Day 35: Great Sand Dunes to Saguache Creek - Western North America - 2005 - CycleBlaze

June 21, 2005

Day 35: Great Sand Dunes to Saguache Creek

Got up at sunrise to admire the dunes and guess what? No wind. It was utterly still. Maybe the wind was down, but the mosquitos sure were up. One guy I talked to was covered with welts. So I decided to admire the dunes from a distance and save a trek for another visit. Why be miserable?

Great San Dunes in the San Luis Valley
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The San Luis Valley is huge and the roads go on endlessly - flat and straight. But the farm roads in the valley are empty. As elsewhere, farmers have discovered the virtues of center-pivot irrigation during the past twenty years and big, green polka dots fill every quarter section. Not much shade, either. I sat in the shade of a sheet-metal potato warehouse and had a snack. Then I rode on to Center and had a long, lazy lunch. This time there was a town park with grass and big, old cottonwoods.

Abandoned Farmhouse in the San Luis Valley
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Another storm was brewing. I hoped that I would get a tailwind, but the wind came from the west-northwest - meaning I had to work my way north. It was another long, straight road to Saguache. Unfortunately, I was on Highway 285 and had a good deal of traffic - at least by my standards. The wind shifted to more of a headwind and the farmland shifted to pasture and marsh. So I took a little time off for a snooze at a pull-out in a small grove of trees. By now, storm clouds hung black and foreboding over the Sangre de Cristos thirty miles away. I pedalled hard to get into Saguache.

I had thought that, maybe, Saguache would have been "discovered" since my last visit. No. It was even worse off. Most of the little downtown was shuttered. The really bad news was that the grocery store had shut down. How can a town survive without a grocery store? I stopped by the cafe and had a big Mexican dinner, charged up my cell phone, and watched the rain from inside - sitting fat, dry, and pretty.

Most of Downtown Saguache is Boarded Up
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As always, I got back on my bike for an evening ride. Why not? I now was in open country where you could camp almost anywhere. The ride up Saguache Creek into the mountains was just plain sweet. Two or three cars in 25 miles. I was lucky that the wind had died down because you can have some strong westerlies in this stretch.

Corrals along Saguache Creek
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After riding by meadows and ranches, I stopped just before the road started up the pass and found a nice spot in the sagebrush for my tent and me.

Today's ride: 86 miles (138 km)
Total: 1,759 miles (2,831 km)

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