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.
The stops in between: Twin Angels, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Mesa Verde National Park and back through Aztec Ruins National Monument. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,450 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
The Chacoans built roads that do not seem to go anywhere. From Chaco Canyon, the centre of an extraordinary culture that flourished in the San Juan Basin of north-western New Mexico around a thousand years ago, a road known as the Great North Road runs almost due north for about fifty kilometres, straight as a ruler across mesas and washes, toward Kutz Canyon. Along it stand small great houses, and the site known as Halfway House is one of them, a stone structure about halfway along the road, possibly a waystation or a ceremonial marker. Chaco Culture, including outliers like this one, was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 1987.
Read the complete Halfway House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Halfway House 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 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is Aztec Ruins National Monument.
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.
about 87 km into the recorded legs you reach Aztec Ruins National Monument. Next is Mesa Verde National Park.
On a high sandstone plateau in the south-west corner of Colorado, the Ancestral Puebloan people lived for about seven hundred years, from roughly the sixth century to the end of the thirteenth, and in the last century or so of that time they built their homes in the shelter of the cliffs. Mesa Verde, the Green Table, takes its Spanish name from the pinon and juniper that cover the mesa top. The cliff dwellings, tucked beneath overhanging rock, are among the best preserved in North America, and Cliff Palace, the biggest of them, has around a hundred and fifty rooms and many circular ceremonial chambers called kivas.
Read the complete Mesa Verde National Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mesa Verde National Park, about halfway. Next is back through 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.
back through Aztec Ruins National Monument sits at 206 km, about halfway. 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 comes up about 406 km into the recorded legs. Next is Halfway House.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Halfway House write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Halfway House closes the day.
Halfway House → Twin Angels is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Twin Angels → Aztec Ruins National Monument is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Aztec Ruins National Monument → Mesa Verde National Park is 140 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Mesa Verde National Park → back through Aztec Ruins National Monument is 141 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Aztec Ruins National Monument → back through Twin Angels is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Twin Angels → Halfway House is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.