Here is your first real navigational moment, so listen up.
Coming into Questa, Highway Five Twenty-Two ends at a junction with State Road Thirty-Eight. **You want to turn RIGHT onto Thirty-Eight, signed for Red River.** If you go straight or left you end up heading for the Colorado line and the Wild Rivers turnoff, and you will have left the circle.
So: right turn, onto Thirty-Eight, toward Red River.
The junction is in the middle of the village, so you will be slowing for the town anyway. There is fuel here and a couple of places to eat, and this is a reasonable last stop before the climb — the next twelve miles are uphill through a canyon.
Once you have made that turn you will immediately feel the road change. It stops running along the edge of the plain and turns INTO the mountains, following the Red River upstream. Within two minutes you will have walls on both sides.
Make the right, and we will climb together.
Photo: Forest Service, USDA · Public domain