I’m in Westcliffe now – soggy but in one piece (and so is the car). The weather alternated from beautiful to horrific, sometimes within a half-hour period. Look for an update later tonight.

Update: Ok, both the car and I are somewhat drier. I left Taos this morning, where the car got a lot of interest, even stopping traffic on some streets so people could have a conversation with me about the Atom. From Taos to Angel Fire, the roads were very good – nice and twisty, with a number of 15MPH (posted) switchbacks.

From Angel Fire to Mora, things got interesting – apparently I had moved the route selection slider on my map software from “highways” all the way to “not really a road”. The road doesn’t even seem to have a name, just being referred to as “Local road” on the map software. I probably should have given up and chosen an alternate route when the sign that said “Unpaved road next 12 miles – may be impassable” came up, but being your intrepid correspondent, I gave the Atom a workout on it. The car performed wonderfully, on a road far worse than any of you would ever want to take. Here’s a picture from near the summit, where the road is in reasonably good shape:

After getting through that, the rain increased to a deluge. Fortunately, by the time I got to I-25, the sun decided to peek out for a bit and I got dried off somewhat. This pattern of soak / dry repeated for the next 150 or so miles. When I arrived at Westcliffe, it was pouring again, so I landed at the first motel I could find. Of course, after I rushed to unload the car and get the car cover on it, the sun started to come out again:

Since the weather had improved, I gave a pair of prospective Atom owners rides to check out the car, and spent an hour or so talking about the Atom and cars in general.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 20th, 2006 at 8:12 pm and is filed under The Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.