To Santa Fe

Starting Mileage 1123
Ending Mileage 1440

Another hangover and another long ride today. After my steak and beers last night I decided to skip the Big Texan Ranch breakfast. I can only imagine how big that breakfast would have been. I jumped on headed off to Santa Fe, just over 300 miles away.

About 20 miles out of town I saw some cars parked on the other side of the freeway and people walking to some things stuck in the ground out in a field. I then recognised this as the Cadillac Ranch I had read about. I turned around on the next junction to come and have a look.

Its a public art display that was created in 1974 and represents a number of evolutions of the Cadillac car line. These are half buried in the ground and you are allowed to go ahead and spray paint whatever you wish on them

.

I got some spray paint of a kid and wrote my boys name Harry on one.

I headed out again with my next destination being Santa Rosa Lake, New Mexico. I'm only crossing the northern small part of Texas but with so much nothing between towns this State feels huge. Texas is larger than France but from Amarillo to New Mexico I hardly saw a soul. I would come off the freeway and many places just to try to find signs of civilisation. These small towns were empty. I mean left and forgotten. Old gas stations where prices still showed at half the current gas price, motels with old signs swaying in the wind. Boarded up windows and old abandoned vehicles were all I could see of once were bustling towns. The freeways that were built took the flow of traffic out of these areas so commerce suffered. So I am told. Outside of these small ghost towns it was again just dried out fields with a few cattle ranches dotted between. I finally crossed the border into New Mexico and found Santa Rosa Lake. Its pretty much a camping spot with a huge lake in the middle of nowhere. There was no where to grab lunch so I took a couple of pictures and left.

The temperature was not as hot as it had been and I started to notice a big storm cloud to my right. I was heading west still but I remembered from my map that I would have to turn North towards this cloud at some point.

It seemed to coming closer even though I was travelling west and at the time where I had to switch north to Santa Fe it was directly in my path.



I was hoping that it was the other side of Santa Fe so I started to gun it at 90mph to try and get there fast. I had no idea how far Santa Fe was and by the time me and the rain met I realised I was almost out of petrol. The raindrops were like small stones exploding on my body. I had to stop and put my jacket on and then continue at a low speed as I could hardly see anything. My sunglasses were terrible and the wind accompanying the rain was making it very uncomfortable to ride. I had my hand over my face for the 10 or so mins. There was nowhere to stop and nowhere to find cover. Then as I came over a hill a solitary gas station appeared. I was soaked. The bottom parts of my jeans were drenched as they had also been collecting water from the front wheel. I was really unprepared for the wet weather and have been so lucky to get this far without any.

After 20 mins it died off and the sun reappeared. By the time I had ridden the next 10 miles to Santa Fe I had completely dried off. The b&b, El Paradero, is really cool place to find. I'm glad I spent a bit of extra money to book this. Very close to town and the rooms are amazing.

I checked in, grabbed some afternoon home made cookies and headed out to the main square which was 5 blocks away. The nightlife in Santa Fe is pretty much non existent. I had some food, Fajitas !! and then found a Soul/Jazz bar. Now off all the places in the world I would not have expected to hear an English accent at the bar, let alone a guy that used to run or originally opened the Sugar Hut in Brentwood !

The band were really good with names like Soul Man Sam and Catfish, local celebrities. Great voices. I slipped off at 11:30 when they finished.

Me and Soul Man Sam. The sunburn is not as bad as it looks...



July 4th tomorrow...