Off to Grants, New Mexico - Navajo country

We woke around 6, had tortillas and melted cheese for breakfast, packed up and left at 8.

 At first we were riding along a dirt road, heading north. We had a southwesterly wind that gradually got stronger throughout the day.

The road surface was pretty rough in places...sometimes it was rocky, sometimes bad washboards, and then we encountered something new: patches of sand. This made the riding really difficult as the bike would fishtail and be really hard to control. We regularly came to a standstill or slid off the road.

 We saw a squirrel and a few horses. In one area, someone had put down loose gravel which made the riding really treacherous. I rode right thorough it, hard work with the bike constantly sliding around, but Pete and Gay couldn't manage it on their touring bikes and ride on a dirt track beside the road instead.

A bit further along, we saw a pronghorn antelope running away from us beside the fence. There was a fence on the left but not on the right. The pronghorn kept running, looking back every few minutes to see if we were still there. Then a truck came the other way and the pronghorn was trapped between us and the truck.

 It ran back towards us, panicked and tried to climb through the fence. The truck stopped and the pronghorn finally ran across the road and off into the open land on our right. 

After about 48 km, we reached a sealed road.

We were all kind of tired from the washboards and the sand, so we stopped for lunch.   The only shade we could find was behind a barbed wire fence, so we crawled underneath and ate in the shade of a tree surrounded by dried cattle dung.

 Tim Hinderman came past. He was riding strong, and intended to have lunch in Grants.  We continued along the road. The wind had picked up, and was often a tail wind so we were blown along.  

Then the wind would change to a cross wind, and I found it hard to keep the bike under control. Several times, I was blown off the road.

We passed through the El Malpais National Monument, an area with huge sandstone cliffs on one side and lava fields on the other. 

 Translated as "The Badlands" It was a stunning area. At one point, we passed a stone arch. Beautiful.

 We saw a couple of large hawks circling up on the thermals.  A bit further along, we decided to stop at the ranger station to ask about the wind and weather conditions for the next few days, but the woman there couldn't tell us anything. Outside, I saw a lizard about 20 cm long as we were getting ready to leave.

After about 103 km, we reached the intersection with the Interstate highway, I40, where there was a petrol station that sold food. The wind was really strong by now, and it was great to get inside out of the wind and eat and drink. There was even wifi...and cellphone access for the first time in four days! 

We weren't keen to ride into Grants along the Interstate, so we followed the "old road", Route 66. This headed west, right into the headwind. We crossed over a railway line just as a train was passing. The train had hundreds of shipping containers on it, some of them stacked two high.

It was hard work riding the final 12 km into Grants, and I was struggling a bit. The wind was even stronger, and it was a huge relief just to get out of it. We decided to stay in a hotel and take a rest day...my body is certainly feeling it now, and I've become a bit run down. We'll explore Grants, take on more food and plan our journey to Cuba.