Grants to Albuquerque, NM 04-24-2026 Day 14

We awoke to one of the coldest mornings so far. When we walked down to the lobby of our hotel for the continental breakfast, it was about 35 F. Once the sun came up, it warmed quickly, but I started off in my heaviest jacket, 2 layers underneath, and leggings.

In minutes, we were on McBride Road that led us to a frontage road that represented the Historic Route 66 that ran along its replacement, I-40. Ron was ahead of me as we went over I-40 and he got distracted and missed the turn for NM 124 (Rt. 66). At this point he was several 100 yards ahead of me. I had lost sight of him as he went over a hill. I took the correct turn and thought it was odd that I couldn’t see him ahead of me. I just assumed he was feeling extra strong and wanted to do a quick pace. The wind had already gotten strong and I was going better than 16 MPH. I went at least a mile without seeing him. I figured he knew where he was going and would we meet up long before we needed to get on I-40 for a segment. I was admiring some of the remnants of old houses and the landscapes.

While I was stopped to take the pictures I could see Ron pedaling up from behind me in the distance. When he pulled up I asked if he had a flat or some other issue. That’s when I found he had missed the turn and had been pedaling madly to try and catch up with me.

From there we rode together and passed through what used to be stops along the road. Now they were just remnants of abandoned houses, gas stations, and motels.

We went about 33 miles on NM 124 (Rt. 66) until we crossed over I-40 and were ready to change onto the interstate. It gave us a nice view of where we had been. Along the way, there were beautiful red rock formations along a stretch of road known as Dead Man’s Curve. I thought I captured many shots on the bike mounted GoPro as well as some video. Tonight they seemed to be lost. You wouldn’t have believed how great it looked! Probably because I can’t show you 🙁 This is what we saw as we looked back from atop the I-40 overpass.

As we started to go down the ramp onto I-40 near Mesita, we noticed some new signs. As you can see one sign basically says no bicycles, where another asks the bikes to use the shoulder.

At first we just saw the No bicycles part and started looking to see what our alternatives were. They were all bad – adding lots of pointless up and downs and many more miles. We even stopped a local woman to ask for directions. She basically said one of the alternatives we were considering to the north would literally leave us high and dry – without water. We went back to the entrance to the interstate, caught sight of the sign about bicycles using the shoulder and came to the consensus of “Screw it – we’re taking the interstate”. And we did until we got to the Highland Meadows exit. We wanted a little break. As we started back on, we noticed a similar set of signs, equally confusing.

It all seemed like a scene from the first Rocky movie – “Are you closed to everybody or just the general public?” Anyway, we pressed on to the Rio Puerco exit and Route 66 Travel center for lunch.

Coming out, we were able to ride a frontage road north of the interstate that had a very long , hot multi-mile climb before we crossed over I-40 to catch Route 66 into Albuquerque. It was literally all downhill from there – sometimes at 30 MPH!