My parents came out Thursday night. They had a real tight connection between Atlanta and Albuquerque and barely made it themselves. Their checked luggage did not make it. So, we had to wait for the first Friday flight from Atlanta to bring the bags. This was nice, because we got to take them to Frontier to experience one of Albuquerque’s best restaurants. We also got to have a nice leisurely start to our weekend on Friday morning. We got the bags early Friday afternoon, and headed out at around 4:45pm.

Tamara and I rode the VFR and my parents rode the VStrom. We took off towards the Jemez Mountains. Since we left so late and had to get to Taos that night, we did not stop to take any pictures. Once we got through the Jemez and into Los Alamos, I missed my turn onto NM-502 and we ended up driving through the residential areas of North Los Alamos. My Dad’s GPS smart phone told us to take Rendija Rd to get back on track. A few miles down the road we found that it was unpaved. We pushed on through it though. Then, right when we thought we were almost at the end of the road, we found a locked gate blocking our way. We looked around for a path around the gate, but it was surrounded by barbed wire fence… We trekked our way back out of there (which seemed much faster than the way in), and back into Los Alamos to find NM-502. This took us to NM-30 and into Española. We picked up NM-68 and rode through dusk into Taos.

We got into Taos around 9:15pm or so. The city’s fireworks show greeted us and we stopped on a side road to watch the last 45 minutes of it. After it was all over, we were beginning to suit back up for the short ride to the hotel. Then, a wave of traffic started coming towards us as everyone from the fireworks show was going home! We picked up the pace a bit and squeezed into the traffic before it got too bad. It was like leaving a music concert at a pavilion all the way to the Best Western. The hotel was just outside the Taos Plaza. Luckily, there was one bar open and they had some food for us. The kitchen was closed, but they had chips/salsa and pretzels for us. We ate, drank, and enjoyed a blues/funk band that was in town for the night. Just around 1am, we went back to the hotel and fell asleep before our heads could hit the pillows.

The next morning, we got up and ate breakfast at the hotel’s restaurant. We got on the road around 10am, and headed north towards Questa on NM-522. From there, we began our journey on the Enchanted Circle. It is a beautiful ride that twists and climbs up through Red River, to the top of Bobcat pass (elevation: 9820′), down into the Moreno Valley and into Eagle Nest. We stopped for a nice break in Eagle Nest where we refueled, took photos of Baldy (which is on Philmont’s land), Wheeler Peak, the valley, and Eagle Nest Lake. My Dad reminisced about stopping here as a kid with his family after hiking at Philmont and continuing west for a sailing trip with their beloved Lollipop. It was a gorgeous valley surrounded by 12,000′+ peaks. From here, we headed south on US-64 to Palo Flechado Pass. There were a few convoys of vehicles on this tight-turn section of US-64, and we made a few risky passes to get away from them. We had some fun on the road though.

The Enchanted Circle led us back to Taos. I was just about to head south to the High Road to Taos when my Dad said, “Hey, let’s go to the gorge.” We had left the Rio Grande Gorge out when we departed due to leaving so late in the morning. I was not sure how much time we would have spent on the Enchanted Circle. So, we headed BACK through Taos. This was a mistake, because the Taste of Taos wine festival had the town full of traffic. It was well worth the wait once we arrived at the gorge. It is a deep, narrow box canyon that has been formed by the relentless Rio Grande. Just west of the gorge on US-64 is a rest area at which we stopped. We walked a little ways down the west rim trail, took photos of the bridge, and headed back to the rest area. We re-hydrated, suited up, and headed back into the Taos traffic.

Just south of town, we took NM-518. This is the High Road to Taos in reverse. It winds up over the Sangre de Cristo mountains and into a valley full of orchards and farming. From there, we took NM-75 back to the Rio Grande and NM-68. We stopped for a late lunch at Embudo Station. This little restaurant and inn sit right on the Rio Grande. We dipped our feet in for a refreshment before eating. Leaving from there, we headed back to NM-75 to take NM-76 south to NM-503 and completing the High Road to Taos (in reverse). 503 goes through the Nambé pueblo before hitting US285/US84. We rode the highway into Santa Fe, found our hotel, and enjoyed a wonderful dinner at The Ore House on the Santa Fe Plaza. We went to bed much earlier, but slept in anyways.

