June 8, 2023
Zeros for Heros
A zero day in Abiquiu
We took our long awaited zero day in the beautiful town of Abiquiu. There is a great river running beside the riverside retreat. Its fed from the colorado river basin. That diversion runs into a reservoir, which the locals say is full, so the river is running at max. This river runs into the Rio rande which goes down to Santa fe and then to Albuquerque (my spelling of these townsmight be off). The cottonwoods along the river were releasing their cottoney seeds and it made it look like it was snowing. We slept well since it was nice and cool. Its been getting down to the 40's at night and my modified hammock underquilt has been more than warm enough.
Most of the riders that were here yesterday planned to move on today. The talk of the town was the snow blocked passes ahead. The pass after Platoro and Indiana pass (12000') apparently have snow pack left. The grape vine says that the road maintenance people sent a grader up there a few days ago and it had to turn back due to snow. Allegedly there is 20 miles of snow up there. Line said definitely dont do it and some people were posting on a GDMBR facebook group about potential re-routes. So the two younger guys (alex and brian), the couple (jones'), and Line left this morning. We planned to go to the family dollar (2 miles away), but when we arrived it was closed! so we had to go back to the overpriced Bodes. After some shopping, we went back to the retreat. Barb and Bob from VT showed up from Santa Fe, where they had stayed a few days trying to let the snow melt. They have been active on the FB group and were the ones talking to rangers and posting re-routes to get to Del Norte. We spent the rest of the day chatting with them and later in the afternoon a Swedish couple showed up. I think they have been taking a gap year and traveling the world on their bikes, most recently in Austrailia. They had 40mm tire gravel bikes and I was amazed. I certainly felt like I had it good on my 66mm tires. Then I was complaining to the new people about how hard it was to find food along the trip and Barb mentioned how she is type 1 diabetic. Sure put things into perspective. So our tentative plan is to ride to Santa Fe tomorrow (about 50 some miles), rent a car, drive to Silver city, get our car, and drive past the snow to somewhere in CO.
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