Striking gold in Silver City

Well, well, well. Here we are in New Mexico, land of enchantment, Bob Dylan movies, large mountains to climb and puppets! No complaints though, all the folks here are treating us very, very well and we're having amazing adventures...

First off, we leave Chris in El Paso to cycle a lovely 50 miles of flat, wind-free pecan groves to Las Cruces. We arrive in Las Cruces for Marianne's 21st birthday! YAY! Our hosts there, Lee and Cindy show us around their really cool retro house, treat us to a lovely italian dinner and then we catch I'm not there, a film about Bob Dylan, at the Fountain Theatre in La Mesilla. A following day in Las Cruces included some trekking around town, finding used maps of all our next destinations and some really tasty dinner and birthday cake for Mare...

From Cruces, we battled ridiculous winds through Hatch to end up at Caballo State Park, where we camped for the night. While we were informed about an eclipse of the moon, the evening saw nothing but clouds over the shores of Caballo Lake which made it impossible to see the eclipse.

Then, comes the epic Emory Pass... 8828 feet of elevation and an intense climb from Caballo. We broke the ride up into two days stopping at the Black Range Inn, in Kingston, after more really intense wind. At the Black Range, we enjoyed a great nights sleep and a lovely breakfast. Then, the final eight miles of pure uphill intensity. When we reached the top of the pass, the wind was blowing very, very hard and the downhill was pretty great.

After the pass, we got the oportunity to stay with Pat, in Hanover. She made us a lovely dinner and we got to hang out with all her animals. Pat sent us off to Silver City with a batch and a half of her amazing cookies... definetly worth climbing for.

Upon arrival in Silver City, we stopped in at the bike shop for some tubes and recomendations on a good place to stay. We were promptly sent to the home of Jamie, Paul, Andrew, Gretta and Joel, their two chickens, dog, cat and room full of giant puppets. We enjoyed a birthday party for Erika, a friend, on Saturday night. Sunday, another friend, Christian, very, very kindly lent us his truck so that we could go check out the Gila Cliff Dwellings while a bunch of people biked up the Emory Pass and back.

While the Dwellings are only 44 miles

away from town, the drive took over an hour and a half as the road is very windy through the mountains. It was well worth it though, we were really excited to check out the old structures which were built and inhabited by the Mongollon between 1280 and 1300.

After spending what felt like a very, very long time in Texas, it was hard to believe that one or two days of biking would have us leaving the state of New Mexico. We spend one more day in Silver City to gear up for the next leg towards Phoenix.

Find out more when adventures from Team Ontario continue!