Sunday, we got up around 9am or so. We did not like the hotel restaurant’s breakfast options, so we headed into the Plaza again. We found a great diner right next to The Ore House called The Plaza Cafe. Afterwards, we headed over to the Loretto Chapel to see the Miraculous Staircase. It is quite an amazing structure. We snapped a few photos of the St. Francis Cathedral. Then, it was back to the hotel to pack up. We left Santa Fe at 11:45am and decided to take the interstate home instead of the Turquoise Trail just to be safe on time as my parents’ flight was at 4:30pm. The trip ended up being roughly 450 miles or so. It was a nice pace for a two day weekend since we were cut short at the beginning of the trip and had to get home early afternoon on Sunday. The roads and scenery were spectacular! You can see all of the photos here: http://photos.tonyfugere.com/gallery/v/trips/2008/july_4th/

Share/Save

(Click for Google Map)

Tamara’s niece turned two over the weekend. This is the Jones family and they live in Roswell, NM. It is her sister and brother-in-law live there with their 4 children (3 girls and 1 boy). We took the opportunity to drive the VStrom on a longer trip and test out a few new toys.

1. Our new BlueAnt Interphone bluetooth headsets that also have an intercom feature
2. A homemade hardware mounting plate for my garage door opener, MP3 player
3. New headphones for the both of us
4. My old Escort 945i radar detector

We took a straight highway route to get there on Saturday morning. It was colder than expected, humid, foggy (in Vaughn), and a bit rainy. It took just a bit longer than usual because we took an extended gas break in Vaughn to let the weather pass over us a bit. The route we took home was the fun part.

Before we get to that, let’s look at the mounting plate I created. I took a leftover piece of 2″ steel plate from another project and cut it to 8.5″ inches long (an aluminum plate would also work and be much lighter). The VStrom already had a mounting bar that my Dad installed. It is the SW-MOTECH universal handlebar crossbar. I cleaned all of the surfaces with denatured alcohol and placed 3 Superlock Strips from RadioShack on the bar and 3 more on the bottom of the plate. I put industrial strength 2″ x 4″ Velcro strips on the top of the plate to mount electronics. I started out by trying to mount my radar detector on the windshield with the suction cups. That was not working well, so I placed it in the middle where you see my CamelBak tube. It also had a small piece of velcro to keep in on the plate. This was quite convenient, but if abused, one would have to make many more stops… You also see my RCA Lyra RD1201 MP3 player. It has a SD card slot that makes it a great, inexpensive (I got it for free) 2GB MP3 player. I ran both the headphones and radar detector speaker cords under my tankbag to keep them from flying in the wind. After a few minor adjustments of equipment along the ride, I had everything in a good place by Sunday’s ride.

While in Roswell, the kids loved the bike and everyone wanted a ride. I gave Tamara’s sister a ride down the street (she was kinda scared, but enjoyed it). Then, I gave Cavan a ride who was followed by Addison (seen at left). Tristin got a ride Sunday morning and preferred not to have to turn though (scared to lean). She really leaned against the turn, but she is too light to affect my driving greatly. They all enjoyed the rides though.

After lunch, we left around 2:45pm. We worked our way West towards Capitan, NM on a back road (NM-246). It was a beautiful road that started out in ranch lands with fast, wide sweepers that moved its way into the small cedar trees that are typical of the Southern Rockies. The sweepers got a bit tighter in these areas, but nothing below 40mph (turn recommended speed). This ride was pretty straight with the occasional set of sweepers that rode the contour of the land or went around ranch land. After we fueled up in Capitan, we headed west to Carrizozo. I learned that the Valley of Fires was only a short drive from there and decided we should check it out.

The Valley of Fires is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management although it really has the facilities like a national or state park. According to their brochure: “Lava vents extruded lava which flowed on the earth’s surface about 1,500 to 5,000 years ago, making this one of the youngest lava flows in the Continental U.S. (Although Mount St. Helens erupted in the 1990s and is building a lava dome in its crater, it did not cause a flow of lava across the landscape.)”

From there we traveled back to Carrizozo and then north to Mountainair. Along the way, my route had us going up to Willard via Corona. There were a couple of isolated thunderstorms that way, and I came across NM-55. I realized that I could take it up through Claunch instead. Thank goodness, because the rain was heading our way. We saw maybe two or three drops hit the windshield before steering clear of that mess. We ate dinner in Mountainair at a small diner-like restaurant. Then, we headed north towards Manzano and Tijeras. NM-55 north of Mountair is a fun lazy sweeping road that twists up the Manzano mountains through three or four tiny unincorporated townships in Torreon county.

Just around Manzano, we caught a beautiful sunset over the Manzano mountains. Then it was onto Tijeras canyon, which consists of mid-sweepers and tighter sweepers that made the last part of the ride quite enjoyable. We took a side-road all the way into town that turns in Central Ave.

