5,000 feet (1,250 Dogs)

Tonight, we are in the historic town of Fort Davis, the seat of Jeff Davis County, and a veritable hotbed of cultural and natural attractions. It has one of the best preserved 19^th Century frontier forts, not that we had time to visit it, but we did pass by the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center on our way in from Alpine today, and tomorrow we will be setting off into the Davis Mountains, where we will cycle past the McDonald Observatory, which has several large research telescopes and hosts astronomers from around the world.

During our short 24-mile hop today, we climbed to over 5,000ft, and tomorrow only gets higher… but more of that later. It was a bright, clear, sunny day today, yet was surprisingly chilly: definitely a leg warmer day. We had a relaxed morning in front of The Weather Channel checking the forecast, especially the wind direction (our constant obsession) and set off late given the short day. It was truly a beautiful ride in every way, and for about 10 miles in the middle of the trip we experienced a little bit of cycling heaven…yes, as we crossed into Jeff Davis County, we were treated to some perfectly smooth road surface, a joy that we have not known for a long time, together with a tail wind and a gentle descent…awesome! We were going to call this blog “We love you Jeff Davis”, but as the road surface changed back to its usual state, and we started to climb, our appetite for this title waned somewhat…

It’s a quiet night tonight in preparation for our 90+ mile ride tomorrow, with some serious climbing: we will get up to over 6,000ft within the first few miles, and will then have rolling terrain after that. We are staying at a lovely hotel: super stylish, with everything that we need, and very reasonably priced. To satisfy our “Eat the Borderline” fans, we should say that we had a fantastic meal tonight of traditional Mexican food, and are now back in our room early, watching the Hound Group on the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show (the US version of Crufts)…bliss. Len & Tanya – you will be glad to know that there is a beautiful example of a Rhodesian Ridgeback on as we type. But, somehow the Whippet ran away with it…closely followed by the Greyhound. Usain Bolt was nowhere to be seen.

Us x