Day 14 (Wed, 27 Feb)

I rode from Cloudcroft, NM to Artesia, NM today. The ride was 90 miles, nearly straight East – putting on some good miles heading to Texas.  I descended over 5,000 ft down from the mountain into Artesia.  I’m now at an elevation of about 3,400 ft.  It was a sunny day (again!), starting out quite cold in Cloudcroft (low 20s when I left at about 10a) and after the first two hours of descent, the Temps were in the 40s throughout the rest of the day.  A bit of a cross/head wind throughout the last half of the ride gave me some work getting into Artesia.

The entire ride was on Hwy 82, with very light traffic and very little human development along the entire ride – just a few cattle ranches and a few homes between Cloudcroft and Artesia.  Lot’s of clean, fresh air and time to enjoy the scenery!

I’ve now left the mountains behind and hit the western edges of the plains states.  It definitely was strange to look out onto the horizon and not see mountains - first time that’s happened during the trip.  The transition happened quite quickly from Mountains with plenty of evergreen trees/snow, to a couple of hrs of rolling hills with a few trees, to no trees at all.

I did see some wildlife today: a) I believe I saw what is called a Swift Fox run across the road (http://www.defenders.org/swift-fox/basic-facts ), b) a Golden Eagle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_eagle ), c) red-tailed hawk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-tailed_Hawk ), and d) 7 Mule Deer (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_deer ).  First time for each of those during the trip and a nice break from the typical domestic dogs coming out to greet me… 

No flat tires today!

On to the pictures:

Snow just East of Cloudcroft

Ski Cloudcroft (no skiers this early in the morning...)

Full Cycling cold-weather ninja gear for the first 2 hrs of the ride today!  For cyclists following this: face mask, lobster claw gloves, Pearl Izumi winter coat w/liner, shirt, baselayer shirt, two layers on legs, and on feet: 2 pair socks, shoe toe covers and full shoe covers - that was just about right for the 20's plus 20 mph wind going down the Mtn.

Wide, sweeping valleys on the East side of the Lincoln National Forest.

A little bit of local history.

Most of the river valley on this side of the mountain was quite flat; this was an exception where the river had cut steep sides into the mountain.

Appeared to be an old, abandoned cattle ranch/pen (or something similar - not my area of expertise!)

Looking back Northwest from Hwy 82 to the Sierra Blanca Peak area - this would be my last view of the mountains.  That's a good 40 miles away from where I took this picture.

Open plains - loads of it.

If you click on the 2 pictures below, hopefully you can see the 7 Mule Deer.  They saw me while they were near the Hwy, ran about 200 yds away from me and then for about 1/2 mile ran parallel with the Hwy in the direction I was headed - I got a little ways ahead of them so I could stop and take these pictures.

Apparently Artesia has a decent high school football team - they've won 27 state titles at their level - pretty good.  Landry Jones who just finished as Oklahoma's quarterback and is likely to go high in the NFL draft is from Artesia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landry_Jones).

Lot's of horizon in this picture given the landscape.

Updated map - making progress.