They rode across a mesa and then descended to a wide creek.
Mesa Verde National Park, the most popular of these spectacular ruins, was but one of thousands in the area where the bikers camped.
A chopper landed ahead of them on a wide, flat mesa.
Such land is found in Palencia, and in the Mesa de Ocana, where it yields abundant crops; and many of the northern mountains are well wooded.
A conspicuous feature of the New Mexican landscape is the mesa, a flat-topped hill created by differential erosion and projecting above the surrounding country like a table.