US-89. Return Trip Day 6. "Bandelier National Monument"

Wednesday, July 27th, 2016. The goal today is to ride from Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado to Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico via Taos, which is about 325 miles. 

I wake at 6:00 AM and hear a guy screaming happily. I heard him last night and really thought nothing of it because I was sure it was just someone having a good time. But, now I can hear that his yelling and screaming is in pure gibberish. Is he doing some Colorado drug?  I then see an older man come out of the rest room after brushing his teeth go into the same camp. He quietly walks into the camp behind the trees where the screaming is coming from. Then I see two teen girls come out of the camp, stop and start talking about shopping. They all can hear this man screaming, but none of them appear to take any notice. They all appear to be used to his screaming. 

Then Ann comes by in a jacket, as I am now in my Tee-shirt. Ann tells me to have a great time. She says Tom keeps asking if I have left already. Not sure why anyone really cares. 

I then decide to recover from the dumpster my top-roman meal from the previous night. I used my extended selfie stick to hook onto the garbage bag at the bottom of the bear dumpster.  I pull the bag up and grab my unused meal. I am a happy camper. 

At this same time another man has left his coffee machine from his RV outside the rest room.  A deer has come up and is staring at the coffee machine, sometimes approaching it and then backing off. I am about to take a picture of the deer when a lady came out of the rest room and scares the deer away.

I pack up my gear and go over the park café where I have a huge stack of pancakes and eggs. I am stuffed.

I head off to Durango, where once again a small town and the traffic is terrifying me. I finally got out of town and headed towards Taos.

The road to Taos is probably the best stretch of road on the trip. There are hardly any cars, the weather is just perfect around 70 degrees, the actual road is in good shape and the speed limit lets you move at a decent pace. I continue past chimney rock and over a mountain range until I hit the bleak high desert about 30 minutes outside of Taos. 

Just before entering Taos, I am casually cruising and come over a very small hill. All of a sudden you think the circus had come to town. Lining both sides of the highway are booths of goods, and all kinds of strange people selling them. There are also people stopped on both sides of the road, for this is the Rio Grande Gorge. I pass over the gorge and it is a fine site to see earth dropping hundreds of feet down.  All of this suddenly in the middle of a desert. 

I enter town and quickly find a café to get a New Mexican lunch. I have a vegan blue corn tortilla disk with green chili.  It is wonderful.

I leave café and as normal the GPS sends me in the wrong direction. I go 5 miles back in the direction I came through with horrible summer traffic. I find another route back around the city and I am soon following the rio grande to Bandelier National Monument. The temperature along the river eventually gets to 98 degrees. 

I get to Bandelier and there was no one working the ranger both at the gate, but there is a sign that says to go to the visitor center if you have a pass and show it to the ranger. So, I drive 5 miles to the visitor center, go in and hand my pass to the ranger. He looks at it and says “looks good, now go back to the entrance and check yourself in for camping”.  I cannot believe it.  I could have just gone to the campsite in the first place. I found a site and then go to the automated machine to get my $12 ticket. This is quite a deal as compared to Mesa Verde at $32 dollars. Really, the only difference is Mesa Verde has showers , a store and a laundry. Both parks have flush toilets, which Tom and Ann hold as something most dear. 

It is nice going to these lesser national parks and monuments. They are about 10% full, if that. I had lots of options at Bandalier and got a great site near the rest rooms, water and bear box. I just hope tonight I do not have any crazy person screaming. 

At Bandelier, unless you are camping you must take a bus to visit the park. There are ruins to visit, but since I finished getting setup up around 5:00 PM, the visit was out of the picture. You also must walk to the ruins, which also adds more time, unlike Mesa Verde where you can drive right up to most ruins. 

I am sitting writing this blog and Dan and Wanda come by with there little Chihuahua dog. Dan comes up to my table and tells me he is from San Angelo in Texas. They have the RV at the bottom of the hill, and used to be camp hosts in a neighboring campground for 4 years. Dan knows quite a bit about the population of New Mexico and gave me tips on how to visit an Indian pueblo.

He once had a friend that was a chief's son. He said he sat out with them on one trip and then they started drinking a week brew that they had collected.  Dan then decided it was time to leave once they starting getting a little looped. I talked to Dan about a half hour about the cultures of New Mexico and how they do, and do not get along. Really interesting guy to talk to.