Day Seven - Mexican Hat UT to Red River NM- 431 miles
We began the day riding north on US163 riding along the San Juan River. We went up over Comb Ridge and into the town of Bluff UT. This is a rather depressing town and I believe it is an Indian Reservation, so not much happening in the relatively early morning. On the other side of Bluff we turned right on UT162 and blasted down to Four Corners for a look see. We turned right on US160 to get to the park. There really isn’t much at the park other than some “booths” set up to sell trinkets, most likely made in China, but I digress. We snapped a few tourist style pics and went on our way. We continued south on US160 to Teec No Pos where we caught us 64 and headed east to Shiprock. We hadn’t eaten, so we stopped in Shiprock for some breakfast, but made it quick and continued our east bound trek. US64 is a wide open large highway on the high plains at 5,000 ft, so we didn’t mess around, letting the throttle out a good portion of the way. Through Farmington and Bloomfield and before we knew it we were in Dulce. Although it didn’t really like it we were climbing at a pretty clip and when we reached Chama we at nearly 8,000 ft. We needed to turn right south of Chama, but we decided to tour Chama as it was already 2:00 in the afternoon, and we hadn’t seen much except for road to this point. Chama was supposed to be a rustic little town with a train stop for the old Rio Grande Railway. There looked to be a lot of activity at the station, and a tour bus was parked there, but we must have missed the train or it was about to come. Either way we are not the type to wait around. So, we continued back onto US64 and traversed into the New Mexico Valley and headed up the Tusas mountain range towards Brazos Cliffs. We knew we were climbing now and when we reached the Cliffs we were above the 10,000 foot mark. We stopped for some pictures and a brief rest before continuing. Going back down the mountain range we were met by some nice riding with far views and nice sweepers. We stayed on US64 although we had considered taking the old dirt road and crossing the old steel truss bridge, but we opted to try the newer bridge and forego the dirt. We reached the Rio Grande River bridge and were not disappointed.
We stopped at a couple of different spots to get some nice pics. We said goodbye to US64 for a while and turned left heading north on NM522. Not much here as we reached Questa and turned right heading east on NM84. We didn’t know what was in store for us as we motored towards Red River and our final destination for the day. It was an absolutely fantastic road and when we reached Red River we knew, without saying anything to each other we would ride that again.
We checked in and quickly decided we had more time to ride. So we went back down to Questa, once again enjoying the road. I had staked out a nice overlook that led to what looked like a great spot at the confluence of the Red River and Rio Grande rivers. In Questa we headed north for a short time before turning left on NM378. This road meandered high above the Rio Grande on a cliff that led to the overlook. We stopped there for an extended look, walking around and enjoying the view. Anyone who says they don’t like to know exactly where they are going and prefers to “see where that road goes” simply doesn’t get it. We would have never found this road if we didn’t have previous knowledge. Anyway after our viewing we were giddy knowing we got to ride NM38 back up to Red River. We went back to hotel and headed to dinner on foot. We had a nice dinner at a local spot and really enjoyed walking the town before the rain hit hard.