Pinto Canyon

This was the ride on Thursday. Craig could not make it and as Greame needed to first go to Presidio for an inspection sticker, I went with him. Scot went ahead and as it turned out we were never able to meet with him that day.

After our detour in Presidio, we took a dirt road through Casa de las Piedras north towards Marfa.

After having lunch at Mandos and an espresso with the barista Eli at the coffee shop we turned south and went towards the Pinto Canyon.

I will use an explanation of our trip that I found on the Internet which I thought it was very well written and quite accurate ...

"

My favorite drive in Texas begins west of downtown Marfa, by the Texaco station. In less than a minute civilization is a memory as the road is swallowed by the waist-high grasses of the Marfa Highlands. The 7,730-foot Chinati Peak rises from the horizon under a perfect blue sky marred only by a distant thunderhead, and the rolling terrain slowly gains altitude. Telephone lines and barbed-wire fences disappear, and nothing is left but road, land, and sky.

Thirty-two miles from Marfa the pavement ends and the excitement starts. At first the dirt road is almost as wide as the paved portion, but after a couple of miles, it drops precipitously, twisting and turning down hairpin curves from a ridgetop into Pinto Canyon. Scrub oak and mesquite appear in this sheltered basin, where some of the low-water crossings are so jammed with gravel and stones that you have no choice but to slow to a first-gear crawl.

The dirt track winds through the canyon for ten miles, passing an abandoned mining operation before dropping out of the Chinati Mountains onto a long desert slope that reaches all the way to the verdant Rio Grande floodplain. At the unmarked fork in the road, bear left for Ruidosa. A few miles and three mailboxes later, a stop sign at the quiet village of Ruidosa marks the junction with FM 170. Don't take the return to pavement as a license to hotfoot it. You'll miss the La Junta General Store and Ben's Lounge, the only way stations open to travelers on my favorite drive, and the winding twelve-mile drive to Candelaria is punctuated with numerous low-water dips and unexpected obstacles, such as the family of five javelina that sauntered across my path. A few folks are stirring, taking note of the arrival of an unfamiliar vehicle. Mexico is just across the river, but notions like borders and sovereignty have little meaning here. This is as remote as a town on a highway can get.

"

It was another unforgettable day of riding and we have to thank Scot over and over again to use all his UPS logistics experience in putting together these outstanding routes.

 

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