Our own little Alp d'Huez

We woke up pretty early, around 7 o’clock we started driving towards Gila National Forest via the Pinos Altos, which hours later would crowed with cycling fans because the tour de Gila would finish there. While driving we did not see many other vehicles on the road, maybe the odd cyclist on his way to Silver City for another cycling day. After a short while, the road became narrower and it had a couple of hairy turns. A good thing that we did not encounter any traffic coming our way, because some of the turns were so tight that we took the entire road to turn the motor home. At one of the overlooks we stopped, somebody had gone over the edge of the road in the past and had crashed their car in such a way that the poor sod probably would not have survived the crash. It was a sobering moment. After a short stop, we went on and we came to another overlook. A couple was having breakfast, while were admiring the stunning view we stroke up a conversation. The couple told us that in a matter of a couple of hours the Tour the Gila would come by at that same spot and that is was probably one of the better spots to view the cyclists up close. At first, we wanted to continue to the park, but we both thought it would be fun if we could see them up close. We parked up the motor home properly; it took almost the entire turn out to park up. We had some breakfast and a cup of tea whilst waiting for the cyclist to arrive.

More and more cars were pulling up trying to park at the same spot we were in; it was turning in a right little Alp d’Huez! Around ten-thirty the first cyclists were in sight, than a second group with Lance Armstrong with some other big names as well. I managed to get a couple of descent shots of Lance Armstrong.

Nils & Karen, the couple we had met at the viewpoint, drove us to a better point along the road, it was impossible for us to pull out our motor home at that point. From our new advantage point, we had a second change to view the cyclists one more time. We met up with some of the other people we had met in our previous spot; one of them was the spitting image of John McEnroe. Even his voice sounded the same. Some of the were huge cycling fans and they seemed to know a fair bit about cycling and kept us up to speed. In the distance, we saw the leader coming up and shortly after that; we saw a second group coming up with Chris Horner leading and Lance Armstrong right beside him, followed directly by Leibheimer. After waiting a short while the cyclists had to start their climb back up the mountain, this time the Lance Armstrong and his teammate, followed by Leibheimer were much closer to the leader. Here I managed to get a couple of decent photos.

Number o4. is Lance Armstrong
Number 71. is Chris Horner
And in the red jersey is Levi Leibheimer





After waiting till most of the cyclists had past by, a small group with Floyd Landis came by. Landis had won the Tour de France a number of years ago, but after the tour he tested positive and was banned from cycling for a number of years. This year he was trying to make his come back, however he did not seem to do that well. After the last cyclist had gone past we all exchanged e-mail addresses and said our goodbyes and hitched a ride with Nils & Karen back to our motor home, they also were heading towards the park, but it took us longer to get up there. Besides we had to find also a spot for the night, which we did at Upper Scorpion Campground.