After we crossed the river, we took Atrisco up the bluffs and back to our side of town to get home at around 10pm. That made the ride roughly, 7 hours including a fuel and dinner stop. Outside of the fact that it is a more straight road ride, it was enjoyable. The VFR would not have been near as comfortable.

Check out all of the photos here:

Laurelen’s 2nd Birthday

Share/Save

Last week, I took delivery of my newest toy. It is a 2002 Suzuki VStrom (DL1000). My Dad sold it to me after upgrading to a 2003 FJR1300.

Late Sunday afternoon, Tamara and I decided to head up to the Jemez to check out some of the natural springs. The route was a pretty simple 125 miles and about 3 hours of driving time through the beautiful Southern section of the Jemez National Forest.

NM-4 is the road that winds up through the Jemez. It starts out as wide sweepers through the Jemez Pueblo. The first stop was just north of the Pueblo at a neat picnic area with these gigantic red rock formations.

After filling up with water, we pressed on North towards Soda Dam. This dam was created from the minerals in a natural spring located beneath the Jemez River. There is an in-depth description of Soda Dam at the USDA Forest Service website.

A unique feature of the road here is a very dangerous cattle guard. The guard is in the apex of a semi-blind, wide sweeper that leads you past the dam. There are no signs warning of the guard either. From both the north/south-bound directions, the guard will sneak up on you. Be careful when leaning through this turn. Soda Dam acts as a great landmark to remind you to slow down! Click on the photo below to see the cattle guard at full resolution. It is directly beside the boy and father silhouette holding hands on the right-hand shoulder.

We got to Battleship Rock around 6pm and made a 2.5 mile to the McCauley Warm Springs. The hike was moderate to strenuous since we ended up on the wrong trail that cut straight up the mountain instead of switching back and forth. I think it had to have been a trail cut by firefighters from past wildfires. It eventually ran into the correct trail though!

The entire area was covered in pines and large black boulders that must be remnants of the volcano explosion at the Valles Caldera just north of here. The trail was beautiful and smelled of pine most of the time. There was a lot of fire damage, too. Logs that were burned and trees that were badly damaged. There were a lot of young plants sprouting up from the ground. Trees, grasses, an interesting lace type of plant, and others were flourishing.

The springs were atop a relatively flat spot of the mountain we were climbing. There was a large pool at the top that flowed down into another large pool that appeared to be cleaner and used for bathing. The upper pool was covered in algae, and we decided that it must not be for bathing… The water was crystal clear and there were tiny fish (less than half an inch long) that nibbled on us while we swam.

This pool was artificially dammed to get the pool to its large size (as seen on the top right of the photo above). The water was almost luke-warm. The spring feeding it must not be getting the same heat as other hot springs in the area that are supposed to be 100°F+. The creek continued downhill to the Southeast and eventually led into the Jemez River.

We left the warm springs around 7:30 or so and hiked through the sunset and into late dusk. We ended up taking the correct trail that we should have taken on the way up and it was much easier to hike. However, it did scare us a bit as we were approaching dark on an unknown trail. It appeared to be heading the correct direction, and I could hear the river which would’ve led us to the parking lot. We arrived at the bike just in time to be the absolute last guest to leave (the last car was pulling away as we got to the parking lot). We got to see the moonrise over Battleship Rock though!

(Click for link to Google Maps)

Share/Save

840 Miles of Southwest Fun!

It all started out with replacing a REALLY bent inner fork tube for the VFR. Check it out… <sarcasm>Can you see where it is bent? I’m not sure that it is pronounced enough.</sarcasm>

Tamara and I fixed the bike up together and went on a ride to Western NM and Eastern AZ over the Memorial Day weekend holiday. Check out the photos here: Memorial Day Weekend Ride.

Day 1 (Friday): 80 miles to Socorro

We left after work around 6:15pm and headed to Socorro. The wind was a bit high and we were heading into it. The one hour drive to Socorro couldn’t go by fast enough! An annoying start to the ride. We stayed at a Howard Johnson that was strategically placed across the street from Socorro Springs Brewery. They have the best beer and pizza in the Southwest! This would be our only stay in a hotel, too.

