Miles Saturday: 131
Hours in the saddle: 3:15
Saturday was our one reservation, at The Lightening Field, an art installation. It’s 400 lightening rods over a 550 acre space. You show up at 2pm and they give you a ride out to a “rustic cabin” along with 4 other people. Dinner (to pop in the oven) and breakfast ingredients are provided and you stay overnight. They pick you up at 11am the next morning and deposit you back in town. It’s open from May-Oct, so it gets just over 1000 visitors per year.
The reservation process was kinda crazy. They accept reservation requests beginning at midnight on Feb 1. I was going to stay up until 2am to send it and Jaron suggested that there had to be an automated solution, which there was – a plugin for gmail. So my email went out exactly at midnight, but 3 days later I received an email saying that I was on the wait list. After another several days, a spot opened up. They give uou a couple of days to pay online, so I figure someone didn’t pay and I got their date.
So Saturday was about getting to Quemado on time. We had lunch at their one restaurant and gassed up and went to the Dia Art Foundation office. We had to pack for overnight away from our bikes. The other 4 people showed up and we piled in to an SUV for a 1.25 hr ride to the cabin.
The caretaker was a pretty stereotypical cowboy. A man of few words, weathered face, etc. He dropped us off at the cabin and said to call if we needed anything. So now we are at a cabin in the middle of nowhere with 4 strangers. We all joked that it was the start of a really bad movie. The other 4 were two couples in their 40’s-50’s from San Francisco. It was a little uncomfortable at first but we found plenty to talk about. The caretaker pointed us to a room with a separate entrance that actually used to be the shed, so we had our own space.
Pictures are not allowed because copyright, and we definitely didn‘t take any. Nobody brought a drone and Julie definitely didn’t get to fly it.
Well, we didn’t see lightening, so we’ll have to come back during the height of monsoon season next time. But we had a good time and the sunset was amazing. As the sun set, the sunlight reflected on the lightening rods and it was super cool. Here are a couple of pictures of the sunset and the moon.
This picture of the stars was taken by another guest who had a real camera.
While we were there, I got to read a booklet on the installation. They looked for the right piece of land by truck in AZ, NM and CA for like 3 years. Then the survey took 5 months. The precision on the spacing and height of the poles is pretty impressive, especially for 1977. Installation took 3 months and was done by a crew of high school students.
Jaron made breakfast for everyone in the morning and the caretaker even showed up to take us back.
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Miles Sunday: 146
Hours in the saddle: 3:08
Drops: 0
From there, we did some riding in El Malpais, the badlands, and camped at El Morro.
The 9-site campground was almost full and the accessible site (with instructions to fill that site last) was paved, so we took it. It was right next to the vault toilet which is not Julie’s favorite place to camp. And yeah…the wind changed. Other than that, it was a really good night of camping. We got there at 5:00 and set the tent up in daylight, which was weird. It was amazing how many things we got right the first time and didn’t have to re-do because we could actually see what we were doing. We chilled out and made dinner and watched this gorgeous sunset. I mean, it looks like the sky is on fire.
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Miles Monday: 181
Hours in the saddle: 6:41
Drops: 1 (Julie)
We got moving early because Julie really wanted to see the Ice Cave and we were heading to the Petrified Forest next.
We went to a privately run attraction to see the Bandera volcano and the Ice Cave. Julie was very intrigued by the existence of an ice cave in the middle of the desert. The ride in was on a sandy road. Jaron fishtailed on one section but held it together, so Julie slowed down but went down anyway. The owner’s husband walked over to talk to us when we pulled in and he was very interested in Julie’s lowered bike because he was on the shorter side. He asked if he could sit on it and I said sure. He said that it wasn’t leaned over enough and kicked the kickstand puck out from under the kickstand. I said no, I know my bike, and put it back. My kickstand is the adjustable one that I got after lowering the suspension and it does not have a wide foot like the original one does, and it sinks in to the ground really easily. He pushed back like 3 times, mansplaining to me how to park my bike. It was really weird, and I think I earned a cookie for handling it well.
So with parking done, we went on a couple of short hikes to check out the volcano and ice cave.
The ice cave stays at 31 degrees and the ice is 20 feet thick. The Pueblo people called it the winter lake. It’s a lava tube that holds cold air in. So crazy for it to be in the middle of the desert, during a drought and a heat wave. It was legitimately cold.
Next, we crossed the Arizona state line and went to the Petrified Forest. We had no idea that it was a 26 mile drive with 20 stops and to expect to spend 2 hours there. So we decided to stay nearby and hit it in the morning in the spirit of actually enjoying our vacation.
We are staying at the Globetrotter’s Lodge for the next 2 nights, which was recommended by at least 2 people and/or books. It’s an eclectic place. After we came back from dinner, 3 Harleys were parked next to us and 3 couples were speaking Polish as they got settled in. We figure they rented them since Jaron noticed that the bikes all looked really similar.
We walked to a nearby steakhouse for dinner. There must be a lot of international visitors, because the menu listed grams next to ounces and had Welcome in several different languages…not typical for a steakhouse. It was very touristy.
Oh, and here is a random tidbit from the Globetrotter’s Lodge.
More to follow tomorrow about the Petrified Forest.
Ps: I got really behind and didn’t publish an almost-finished blog before going off the grid. If you wonder where we are bc I haven’t posted, you can always check the Spot beacon page that’s on the first blog for this trip and see where we’re checking in at.
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