Southwest Virginia Blogs

There’s a good long dirt road through the Gila National Forest, and I spent one weekend exploring it.

I rode into the Gila National Forest from the East, on NM 152, which starts off straight and flat, then passes through two old mining towns (Hillsboro and Kingston) that are enjoying a resurgence, which means that property values are going up. Millionaires who can no longer afford to live in Sedona or Aspen now move to towns like these. I just rode on through, though, and only took one picture, of a church (in one of those towns):

As I noted in another post, I met Joe (Triumph 675) and Willie (Harley-Davidson) on my way up Emory Pass (8200′):

Here’s the view looking East from Emory Pass:

I passed several campgrounds after descending from Emory Pass, and a couple of them were packed, so when I saw Lower Gallinas Campground and saw no one there, I headed down the steep dirt road and followed it a mile or so, and only saw one occupied campsite. Continued along a bit farther, and selected a nice spot beside the dry creek and set up for the night:

While I was setting up, a family from Texas came hiking up the stream bed and the father stopped to chat with me for a bit. They were camped another mile or so down the canyon. A couple of hours later, the father drove up from their campsite and brought me dinner! A bowl full of fish stirfry with rice, and my choice of Bud or Miller Lite or Coke. I took the Bud and enjoyed a delicious meal sitting on a rock near my tent watching the hordes of chipmunks waiting for me to spill a bite.

In the morning, I went to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument (to get the stamp, of course). I didn’t do the 1-mile hike to the dwellings, figuring I’d save it for later.

I had spoken with several folks about the condition of the 120-mile road through the Gila National Forest. One forest ranger told me it was treacherous and dangerous and I should definitely not do it. A couple of motorcyclists I met while having breakfast in Mimbres told me it was quite rideable and to have a good time. But the clincher was the young lady at the Gila Hot Springs General Store (I should have asked to take her picture) whose eyes lit up when I told her I was taking the road by Waller and Snow Lakes. “That’s the way to see the Gila!” she said. And she was right, though I think a backpacking or horsepacking trip would be even better.

So, I return to the road marked “No Services Next 120 Miles” and point the weestrom into the Gila. I hadn’t gone but a couple of miles or so when I saw an intriguing sign for the Northstar Helispot:

Of course, I turned left and followed the rough gravel road through the junipers and pinons, to find a large group of firefighters, several trucks, and two helicopters.

I chatted with one of the pilots for a bit, and then they started loading the ships to fly the firefighters, two at a time, into the Gila to fight some still-small forest fires there:

One thing I learned out here is that big fires have names, like hurricanes. Perhaps that’s the case everywhere, but I found it interesting.

After the choppers left, I continued my journey into the Gila. The next few pictures are shots I took along the way, to show the variety of the road and the terrain:

If you zoom in, you see that the GPS says we’re at 8040′:

Sometimes the road’s crooked:

Sometimes it’s straight:

Sometimes it descends into canyons:

This is the descent into Rocky Canyon, where there’s a nice campsite at the bottom:

More dirt road through more woods:

Here’s the beginning of the descent into Black Canyon:

There’s actually water in the creek, and several campsites along the creek:

Looking back into the canyon from the north side:

A corral:

A watering hole:

There are some sideroads that look pretty interesting, but I didn’t explore them (well, except for the one):

Waller Lake is beautiful, but it’s privately owned, so no camping, no fishing:

Another view:

A fellow I met at Snow Lake described this high valley as God’s Most Beautiful Golf Course. The picture does not even begin to convey how open and beautiful this place is:

The sign reads: “Caution. One Lane Road Next 57 Miles. Drive Carefully.” I passed one truck, one car, and one motorcycle in that 57 miles.

This sign reads: “Tencow Canyon”

More straight-through-the-golf-course riding:

I only saw forest fire smoke once:

Snow Lake was my intended campsite for the night. I passed several beautiful unoccupied campsites along the way, but the lure of Snow Lake kept me going:

There were half a dozen occupied sites, and I found a nice levelish site, not too far from a family group. I chatted with Fred for a while, and later in the evening his son and girlfriend came over to give me a grilled trout and a roasted ear of corn and to invite me over to “their place” for the evening. I hung out at their campfire ’til late in the evening, enjoying roasted jalapenos, cold beers, and of course that tasty trout fresh from the waters of Snow Lake. The conversation centered on a scheme one of their friends had for making a million by getting into the cat-racing business.

In the morning, Fred and the cat-racing entrepeneur were down at the lake fishing:

I packed up and continued through the Gila, and when I spotted the sign for the Negrito Lookout, only 1 mile off the main road, I decided to go for it.

