Abiquiu to the top of the world!

BETH writes - Mom and I said good bye to Mike really early at the Albuquerque airport and drove back to Abiquiu. Thanks Mike for a great week and half with lots of climbing!! For the next two days Mom was going to stick with me and carry my BOB trailer. Today was a 4400 ft climb over 28 miles. The weather and scenery were beautiful. With no trailer in tow the climb over rock and through sand was easy. I climbed out of a valley of Juniper and Cacti to a Mesa where Mom and I had lunch looking out over the countryside and up into the mountains. Once we were in the Santa Fe National Forest the habitats would begin to change as we climbed to higher and higher elevations. The climb was along the Polvadera Mesa over looking the volcano like Cerro Pelon peak. All along the ride today there was evidence of people cutting firewood. This is a legal practice in many of our National Forests in order for the forests to be thinned and cut back on fire. In this stretch I am not sure that the cutting would help prevent fire. People would cut and leave pieces everywhere. Mom and I could have had a great fire, except the fire danger is extreme because of the little rain New Mexico has had. The highlights today where the Blue Grouse, Great Horned Owl, and terrific storms and lightning we watched before going to bed. We camped at the top of the world - or so it seemed. We had a view on all sides at 10,300ft. After dinner we watched the clouds roll up over the hill we were on and collide with the clouds and storms over the Cerro Pelon. As the lightning struck through the sky the light reflected with the setting sun making the entire sky light with red, purple and orange colors. The sky was layers of clouds all moving in different directions and settling over the Pelon. It was wild to watch and we were happy we were not under the storms!!!
JAN writes - Today was truely one of the best I've had on this adventure! We said goodbye to Mike in Albuquerque and drove back to Abiquiu for Beth to resume riding where she left off. Since today was to be hot and also the hardest climb of her entire ride, I kept the BOB trailer in the car and was either a few miles ahead or behind her. Today made any previous off roading days look like a walk in the part! Thank goodness I was in a Jeep! My son would be saying, "Way to go Mom!" And my husband would have been horrified at what I drove over today. We had deep sand, gravel, Bandelier Tuff (compressed volcanic ash), volcanic rock, and everything in between. There were ruts big enough to lose a small child in, which I luckily could straddle. The warnings for this stretch were not to drive or bike if raining as the sand turns to quicksand and the tuff to slickrock. But since today was bright and sunny we went ahead and even went further than originally planned. We climbed and climbed and climbed - about 4,300 feet. We quit at the top of the world - on top of the Polvadera Mesa in the Santa Fe National Forest. We were on the northern rim of the Valle Grande Caldera. We quit at 10,350 feet high. We went from cactus, sage brush and scrub trees to blue spruce and fir. We climbed through areas that are being logged with pinon pine and junipur to logged areas of ponderosa pine and aspen into areas that had been logged several years ago. We saw birds galore. Blue Grouse, Owl, gorgeous Western Tanagers and lots of unidentified birds in the once forested and now open areas where grass is now growing. We have not seen a single sole today. It was slow going - it took us 5 1/2 hours to go 29 miles. I doubt I ever got up to 10MPH. There were times Beth was out riding my driving because of the terrain. I was ahead of her once and stopped to wait because of cows on the road. 4 young calves became very intereseted in my car and came closer and closer until they started licking the bug encrusted front of the Jeep - the Jeep had a "cow wash". What started out as hot, is now breezy and cold up high on the Mesa. We are both wearing several layers. I might just stay up here forever!