Bacon and Eggs from Yesteryear in Cuba

I had reserved two nights at the Quality Inn in Farmington, thinking that after a week of constantly changing motels, thinking that I might want to rest for a day. But one look at the town made me realize that despite the presence of a Starbucks allowing me to work, there was really no point in staying there more than overnight. I had momentum I wanted to keep going.

I was so close to the Colorado border. I could almost feel the pull of gravity of home, or what passes for "home" lately. But I wanted to give New Mexico its due as part of this long phase of my journeys. I'd spent only one night in the state, twenty five years ago, and passed through briefly only a couple other times. Moreover there was a friend I was hoping to see in Albuquerque, where I'd already booked three nights at the Candlewood Suites.

So after one pleasant night at the QI (still no TCM since Sedona), and having put in some early morning work, I checked out, gassed up, and took the highway south across the undulating scrub plateau of northwest New Mexico.

After three hours of mid-day drive listening to podcasts on my smartphone, I arrived in the little town of Cuba at the base of the low mountains just to the east. After a standard bacon-and-egg lunch in a little cafe that looked like it hadn't changed since the Great Depression, I was ready to continue on, but I was ahead of schedule and didn't feel like getting to Albuquerque so soon in the day.

According to the map, there was a paved road from Cuba that ran up into the mountains, into the Santa Fe National Forest. I decided a side trip was in order. Twenty minutes drive on switchbacks found me several thousand feet higher, with snow beside the road. I drove onward until the road turned into dirt and gravel. Almost immediately I hit mud patches and decided it was time to turn around.

At the point of my turnaround, a side road into the national forest was covered with snow. I decided some snowshoeing was in order, so I parked, strapped on the MSRs and headed up the road into the woods for about twenty minutes, passing shuttered vacation cottages. It was nice walk, in shorts but with gloves (an odd combination), and I would have kept going, but there were too many already-melted mud patched on the road that made it less than fun. Nevertheless it was a pleasant way to kill forty-five minutes.

And it let me add New Mexico to the list of places where I'd snowshoed. My life seems to be driven partly by these lists that have meaning only to me.