DAY 7: Taos to Espanola, 43 miles It would have been nice to cycle all the way from Taos to Santa Fe. But even by the shorter, less scenic route, it was over 70 miles and we'd be heading southwest into likely strong westerly winds again. So we decided instead to head for Espanola (about two-thirds of the way) and cycle the last 30 miles into Santa Fe on Thursday. We'd already decided we'd take the Park-and-Ride bus from Santa Fe back to Bernalillo on Thursday afternoon as there are no nice roads to cycle between those two points. For any cyclists who are reading this, there are actually two routes from Taos to Santa Fe (or Espanola). The eastern route, called the High Road to Taos, is longer and hillier, but more scenic, passing through some nice mountain villages. The more direct (western) route down Highway 68 is also pretty scenic and downhill for about 20 miles through the Rio Grande Gorge - that's the route we took. I've heard it gets pretty heavy traffic during tourist season, but in the first week of June the traffic was mercifully light and we really enjoyed the ride. We could have done those first 20 miles in less than an hour except for the strong headwinds that kept us peddling downhill. There were whitewater rafters on the river and beautiful high rocky cliffs on both sides of the narrow gorge. Some pretty nice scenery. The last 20 miles were a little less scenic as the gorge opened up into another wide, windy valley that had us plodding along into Espanola at ridiculously slow speeds. As for Espanola itself, there's not much to see or do there but several decent motels and the usual assortment of franchise eateries. We had a comfortable, if uneventful night. NEXT

John overlooks the Rio Grande A black-crowned night heron fishing the Rio Grande Museum? Old cars and old gas pumps on Hwy 68