12/1-A Little Spin on Gravel In Between Rain Showers

The sun was actually shining this morning! Rain was supposedly coming in around 2:00, so we decided to take the unloaded bikes for a ride. Of course, as soon as we got our bike clothes on, it started to rain. But, it only spit rain for a few minutes. Being smart like we are, we did take our rain gear with us. We headed back to the bridge we had come over coming into La Junta, but instead of going over the bridge, we took a left to follow the river. 

First we stopped in the plaza to admire this Christmas Tree made of plastic bottles (now that’s recycling!).

The view of the mountains and the plaza. They were putting up more decorations in the gazebo. 

Once we were following the river the road turned to gravel. What was surprising to me was that the gravel roads were not muddy after all the rain we’ve had. 

The road was mostly flat, but later on we encountered a few easy hills. It was good to make the legs do a little work. 

We stopped and walked down to the river for a moment. 

You can see Markus is already at the river. 

Nice river and blue sky. 

The further along the road we went, the more we were headed toward some dark clouds. After about 10.5 kms, my Garmin said a climb was coming. Since it also looked like rain was imminent, we turned around. 

We went a bit farther than this photo. 

Sure enough, pretty soon we were feeling drops of rain. We stopped to put on our rain pants/shorts. It rained a bit harder, but as we neared La Junta, the rain stopped, and the sun came out again. 

Back in town, we rode by another Supermercado. 

Quite a modern looking store. We decided to check it out. This one is even better than the one last night! They even had Philadelphia Cream Cheese! And, another thing we hadn’t seen in any of the other mercados…peanut butter (in the small container). 

I threw my purchases into my frame bag, and we rode back to the cabaña. We’ll probably ride back there tomorrow. I’ll still need to get dinner food for the next section. 

Lani and Steve made it to La Junta. They got the Cabaña next to ours. We met up with them at the supermercado. This one is the one that doesn’t have fruit or veggies (kind of like a Dollar General). Since Alex was making a lentil soup for dinner, we also needed to go to the Frutería. We showed Steve and Lani where that was. Then we came back and made dinner. 

It was very good! It had lentils, onion, carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, beets, potatoes, coconut cream, and curry, ginger, and maybe some other spices. Alex thought it would be too spicy for me, but once the coconut cream was in it, it wasn’t too spicy. 

As we were sitting after dinner, it was, of course, raining. But I could see it was getting brighter in the distance. Pretty soon, it was still raining, but it was really bright. I said to Alex and Markus, “There has to be a rainbow out there!” I went out, and sure enough, there was an awesome rainbow. 

Oh, and it’s 8:30pm! Last light is at 9:50 tonight!

One more day here tomorrow, and I promise we are leaving (selling the cabaña, and moving south)!