Day 26 - Antonito, CO to Chama, NM

I'm now into the "home" stretch, having entered the slast state en route - New Mexico!  Today's ride began in the early dawn chill in the flat plains of the Rio Grande valley, but the landscape changed rapidly and dramatically as we climbed back into the San Juan range of the Rockies by way of the Conejos River gorge. 
When we left Antonito at 5:30am, hoping to beat the headwinds later in the day, it was relatively warm at about 50F... But an hour and a half later, and 1000' higher in elevation in the shadows at the bottom of the gorge, the temperature dropped to about 35F! I thought my fingers were about to go completely numb as the sun finally cleared the rim of the canyon, and we began our climbing in
earnest up the 1500', 7% ave. grade up La Manga Pass (10,230') from the Hamlet of Horca, CO.
  Fortunately, the gradients never exceeded 9%, so we managed to grind our 60lbs bikes to the top without any major difficulty ;-)

Once on top of the pass, we had about 10 miles of alpine valley
to traverse before a short climb back up to Cumbres Pass (10,022') as we crossed the narrow gauge rail line of the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, and we're even treated to the arrival of the morning train at the station on top of the pass. 
Very cool to see a real 120 year old coal fired steam engine chugging up and over a 10k' pass!  The train got a lot more switchbacks than we did though ;-).

The last 10 miles of our relatively short day were gloriously all down hill as we descended down the west side of the continental divide to Chama, New Mexico. 
We arrived safely in Chama just in time for lunch as the temperature settled into a comfortable low 80's afternoon.  A cute little town, where we've got rooms in one of the old historic railroad hotels :-)

Tomorrow we'll be off towards Cuba, NM, which will probably take two days with camping along the way.   Not sure if or when Wibke and I will be able to catch up to Mike, who is planning to blitz much of the remaining miles on pavement in the night to avoid the heat of the day.  We're going to try to get miles in during as much of the cool mornings as we can, but also ride shorter days 40-60 miles), slower, and on more gravel.  We're also hoping to get a bit more shade on some sections of the route that are found along the narrow dirt roads up in the mountains and mesas, but not on the main paved highways... Fingers crossed!

So much for today from the GDMBR - Cheers!

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