Passes & Canyons Blog

Judy and I were recently in New Mexico and though we were in the car, not on a bike, we made it a point to hit some great motorcycle roads. The simple fact is, a road that’s great for a bike is generally pretty darn good for a car, too.

We spent a couple days in Ruidoso and boy if there is one thing you learn right away it is that Texans love Ruidoso. In Colorado it is common knowledge that Texans by the horde come to Lake City. Well, for Ruidoso, think Lake City on steroids. A waitress we spoke with said it’s commonly accepted that at any time of year, not just particular seasons, there are more Texans in Ruidoso than New Mexicans.

So we’re not into crowds and we headed south to Cloudcroft and the road from there to Timberon. This was a route I learned about on MotorcycleRoads.com. It was a good trip, and would be a really sweet ride. You’re up high, in fact, so high that along the way you encounter several observatories. Not the look-at-the-stars kind, however, but solar observatories. For looking at the sun.

Then from the main observatory it’s down and down and down through one of the longest series of S-curves I’ve ever seen, to Timberon. There is food here but no gas. Have lunch and turn around.

From Ruidoso we headed over toward Truth or Consequences, turning off the highway for Hillsboro to take NM 152 over Emory Pass to Silver City. This is a terrific road I wrote about some years ago on Examiner.com. At that time I called it New Mexico’s tail of the dragon. Yes, there are curves.

Things change, though, including your memory. I’ll need to dig that old article out to see what I wrote then but I would have sworn that on the western side of the pass the road went for 20 miles or more twisting, twisting, twisting along the creek. In fact, it does a phenomenal amount of twisting on the east side of the pass, and going up the pass, but on the west there are probably fewer than 5 miles along the creek.

Doesn’t matter. It’s still one of the twistiest roads you’ll ever see. Then there is one thing that has changed since I was last there: forest fire. Back in 2013 the area got hit hard by a fire, so it’s just not as green as when I saw it last. But it’s still a good ride. As that guy in my photo above would attest, I’m sure.

Biker Quote for Today

Some paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.

When the OFMC stopped in Raton on the third day of our trip I got gas along with everyone else. Unlike everyone else’s bikes, my Concours has a 7.5-gallon gas tank so when they all filled up again the next day in Red River I did not. We were headed to Santa Fe and I figured I had plenty of gas to get there.

We backtracked through Eagle Nest and down to Angel Fire, where we took a road we’d never been on before. Heck, I didn’t even know this road existed. I had always had the idea that Angel Fire was a dead end, like Telluride. But no, you can continue south and come out a couple different places. We were headed for Las Vegas (New Mexico).

The road quickly got very small, a narrow two-laner, often with no center line. And it got very twisty. Sweet. In fact, if you look at the Butler map of New Mexico they show a portion of this road in yellow, which means it’s very good. It was.

But it wasn’t long, as we rode this nice portion, before we ran up behind a logging truck. Oh great, now we get to go 10 miles an hour for the next hour. But no, the guy was nice and the first wide spot he found he pulled over to let us past.

So we would our way on south to Las Vegas and I was thinking if I had the chance without inconveniencing the other guys I would get some gas just to play it safe. But there was no way to do that with inconveniencing the others. And I knew I could get to Santa Fe. So now I started playing the game of seeing how far I could go before I had to switch to reserve. I was already at around 240 miles on this tank, and that’s about where I usually just go ahead and flip the lever rather than let run dry and start coughing.

But I get very good gas mileage when we’re going slow as we had been much of the way since Raton so I waited. From Las Vegas it was an I-25 blast to Santa Fe so that caused my needle to drop rapidly. And yet, as the miles clipped away the needle was still only in the red, not even near the E. How long can this go on?

Santa Fe was getting nearer but the needle was getting closer to the E. Finally it left the red entirely and buried itself in the E. But still no coughing or stuttering. Long story short, when I finally did get gas on the west side of Santa Fe my trip meter was at 308 miles and I still had not gone to reserve. It took 5.5 gallons to fill my 7.5-gallon tank so I could have gone more than 400 miles on that tank of gas. But more than 300 miles without flipping to reserve? I guess I don’t need no stinkin’ reserve. Except, of course there was that one time when Judy and I did run out entirely. But that’s another story.

Biker Quote for Today

It’s not what you ride, it’s what you ride for.

I put 2,143 miles on my Concours in 10 days going down to Arizona Bike Week, in Scottsdale, and the Overland Expo, in Amado, and there were parts that exceeded my expectations and others that fell short. It’s always that way, isn’t it?

It was some hard riding. Three of those days were in excess of 400 miles, with one of those being more than 500 miles. The weather in Arizona was blazing hot, hitting 100 some days. Nights were just as balmy as could be. If I lived in Arizona I think I’d sleep all day and be up and about all night. (That photo above is of me in the Kawasaki tent in Scottsdale, courtesy of computer simulation.)

While a large part of my riding was interstate, there were a couple stretches on the two-lane that were really good. Those would be the run from Holbrook, AZ, down to Scottsdale, which went through some forested mountains, and the route from Lordsburg, NM, over to I-25 a little south of Truth or Consequences. That last road seems to me to compete with the Tail of the Dragon for curves. I definitely recommend it.

Arizona Bike Week itself was a bit of a disappointment. There was little going on during the day, when it was blazing hot, and at night it depended on what group was playing in the party tent. The nights that Skid Row and Heart played there were a lot of people. The other nights were pretty slim. My conclusion is that this rally is primarily a local event that is primarily of interest to folks nearby who drop in for an evening.

Of considerably more interest was the Overland Expo down in Amado. This expo is for people who want to go adventure touring, whether on two wheels or four, and there were some amazing people in attendance. Ted Simon, who wrote Jupiter’s Travels, was there, as was Lois Pryce, who is well known for her travels as reported in Lois on the Loose and Red Tape and White Knuckles.

It was fascinating to see all the specialized gear–not to mention the incredible vehicles–that the vendors brought to show. It was also very interesting to speak with the organizers, Roseann and Jonathan Hanson, about their vision for the expo. I’ll have more on them and the expo later.

In truth, I had never seen all that much of Arizona before, so it was great to see so much of it now. Arizona has its own sort of very real beauty, but I have to say, I was glad to get into New Mexico where the beauty is less harsh. I could live in New Mexico but I don’t think I’d ever want to live in Arizona.

Most of all, though, the trip was a chance to escape the winter doldrums. It was, after all, the first bike trip of the year. It got me out of my day to day routine and away from this computer. The writing I do for a living is mostly about my motorcycling experiences in one way or another, and now I have a lot of new experiences to write about. I’d say that counts as a successful trip.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Arizona Bike Week builds up slowly (with photos)

Biker Quote for Today

Ahhh…the sound of a bike far off in the distance, late on a clear evening, calls to me, saying rise up and catch the wind under the moonlight’s embrace.