Sure, it was a little rough, but I was battle-tested on all the rough steep canyons I’d already ridden. Of course, it got rougher and rougher, and after one mile, I “parked”:

Needless to say, I was a bit depressed about dropping the bike on a rough sandy rocky road probably 20 miles from the closest human being. Still, I did the usual ADVrider thing and got out the camera to take some pictures, then removed helmet and jacket and some of luggage and “unparked” the bike and surveyed the damage. Not too bad, except for that busted right winker.

Anyhow, having come so far, I decided to hike up the rest of way to see the lookout tower.


The view from the top was pretty nice, but then most of the views around here are pretty nice;

This picture just gives an idea of the size of the rocks in the Negrito Lookout side road:

Here the road runs by Negrito Creek:

The Negrito Creek Canyon gets pretty deep and the dropoff on the right side of the road is a doozy:

Finally the rough gravel road turns into a rough semi-paved road as it begins to descend into the San Francisco River valley:

Civilization again. Frisco is where Elfego Baca was from:

The San Francisco River:

The road between Apache Creek and Quemado is almost all like this:

Somewhere between Quemado and Grants there are huge laval fields and beautiful sandstone cliffs:

The SFNF is northwest of Santa Fe, and surrounds Los Alamos. There are some excellent roads, paved and unpaved in that area, and these pictures are mostly along Forest Road 103, about 30 miles of beautiful gravel road roughly connecting Cuba to Coyote.

Cuba is a small town, and even their welcome center seems to be closed for good:

FR 103 begins on on NM 126 just a few miles East of Cuba, and it’s beautiful from the start:

This is a side road off of FR 103. I didn’t explore it.

Teakettle Rock is just sitting there beside the road. I took a little rest break there and I’m pretty sure I heard it whistling.

The road goes ever on and on . . .

There’s occasionally a nice view:

A creek runs through Coyote, and there’s an auto shop above the creek. They use the little canyon as a place to toss old cars:

There’s not much else in Coyote. I stopped in the little store to inquire about land in the area and was told in no uncertain terms that no one would sell property to Anglos. Oh well.

As I noted earlier, I rode to New Mexico this summer. I took a lot of pictures. This first post has some pictures of ghost towns.

My first NM ghost town was Lincoln, famous for Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County Wars. I met Virtis there, out for a day trip on his relatively new GS:

Some ghost towns were inaccessible because many forest roads are closed due to fire hazard:

St Ann’s Chapel isn’t exactly a ghost town, but it’s pretty close to Ft Staunton, which is a ghost town, and it’s a pretty neat little church:

Smokey Bear is buried in Capitan, also close to Lincoln and Ft Staunton:

Phil and his KLR were heading to Old Mexico:

White Oaks is a proper ghost town, that got that way because the residents were a bit too greedy and the railroad builders passed them by. This is the old schoolhouse:

Jicarillo was a slightly less successful mining town, and cosequently had a much more modest schoohouse:

Claunch isn’t quite a ghost town, but pretty close to it. They used to have a pinto bean elevator. Now they have a pinto bean elevator museum. You have to call to make an appointment to get inside:

Rancho Bonito was built by Pop Schaffer in 1937 and is on the National Register of Historic Places:

Pop Schaffer also built a hotel, which recently reopened:

Old adobe near La Madera:

I really needed a telephoto lens to get a better picture of Coyote, a ghost town northeast of Albuquerque. It’s close to Cerillos, where Young Guns and Elfego Baca were filmed:

Golden is another ghost town near Coyote, with a beautiful old church:

Madrid is just north of Golden and folks there are making a killing off the ghost town status. This building is actually for sale!

The old Opera House in Cerillos:

Christ of the Desert Monastery is at the end of a 15-mile long gravel road that goes up the Chama River Canyon. Beautiful place:

Here’s a shot of the road to the Monastery:

Earthships are houses built out of old car tires. There’s a huge Earthship subdivision just west of Taos. Here’s one Earthship:

US 64 crosses the Rio Grande over a very deep canyon, and they frown on throwing stuff off the bridge:

I just like leaning buildings:

Stay on the path:

Eden Romero was just 13 years old when she went joy-riding with her 17 year old boyfriend, who happened to be wanted by the law. They spotted him, and a high-speed chase ensued, resulting in a high-speed crash and fiery deaths of both the youngsters. Her father built this memorial to her:

This is one of the churches where the Spanish priests worked on converting the locals. It’s now part of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument:

I met Joe J while heading up Emory Pass on NM 152. I passed him, and noticed that he was on what looked like a new Triumph 675, and wondered why he was riding slow enough for [i]me[/i] to pass him. I stopped at a lookout and he pulled in. Turns out it was the first day on his new bike and he was still in break-in. He was also just recovering from cancer.

