Apr 15 - Las Cruces NM to Show Low AZ

What a perfect day! I really was at a loss as to where to go today. I was just here last November and picked off a lot of the NM stuff, and Deb is coming out Saturday to hit the other interesting stuff with me and Jacob, so where to go. I poked around over my crappy motel coffee (with real dried coffee creamer, yum), and I saw it. A weird little road in what turned out to be Arizona, that was long and really, really wiggly. I pulled the little yellow guy on Google Maps and dropped him on the road, and it was love at first site. And it has a tunnel!! Now I need a town big enough on the other side to have a hotel, which turned out to be Show Low, and bingo, away we go.
Rt 10 (deja vu all over again from last November) to Lordsburg with the mandatory stop for security ("Are you a US citizen?") and then the back streets of Lordsburg ("Lordsburg, because Hell was full!") and then Rt 70 to Duncan, which I had been on before. Meanwhile, my fancy schmancy iPhone decided to do it's "lets burn a hole in Millers pocket and drain the battery" trick on Rt 10, so I had to cobble up some wires to re-charge. Since I don't have any real maps, I need the phone to work..
Rt 10 is either an opportunity to meditate and catch your brain up, or really boring, depending on your headset. I have taken to liking interstates (for a while), and today it was ok.
Rt 70 is a straight 2 laner (they bulldozed the other 2 lanes but never finished it so there is a dirt strip next to the 2-laner). At Duncan you turn onto Rt 75 and go through Three Way (and how did they get that name?) and then Rt 191, which is a magical road.

First stop, Clifton / Morenci where there is a HUGE copper mine, look it up on Google Maps, it's huge. I was stopped by a nice Native American woman flag-person, and we chatted for 20 minutes or so while they were washing the road. It was her first day on the job and she was really curious about Vermont, snow, cold, etc. She lived up north on a reservation and came down here for the flagger job. The road was finally clean, and off I went. Rt 191 was either built on top of the copper tailings or they dug up everything to either side of Rt 191 because the first mile or 2 you are actually driving through the mine. I had to stop for three ginormous trucks hauling ore to cross the road. Once I cleared the mine, it was switchback after switchback to climb with absolutely no traffic. And there was that little sign that said "no services for 90 miles". 20 year old Beemer with 91K on the clock and here I go into no-mans-land to die. I did pack 2 liters of liquids just in case.
This road is wonderful. It's like they gave a summer supply of whiskey to a bulldozer operator and told him to have a good time. Twists and turns, no guard rails, and unpredictable turns. The pavement was not great but ok and you had to watch for gravel on some of the turns. It was slow going so I did not get out the other end for 3-4 hours. I saw maybe 6 motorcycles and maybe 6 cars or trucks the whole time, so no traffic. And it got really cold up high. At the north end I ran into another rider (BMW 800GS) from California and he said it was raining up north and I had seen the big ugly clouds up tahead for a while. It turned out to sprinkle once or twice, but I never got wet. But it did get even colder.
At one point way up high, I hit big mountain meadows and burned off areas from a forest fire they had 10 years or so. Mostly twisty tight turns with the occasional flat stretch you could get it into high gear for.
When I came down the other side to a sort-of town called Alpine, the landscape started to get really interesting. The road between Alpine and Springerville (nice little town) is drop dead gorgeous. Big open tree-less areas with white grass growing and big puffy clouds made it downright surreal, especially after being up in the Alpine forest the last 4 hours.
So it was a little early but there is no place the right amount of time away with hotels so I stopped in Show Low for the night (and I was still freezing and a hotel hot shower sounded great). The town was named after a card game between two guys and they decided who got to name the town when one asked to "Show Low" which meant the lowest card wins, and one of them had the 2 of Clubs. So the town was named Show Low and the main street is called "Deuce of Clubs". And there you have it. 383 miles today.