Rest day, Platoro

We have ridden a total of 703 miles, or 1,125 kilometers, since we started riding on the Mexican border.  The last five days getting out of New Mexico were brutal, and we need to recover before we tackle the next stage.

 We've seen some interesting creatures yesterday: a snake, squirrels, a deer, a hummingbird, and a strange thing called a "groundhog" that looked a bit like a brown otter. Oh, and two bears -- except they were stuffed.

We have finally left New Mexico and are now in the state of Colorado.

Colorado is a beautiful place, huge hills, lots of trees and wildlife, and the people are really friendly.

We are in a tiny village called Platoro, which is only occupied during the summer -- in the winter everybody leaves because there's three metres of snow on the ground.  A rest day. We spent the day doing laundry, maintaining our bikes, and resting our weary bodies.

It was an eating day as well as resting day.  I had a "roast beast sandwich" for lunch, and a baked cherry pie for dessert. Yum. The others seemed to be eating almost constantly, but I wasn't particularly hungry today.

I borrowed a book from the cafe, and had to finish it before we leave in the morning, so most of the day was spent reading. At one point, I joked to Gay that we were like prisoners, enduring enforced idleness. After the past couple of weeks, it felt weird to do nothing for a day.

We'll be continuing north towards the city of Steamboat Springs. It should take us another 8 to 10 days of riding to get there.  There will still be a few nights when we have to camp out, but there are lots more towns we'll be passing through now that we're out of the desolate areas of New Mexico. So we'll be able to eat and sleep better, which should help us to recover from each day's riding. We also hope that the road surface will be better, so we can make better progress than the slow days we've had recently.

Tomorrow we are climbing over Indiana Pass, which is the highest point on our entire ride...almost 12,000 feet.  Exciting.