through a very pretty area and at the southern end ties into NM240, which continues on down to NM68. Sweet road. Terrific to completely avoid Taos.
At NM68 I was set to go left when Dennis pulled up next to me and told me his GPS said go right to get to Espanola. Because of some unexpected turns in the road I was not totally sure of our location so I figured to trust his GPS. It turned out this road did indeed go to Espanola but it was not the High Road.
What it was was a road we had never ridden before. So with Blueberry Hill Road this was two new roads for us in one day. And it was a nice road, too. It runs through a gorge on the Rio Grande much of the way and then the terrain opens out into a valley with a lot of wineries. And then it does get down to Espanola and is considerably shorter than the High Road.
We still got into Espanola way too early and had to wait about three hours before we could even check into our hotel. Imagine if we’d gone straight down US 285! But now we were set for the next three days because this was our customary gambling and golf stop that we always make on this trip.
Biker Quote for Today
You might be a Yuppie biker if your leathers still have creases.
