Day Thirty-Seven: Angel Fire - Springer

After sleeping al fresco, we were ready to get out of the woods, so we packed up quickly and exited the trail to the mountain road. There were cars parked at the trailhead, meaning hikers must have awkwardly been passing by our tent while we snoozed, but hey, no one complained as far as we know. We rode downhill to Eagle Nest, another popular ski area with a grassy valley and a flat, still lake. We were a bit unimpressed by the lake, (snobby Pacific Northwesterners), but the town was charming. and we stopped in at a delightful little diner for a hearty breakfast. After a pleasant breakfast, we began to walk out the door, but we were stopped by a woman in her forties and her husband. She whispered to me to “Be careful in these parts. Seriously. This is the worst I’ve seen it.” I wasn’t quite sure what she was referring to until she hinted toward issues of sexual assault, and Slater and I were both rightfully taken aback by her seriousness and creepy tone. So, it’s safe to say that we got the hell out of there as fast as we could (even though I think she was a bit crazy), and left for another day’s ride.

The steady downhill allowed us to keep a fairly quick pace, and despite a few breaks to take cover under trees due to spurts of rain, we arrived at our halfway point without too much of a struggle—that is, besides one incident where a giant bug went SPLAT into Slater’s eye, then stung him, and he flew off of his bike. Luckily, he got away with only a puffy eye.

There wasn’t much in the small town of Cimarron, but a grocery store hosted us for another curbside lunch of lunchmeat and crackers. Slate talked to the Deputy Sheriff, who was familiar with the area, and recommended that we stay at the Oasis Motel once we arrived in Springer (our end destination for the day). It was another 25 miles, so we debated back and forth whether we could beat the approaching storm, and decided that it was worth the risk. The last leg wasn’t bad, surprisingly, until the final five miles, during which we were blasted with 30 mph headwinds, slowing us down to a near crawl. Springer wasn’t much of anything, either; there was one RV park, but it was next door to the correctional facility, and after that woman’s ominous warning, we opted out of camping there; there were two gas stations, one much larger than the other; and there was one liquor store, which served both as a convenience store and a “bar”, welcoming locals to sit around a coffee table to sip their drinks of choice; and finally, there was the Oasis Motel, where we crashed for the night.

The motel was possibly the cleanest we had encountered so far—thank God—and the office inside was run by a lovely old woman and her really freakin’ cute dog. Our friendly neighbors were grilling burgers outside, and all of the visitors seemed quite happy to be there. We bought microwave burritos from the gas station for dinner, as that was just about all we could find, and bought Bud Light Limes from the “bar” down the street while we chatted with the guys inside. Those put us to sleep quickly, as did the soft hum of trash reality television, which we watched mindlessly before dozing off for the night.