Day 13: Santa Fe to Las Vegas -- 72 miles
Onto the interstate with Glorieta Pass as our first objective.
The pass was the site of an important civil war battle, although perhaps not as important as "Gettysburg of the West" implies. Only about 40 men were killed, but the South was blocked from its ambitions to get access to Colorado and California.
We made a short detour to check out this old Pecos River bridge that was part of Route 66 for just a few years before the road was re-routed away from Santa Fe. The people in the small town of San Jose seemed impressed that we'd come 1,000 miles to see a bridge that no longer goes anywhere.
This part of New Mexico is beautiful but sparsely populated. Lon stopped here to inspect a remnant of the road which used to come up from the bridge in the previous picture.
"Uh, remind me again why are we riding in this direction?" An enormous thunderstorm missed most of us by just a few miles as we hurried into Las Vegas around lunchtime.