I also passed a couple on a Harley, and at the scenic view at the top of the pass, I chatted with Willie and his sons for a while. He had one boy on the bike with him and the other was riding in the truck with Willie’s wife.

Leaving tomorrow for the Land of Enchantment. Will be there all summer, working on control moment gyros. Here’s my mode of transportation.

Leaving tomorrow for the Land of Enchantment. Will be there all summer, working on control moment gyros. Here’s my mode of transportation.

Having some time on my hands, I ventured southwest and southeast over the weekend, and studied up on the Smoky Mt Barbecue establishment.

My wee ride began at about 8 AM with sub-freezing temps in Blacksburg, but I plugged in the Gerbing, heated up the grips, and headed out through Fairlawn to one of my favoritest roads: Little Creek Road, which runs along the south face of Big Walker Mountain. I explored a new dirt road near Blacklick, then continued south and west through Rural Retreat, Cedar Springs, Sugar Grove, and Volney, all scattered on good crooked roads. In Volney I stopped for some petrol, then continued west a bit on another fantabulous road: US 58. Instead of doing the entire run to Damascus, I turned left on VA 743, which was new to me. It’s a fairly rough and narrow paved road all the way to the NC state line, at which point it transmogrifies into a very nice well-maintained smooth black asphalt raceway, NC 194, pretty much twisty all the way to West Jefferson.

In West Jefferson, I located the target establishment, parked the motorcycle, and ventured inside:

It’s a clean well-lighted place for pig, and you choose your vittles by lining up at the counter, where you pay and pick up all at the same time. I had the small pork plate, which came with three pups and two sides. I selected the red slaw and the brunswick stew, and sweet tea to wash it all down. Here’s what it looked like before I started in on it.

After lunch, I did a lot of nice riding, all generally in the direction of Rockingham, where I arrived around 5 PM, enjoyed dinner with my mother, her husband and my brother, then rode in the dark to Ft Mill SC to visit my sister and her family. Drank some brewskis, spent the night and rode back on more twisty little roads all different, including another “new to me” backway: Old NC 16. Lots to see along Old NC 16, including this cabin:

For more info, see CheapNCCabins.com :^}

A local advertisement:

One of many switchbacks along the >1500′ elevation change from Millers Creek to Glendale Springs:

An old pile of rocks beside the road:

All in all, a great time, exploring some of the best that NC and VA have to offer.

Sure, cars aren’t quite as dangerous as motorcycles, but they are dangerous when driven dangerously: Four Teens Killed In Fiery Car Crash.

Officials estimated the car was going 105 mph to 115 mph before the accident.

And this was in Raleigh, not on a lonely stretch of interstate in Nevada.

Be careful out there folks, and talk to your teenagers about the dangers of driving dangerously.

Generally speaking, it’s a matter of only mild intellectual interest to me whether the earth goes around the sun or the sun goes around the earth. In fact, I don’t care a rat’s ass either way.

More Abbey witticisms here.
I’ve been reading some old Abbey lately. Arches National Park is still a wonderful place, even though Abbey is probably spinning in his grave because of the paved roads and modern visitor center. Here’s a photo from my trip last summer:

Janklow gets law license restored Febuary 15. Janklow used his car to kill motorcyclist Randy Scott in 2003. He was found guilty and sentenced to a whopping 100 days in jail. Now his license to practice law has been restored.

His name will outlive him, as it is now used to describe blind intersections like the one where Janklow ran a stop sign to kill Scott. Read more about Janklow intersections here.

I’m happy to see that someone is taking on the Phelps idiots, and even happier to see that it’s motorcyclists: Motorcycle group shields mourners from picketers at funerals.

Phelps’ group has been protesting at funerals across the country, contending that American soldiers are dying because God is punishing the nation for tolerating homosexuality.

The “Patriot Guard”:

A veteran of Vietnam, Terry Houck was troubled by reports in a local newspaper that members of a Topeka church were protesting at the funerals of soldiers who were killed in Iraq.

So the Derby resident, who is a member of the American Legion Riders motorcycle organization, started making some phone calls to fellow veterans and other clubs to create a group that would help protect the families of fallen soldiers from funeral protests by the Rev. Fred Phelps and his flock.

The group, called the Patriot Guard, first participated in a funeral on Oct. 11, with bikers placing themselves and their motorcycles between the mourners and members of Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church.

Since then, the organization has expanded to include ride “captains,” or local organizers, in nearly every state.

So far, 940 Kansas bikers have joined the Patriot Guard, which has about 6,500 riders nationwide.

Ride well.