March 31/2015 Weather 80 today and 49 tonight - clear and dry. We are riding a section of Old Route 66 in Albuquerque hat then jumping on a road that will take us up into the Sandia Mountains. Sandia Crest sits at 10,678 feet. We can see the snow on the peak and know it will be cold on top. Putting on the Leathers today!
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| see the rusty red dirt on the snow |
You can take the road to the top about 14 miles, its a really good road. Taking our time with the altitude and the same going down. Once we did a ride about this height in Maui and we came down too fast. At the bottom both of us had tingling fingers and toes and a light headache.
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| View about half way up |
There are several reasons for the name and none are definitive...... Sandia means watermelon in Spanish which is popularly believed to be a reference to the reddish color of the mountains at sunset. Also, when viewed from the west, the profile of the mountains is a long ridge, with a thin zone of green conifers near the top, suggesting the "rind" of the watermelon. However, as Robert Julyan notes,
"the most likely explanation is the one believed by the Sandia Indians:
the Spaniards, when they encountered the Pueblo in 1540, called it
Sandia, because they thought the squash gourds growing there were watermelons, and the name Sandia soon was transferred to the mountains east of the pueblo."
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| View at the very top looking South along the range |
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| Albuquerque from the top - breathtaking |
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