Silver City isn’t the kind of place you can feel good about leaving too quickly. There’s something about it. Eszter says it has the friendliest people, and I think she’s on to something. For sure the good folks at the Bike House were kind to us, welcoming us in just about every way possible.
It was tempting to take a day of and chill in town and at the House, but everyone was all worked up about a big wedding, and we are still feeling the call of the road.
If only every trail town had burrito places and food co-ops with tasty food. We took our time in the morning, knowing it was getting hot, but not caring too much. It was a bit difficult to get organized at the house, seeing as our ‘room’ was up a ladder that was tricky to go up or down.
But eventually we did leave town pedaling up a quiet paved road directly north. I had been worried that with the fire we’d have to take the old Divide road through Georgetown, which features lots and lots of sub-par highway riding. Not so, not so! There was some singletrack CDT we could ride!
And the riding was good. Especially the first part. You could actually see that people rode it! At some point the tire tracks disappeared and the rubble appeared. I commented that I usually have too high of expectations for long distance trails that are near towns known for good riding. Eszter came back with, “I love seeing the little known trails of good riding towns.”
It was a good point. We climbed a lot, we got cooked in the sun, but it was singletrack! At the next paved road, we had to turn on pavement, since everything up ahead was closed.
If you’re going to ride pavement, this was a fantastic road to ride. I loved it. Very low traffic, beautiful scenery, big climbs. Oh, well, maybe not the last part quite as much as the others.
It took longer that expected to plummet down to the Little Toad brewery, where we held out some hope of finding a good meal. It was fun to see a number of familiar faces there — all people we has just met the day before, or some we had just seen and noticed in town (with bikes). This wedding was a big deal, apparently.
We could have waited for food, but decided to stay out of their hair and continue on down the road, hoping for an ice cream and gas station type snack break at Lake Roberts. The good dudes at Gila Hike and Bike had told us of the store there.
They didn’t know, or tell us, that the store doesn’t open until Memorial Day! Oh it was a crushing moment to stand in front of the store and read the sign. We were banking on the store to fill our feed bags with candy and chips — major supplemental calories for the push to Pie Town.
We sat broken for a bit before I asked someone about options. 25 miles to Mimbres. That’s it. Ouch, we’re hosed.
But wait, just down the road is the Lake Roberts Motel, what do they have? Oh, only snacks, he said. Perfect, that’s all we need.
They had more than snacks. They had ICE CREAM! Yes, yes, yes ,yes! And lots of items we could make work for calories. And a hammock in the shade. They saved us a bunch of ‘off route’ riding, making it so we could head for the meat of the evening’s ride: the Gila.
I loved this beautiful dirt wilderness road when I toured the GDMBR. It usually crushes Tour Divide riders, though. And Eszter is no exception. She fears it, and so we have watered and filled up on lots of food. Always a good course of action.
It got smokey as we climbed up to the Divide to turn onto the Geronimo Trail (as the wilderness road is called — it snakes between to huge Wilderness areas and is very remote). Hot and dry. But the sun was falling and the temps pleasant. A perfect evening for pedaling. Up and down steep hills — that kind of pedaling.
We just saw two bears at the bottom of Rocky Creek. They scattered away from the tiny little campground there. So we climbed the next big hill and are situated on what may be the best campsite yet. It’s not windy, the forest is cool, the ground is soft.
Looking forward to a nice night, the rest of the Gila, then rejoining the CDT maybe by sunset tomorrow. Then it’s on to Pie Town!
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