CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Aztec it runs 421 km to Aztec; allow about 10 h 06 of riding. The stops in between: Twin Angels, Pierre's site, Kin Bineola and Kin Ya'a. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
The Aztecs never came anywhere near Aztec, New Mexico. The ruins here were named by nineteenth-century settlers who assumed, wrongly, that such impressive buildings must have been made by the famous people of central Mexico. In fact, they were built by Ancestral Puebloans between about 1100 and 1300, as part of the great Chacoan world centred on Chaco Canyon, sixty miles to the south, and they are included with Chaco in the UNESCO listing of the Chaco Culture.
Read the complete Aztec Ruins National Monument write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Aztec Ruins National Monument is where the day begins. Next is Twin Angels.
South of Bloomfield, on the edge of the badlands of Kutz Canyon, a small Chacoan great house sits on a ridge with views over the San Juan Basin. Twin Angels Pueblo is one of the outliers of Chaco Culture, a stone building with rooms and a kiva, built around a thousand years ago by people connected with the great centre at Chaco Canyon, about eighty kilometres to the south. It lies near the end of the Great North Road, the long, straight Chacoan road running north from the canyon, and it is part of the UNESCO-listed Chaco Culture. It is managed by the Bureau of Land Management, and reached by a rough dirt road and a short hike.
Read the complete Twin Angels write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Twin Angels comes up about 38 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pierre's site.
North of Chaco Canyon, the Ancestral Puebloans built something that still puzzles archaeologists: a road. Not a trail, but a wide, carefully engineered path, about nine metres wide in places, running almost dead straight north across the desert for some fifty kilometres. It is known as the Great North Road, and Pierre's site sits right on it. This is a cluster of small structures built on and around a prominent sandstone outcrop, including what may have been signalling stations or shrines on top of the hill, and from its height you can see far across the San Juan Basin. Like Kin Ya'a to the south, it is protected as one of the Chaco outliers on the World Heritage list.
Read the complete Pierre's site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 103 km into the recorded legs you reach Pierre's site. Next is Kin Bineola.
Over a thousand years ago, the people of Chaco Canyon built great houses of finely laid sandstone, multi-storey buildings with hundreds of rooms and ceremonial kivas, and connected them with roads that ran straight across the desert. Kin Bineola is one of the outlying great houses, some distance south-west of the canyon, on the Navajo Nation in north-western New Mexico. Its walls still stand in places to several storeys, with the characteristic Chacoan masonry of small stones packed between larger ones. It is one piece of the World Heritage property for the Chaco Culture, together with the canyon and other outliers.
Read the complete Kin Bineola write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kin Bineola, about halfway. Next is Kin Ya'a.
A broken stone tower rising out of the sagebrush is what you see first at Kin Ya'a, and it is one of the strangest sights in the Southwest. This was a Chacoan great house, built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries by the same Ancestral Puebloan culture that raised the monumental buildings of Chaco Canyon, some forty kilometres to the north. What makes Kin Ya'a special is its tower kiva, a round ceremonial room built up four storeys high, much of which still stands. Its name is Navajo and is usually translated as tall house. It is one of the outlying sites included in the World Heritage listing of Chaco Culture, linked to the canyon by what archaeologists believe was a formal road.
Read the complete Kin Ya'a write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kin Ya'a sits at 182 km, about halfway. Next is back through Kin Bineola.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kin Bineola write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kin Bineola comes up about 253 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Pierre's site.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pierre's site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 316 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Pierre's site. Next is back through Twin Angels.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Twin Angels write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Twin Angels, late in the day. Next is Aztec Ruins National Monument.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Aztec Ruins National Monument write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 421 km.
Aztec Ruins National Monument → Twin Angels is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Twin Angels → Pierre's site is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pierre's site → Kin Bineola is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kin Bineola → Kin Ya'a is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kin Ya'a → back through Kin Bineola is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kin Bineola → back through Pierre's site is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pierre's site → back through Twin Angels is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Twin Angels → Aztec Ruins National Monument is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.