June 07, 2010

I slept on the couch in the hotel room last night. For that reason, I paid a smaller portion of the cost. Good deal, I think.

We slept in this morning (6:30 for us is sleeping late). After slowly getting ready, we rode to the only grocery store in town – a Route 66 gas station. There was a wide selection of foods, but none were good for camping. I’ll have to ration my food for the next few days.

We left Abiquiu with the intention of only riding the 20 paved miles to El Rito. When we got there, we were disappointed. It is not a place to spend a rest day. We used the computers and ate lunch at the local community college and hit the road again at 16:00. We would try to get in another 20 miles.

We made the distance by 18:45, but found ourselves without a place to camp. We continued on pavement, searching for any decent place to set up three tent (decent means public land, away from the main road, and preferably flat).

While on the road, we rode past a truck sitting idle on the side of the road. Auke rode over to ask if there were any places to camp in the area. The driver was taking a piss and, by the way he talked, was quite drunk.

We turned off the pavement onto a forest road (wild camping is allowed in national forests). A few hundred meters down it, we found a flat area to camp. We set up camp just before dark. I hurriedly cooked a pot of stuffing and ate it while walking – walking was the only way to keep mosquitoes off me.

So much for a rest day…