Day 2 (Saturday): 280 miles to Bill Evans Lake

The 280 miles to Bill Evans Lake outside of Silver City involved a beautiful drive to the Bosque del Apache just south of Socorro on NM1 and then across Emory Pass on NM152. We traveled north on NM35 and NM15 to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. The day was growing late from taking our time at the Bosque and then stopping at overlooks on the way over the pass. We wanted to try to find some hot springs in the mountains, but did not find any (that were free to the public at least). We ate dinner at a fine dining lodge called the Breathe Inn (ha!). It was in the middle of nowhere, but the food truly was fine. We had brie cheese with a strawberry glaze and chile rubbed shrimp cocktail for appetizers. Then, stuffed chicken and blackened ahi tuna with a fruit salsa! Pretty neat little stop in the middle of nowhere. We made our way to Silver City and decided to press on instead of stopping for the night just north of town at a campground. We found a public man-made lake (Bill Evans Lake) that had free camping and we called it a night there.

Bosque, Emory Pass, Cliff Dwellings, NM15

Unfortunately, we did not bring the proper sleeping gear for the weather. We got a bit cold. This time, dawn couldn’t come fast enough! As a matter of fact, I woke up once at night and thought dawn was coming. I was very anxious for it to show up. Then a few minutes later, Tamara got up to go to the bathroom, and I hear her say, “Awe crap! It’s the moon!” HAHAHA, we got a great laugh out of that the next morning… We got out of camp around 8am and headed West to Arizona. We made Clifton, a mining town, at around 10am and grabbed breakfast at a very busy local hole in the wall. We met up with two BMW riders from Phoenix that were also going north on US191. They had made the trip before and told us some pointers. We kept up with them for the first few miles, but we wanted to stop at overlooks and they didn’t. So we lost them. Then, we met up again at Hannagan Meadow Lodge. The BMW guys shortly after we arrived. They were trying to get all the way back to Phoenix that night! They were high mileage riders. We made it back to New Mexico after a lunch stop in Alpine, AZ. We pressed through Apache Creek (our original stop) and then tried to find food in Pie Town. Unfortunately, everything was closed… They were supposed to have good pie, too. We went back to Quemado (40 miles round trip). Oh, did I mention that there were 40MPH winds, too? Yea, it was really windy. It really beat us up good! Tamara found the “World’s Largest Chicken Fried Steak”, and it really wasn’t that great… We had fully bellies, which helped our attitude as we fought the wind again to get to the Cibola National Forest for camping. We found a great spot tucked off an unpaved Forest Service road (FR-6A) that had a beautiful view of the Sawtooth Mountains (pretty, but not the same as Idaho’s.

Day 4 (Monday): 160 miles to Albuquerque

Again it was cold, and we were cold and dawn couldn’t come fast enough. We slept later after the sun began to warm the tent nicely. We headed to the VLA, and took the walking tour. Got up close with a dish and saw the service repair building. Then, we fought the wind to Socorro before heading north to home trying to avoid the interstate wherever we could. We found NM-47 which goes from Belen to Albuquerque along the river. It was a great road and much nicer than the interstate.

All the photos can be found here: 2008 Memorial Day Weekend Ride

Share/Save

My Dad, Hollifield and I had another set of successful track days this past March and May. We started at Arroyo Seco on March 8. My Dad and I were down there and taking turns on the GSXR750. The track was running counter-clockwise. I enjoy both directions, but seem to find better lines going counter-clockwise. I guess it is because I have ridden that direction more often.

Sandia was on May 4. The track was running clockwise which meant that the poor little CBR F2 was going to have trouble in the front straight. The carbs need to be re-jetted, but we have not had a chance to try to work on them. I had my GSXR750 out there for the first time since Dave (the previous owner) last raced it out there.

The day went well though. Both of us have not been out there since 2006, so we started in the beginner class. Near the end of the day, after no meatball flags to send us up to intermediate, we were asked to do so. Intermediate was a much better place for us anyways. Our track friends were all there and they were riding expert. Neither of us was comfortable enough to move up to expert. We did not get any photos that day.

The next weekend we took two days at Arroyo Seco. This involved both directions. We went counter-clockwise the first day, and clockwise the second. The drive down there also proved interesting with a stop at a gas station outside of Truth or Consequences…

Both days went very well until my GSXR’s charging system went out for some reason. It was halfway through the day, and I did not want to take the bike apart to have to put it together again! I did get to take the F2 around a few times though, and that was a good time! It’s a fun bike even though it has top-end problems. It was not a race weekend. This meant the track was an open all-day session (come and go as you please). We were good about pacing ourselves though. The only downside to this was that there were only 8 to 10 bikes there. It is nice to have the track to yourself, but having traffic to negotiate or at least some faster riders to learn from can be much more fun.

Share/Save