Day Sixteen....

Christ I love the San Luis Valley......

Took off from Salida on a cool (high - 50 degrees), cloudy day, but NO precipitation. Cool....good....

Entered the valley at the Northern meeting of the San Juan Mountains and Sangre de Cristo Mountains at Poncha pass. Cruised for about an hour, then wondered to myself (believe me.......riding a skooter for six, seven, eight-plus hours a day??? You DO talk to yourself!!): "Ya know, E? You never DID actually grab a PAPER map of the various states that you are going through on this trip. Errrmmm......HOW exactly are we gettin' to Edgewood??"

Gosh......good point. This was the San Luis Valley! Not really a place where I can easily bop into the AAA office and grab a buncha maps.......













So, no sooner did I wonder WHERE the hell I'd go once I got to Alamosa when I got to Moffat, Colorado. Now, there are other places in the lower 48 that ARE more Geographically isolated than Moffat, but no place FEELS more Geographically isolated than Moffat.

Still, though....next to the post office, there was a cafe with Wi-Fi. Always ready to enjoy a cup of tea, and eager to figure out where the hell I'm going, I stopped in.










So, looked at Mapquest, figured out what was where, hung out with a couple (who rode on the bike pictured on the left in the above fotograff) who were headed to Salida, and talked to the proprietor. Nice older eccentric sort who liked to dig up as well as create jewelry and art. He told me that I should swing by Crestone, Colorado, as it's only 15 miles off of the main North-South road (Colorado 17) on a road going East towards the Sangres.

"Well, yeah.....it's kinda a weird place, but hell, I like the Crestoners....I mean, a lot of 'em are my customers! It's really worth a ride out there." he opined.

Well, I git to Crestone, and I find out that it's some sort of whole-foods, holistic, spiritual, older-hippie sort of place. Kinda got THAT right offa the bat when I went to the Information kiosk at the beginning of town and saw what the accommodations offered......





















Here's just one of 'em: The I AM Harmony Bed and Breakfast.......loved their landscape architecture........










Right, so I ride into the sort of "residential part" of the town (for lack of a better term 'cause there appears to be no Land Use and Zoning code in Crestone) and came to the end of the paved road. Wanted to go see the Zen Centre, but, sadly, I did not wish to play "off-road Helix".........









.......so I turned around and headed back out and saw a group of mule deer......









....and looked to where they had been standing on the left side of the road (JUST BEFORE this pic was snapped), and saw a rather unusual sign......









OK....now, I didn't quite grasp this, as whilst there have been several evenings where I have been in a stupor and yet managed to enlighten people (some of those evenings have been on this very adventure), Jangchub Chorten is not somebody that I have had pints with, nor is Jangchub anyone on my pub quiz team.......so I got offa the Helix forra closer look.

As I got to the top of a hill, saw these weird cloth napkin-type thingies in several different colours with weird writing on them. Thought maybe I stumbled upon a curry house by accident.....



















Rode to the top of said hill, and saw these weird mounds of small rocks in front of a sort of monument. It was weird.....never seen anything like this before in such a strange place...they don't really advertise places like this.....



















Sooooo......I took a walk around......




So, I took a few bucks from that little brown bowl for my lunch, said "Thanx!" to those four weird Buddhist super-hero action figure guys, and headed back into Moffat forra quik bite!

Naw.....seriously, it was a fascinating site......so I dropped a few buxx into the bowl and looked around on the ground for my own little rock to brace it against the wind.

It's good Karma.......and Christ knows, I need as much of that as I can git!!

About an hour later, after exploring the area of Crestone, I saw a few local businesses.....so remember: ALWAYS support your Village Which and your local Holistic Dentist.....



















For more info and specific details regarding Crestone, check WiKi by clicking on the link.....




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Made it to my friends Will and Cindy's place in Edgewood, New Mexico around 7:15pm.


This is friend stop number three, and, much like Denver and L.A., generally, I prefer catching up with close friends of mine who reside outside of Portlandia (or outside of Ora-Gaaaan, for that matter) much more than I like to sit down in front of the EEE pc and force myself to write every Goddamm day.

I tend to be most excited about writing when I'm ALONE in some strange ratty-ass town, in some ratty-ass motel with my ASUS EEE pc and a cheap bottle of wine........

.....on that note, I'd be staying here from the 17th of May through to the 27th of May.......so please forgive me for the layoff from this blog.

More on a sidetrip I took in the next post!!

-E-