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.
On the way it passes Chaco Culture, Halfway House, Aztec Ruins National Monument and back through Halfway House. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,100 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Pueblo Pintado stands in the high desert of northwestern New Mexico, on Navajo land, and it is the easternmost of the great houses connected to Chaco Canyon. Around a thousand years ago the people we call Ancestral Puebloans raised masonry walls here, several storeys tall, laying thin sandstone into patterns that still look careful today. The ruin has been roughened by weather, but the arrangement of rooms, the circular kivas and the long arc of the building are clear, and you can walk around it on a short trail.
Read the complete Pueblo Pintado write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pueblo Pintado is where the day begins. Next is Chaco Culture.
Getting to Chaco Canyon is part of the point. The last stretch of road into this remote corner of north-western New Mexico is unpaved, rutted and washboarded, and after rain it turns to slick mud that can make it impassable for any kind of vehicle. Take that seriously: on a road bike it is tough, and on a big touring machine it can be miserable. But the reward is extraordinary. Between roughly 850 and 1150, the Ancestral Puebloan people built monumental great houses here, multi-storey stone buildings with hundreds of rooms, aligned with the sun, moon and cardinal directions, linked by straight roads across the desert. Chaco Culture National Historical Park was listed by UNESCO in 1987.
Read the complete Chaco Culture write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chaco Culture comes up about 63 km into the recorded legs. Next is Halfway House.
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.
about 144 km into the recorded legs you reach Halfway House. 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.
Aztec Ruins National Monument, about halfway. Next is back through 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.
back through Halfway House sits at 206 km, about halfway. Next is back through Chaco Culture.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chaco Culture write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chaco Culture comes up about 349 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pueblo Pintado.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pueblo Pintado write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pueblo Pintado closes the day.
Pueblo Pintado → Chaco Culture is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chaco Culture → Halfway House is 81 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Halfway House → Aztec Ruins National Monument is 62 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Aztec Ruins National Monument → back through Halfway House is 62 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Halfway House → back through Chaco Culture is 81 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chaco Culture → Pueblo Pintado is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.