I Don't Think We're In Kansas Anymore

We got out of Dodge and travelled to Taos, New Mexico via the Oklahoma panhandle. We think Taos could equally be re-named "Chaos" because when we arrived, the traffic was horrendous, especially for quite a small town. It was easily the worst traffic we have so far encountered and many of the drivers seemed plain crazy, showing little courtesy and carrying out some very risky manoeuvres. For the first time, Ric was a little nervous riding a motorcycle in traffic as he never knew what the other drivers were going to do - most did not use any indicators so it was a case of riding by ESP. To our surprise, we also found Taos to be very very busy and we were lucky to get a room at all.

As we left Taos to head to Colorado, we did ride through some magnificent scenery. On the outskirts of Taos, we stopped at a bridge over the Rio Grande and chatted with a fellow who had a pet wolf. We also saw earthship housing - eco friendly houses built into the earth - which look very impressive. We rode over the Rockies - again through some stunning scenery and stopped at a viewing area at an elevation of 10,000 ft to view the expanse below. The weather was threatening so we moved on but did get caught in a brief but very intense downpour. Not small rain either. It was, to quote Forrest Gump "big fat ole rain." We survived the rain and almost getting taken out by a maniac truck driver who came from a side road and just entered the highway right in front of us without even slowing down. He must have seen us but we reckon he just did not care about us on a motorcycle. We had been warned about that though to date, we have not had any problems with any truck drivers (other than the fact that they are navigating a block of apartments along highways and creating awful turbulence).

We spent the night in Durango as the weather closed in. We woke this morning to thunderstorms and as we write this, the weather is still looking very wet and cloudy. More thunderstorms are predicted. We will leave Durango this morning for Cortez, Colorado and hope to check out the Mesa Verde area, weather permitting.