Red River, Wagon Mound, Springer, NM and a 16 yr old Waitress

We woke to more wonderful weather. The nights are cold at altitude. Nip is on the verge of being cold. He's resorted to sleeping with all his clothes on including his long undies. Complicating his sleeping is a leak in his thermarest mat.
Finally, we soaped his mat up and found his leak and put tire patch cement on the hole which stopped the leak. Nip was now hopeful of better nights sleeping to come.
There is a 100 mile figure 8 couple of loops in the Taos Mtn for a great ride of the area. We would do most of that today.
Here we are at a historic building just outside of Penasco...Nip and his Harley make a great model.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

We stopped at Kristi's Kafe, near Mora, for breakfast. It was a good choice. Good food and good quantity. By the time we finished the temp had warmed to perfect.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Lots of open country

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Lot's of old ranch houses/barns returning to dust....

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Nip follows along passing another old relic of a building. We went north from Mora.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

The folks have time for their churches up there.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Back to the relics...

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

I have great respect for these guys. Looks like fun if you can just subtract the pain in the legs.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Springer NM is east a bit. I needed to go there as my last name is Springer. A true adventurer had to go there. To that end, we took 120 east. I hadn't noticed that a bit of it was dirt, but only about 15 miles.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

We went up to about 9000 ft, and saw a Cinnamoned colored 200 lb Black bear who was all about getting the hell away from us. That was cool with us. I'd have a hard time doing a quick u-turn for an escape.
Shortly we regained pavement, but at the hotter plains lower level of 5000 ft.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Look at those blue skies and cotton ball clouds.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Wagon Mound next......
The 25 miles out to Wagon Mound was sweet. Lots of decaying old ranch building as almost all the old small towns that were bypassed by a freeway (in this case I-25) are drying up.... Still, they have a charm all their own.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Photos often lose their sharpness when you shoot from the saddle....

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

I love a red barn......

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

the ride was complete with antelope......

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

We stopped at a convenience store for sodas to help with the new found heat of the Praire. Oh....it's Sunday and small-town America may be closed. Today was that day. Wagon Mound school, across the street, was good sized.

From Drop Box

We rode 25 miles north to Springer....It was another town bypassed by I-25. That kills the commercial aspect of a town which soon relegates the town to hardly more than residential....with some quaint older downtown buildings.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

We stopped at the town museum...they had a tribute to a fallen soldier from last year, RIP.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

I'll bet the Cozy Motel could tell some stories about the good old days, but those days have faded into the past. :cry

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

We had spent enough time down here in the heat, and I had seen the town of Springer. This was a far east as we'd go on this trip.....it was all west from here. We headed toward Eagles Nest back on the Taos figure 8.
We found a place to eat in Eagles nest. It was kinda an upscale restaurant, but their country fried steak burger was huge and inexpensive.
I'll remember this place as we had a 15 or 16 year old waitress. She was actually the dishwasher, but her older sister, the real waitress, had let her handle us.
We were the second customers that she'd ever waited on. She was cute, and made a lot of rookie mistakes, but still she was a highlight of our day.
A nice red bike sat out front....

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

We moved on to Red River. Our first stop was at the CofC building. It was closed but their Wifi reached to the shaded tables out front.
I wanted to check mail so Nip went for an hours ride, and I fired up my netbook. When I was finished I wandered around out back and found the original Snowmobile.

From Riding SM4C, Sabmag

Nip came back...we went to gas up. There was a nice air supply there so Nip took the time to check and air up his tires. I noted that he had a time getting the air chuck to seal on his tires valve stems.
Soon we were on the road.....it was about 5pm. I'd been watching the map and thought that we would soon run out of FS campgrounds....like in 10 miles or so. Nip thought it was too early to camp. Yeah it was early, so we continued
We rode on to Questa and made the proper left turn in town. As we left town, Nip who was leading made an out of the ordinary stop on the road's shoulder. Whassup....I wondered.
Nip said that his rear tire suddenly went flat...WTF. Sure enough it was dead flat. What to do now. A guy and gal walking told us that at the last Maverick station, just a 100 yards behind us, they had a tire bay and would fix that tire. No crap....how's that for luck?
Nip wobbled the bike back and the store owner who ran the tire part came down to work on our tire problem. Apparently when the tire was installed with a tubeless steel stem it wasn't tightened enough, and when Nip had trouble airing the tire up he had knocked it so that it leaked.
Our new best friend, the Maverick station owner, was able to get it tight, and within a half hour it was all aired up and ready to go.
We asked about campgrounds on down the road toward Taos. They said there were none so we back tracked to a campground a few miles back, and set up for the night.
Nip enjoyed a much better nights sleep with a mat that held air.

Tomorrow we would see the legendary Taos.........