Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Devil's Tail

Can it be we have only 6 weeks left to complete our journey? We are suddenly at an exciting point, with many great motorcycle roads to discover in New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona.

Our ride today initially took us northwest out of Silver City on NM 180, This road took us through familiar hill country, with low scrubby ground cover and omnipresent mountains lurking off in the distance.

We turned west on route 78 which took us across the border into Arizona. The change in vegetation was sudden and profound as we rode into the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest. The road suddenly started twisting as we bagan a dramatic descent of several thousand feet down to the junction of US 191. A few miles north on 191 lies Clifton, an old town set deep in a canyon. Clifton has a real character that is hard to define. A lot of its old architecture has been preserved, and with the cliffs and hills all around it just seems to nestle comfortably in the lanscape like a chook in a nest. We stopped there for lunch and a well-earned break.

From Clifton, the road leads to Morenci, site of the largest open-cut copper mine in the US.,

US 191 climbs 5,000 feet over the next 60 miles heading north to Alpine AZ. It has no towns, no services and virtually no traffic. Once designated US 666, this road has become known to bikers as the Tail of the Devil, a not-so-gentle prod at the much-hyped Tail of the Dragon in Tennessee. Trucks over 40 feet are turned back by advisory signs.

Along the wat the vistas were breathtaking - from 4000 feet above the valley floor you can (we are told) see peaks 100 miles away.

The 2000 ft descent towards Alpine was on a more open road that allowed for much higher speeds and we made good time getting there, The town is appropriately named. In the space of a few hours we had travelled from desert to wildflower filled alpine meadows at 8000ft altitude.
We went to several motels before we found one to our liking and budget. The afternoon was still young, so we walked into town, checked out the shopping and had a beer before returning to our room.

There we met three Americans (Stan, Mike and Tom) and a Swiss lady (Barbara) all travelling together on motorbikes. We chatted for a while before heading back into town for dinner. We shared one meal- which was just as well, because the steak was too big for one person to eat.

On returning to the motel we picked up again on our conversation with our new made friends, until we all decided it was ime to bunker down.

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