Kidnapped by Cowboys, (that's where I been.)

Or: New Mexico!
has a superabundance of…


1. Motels.
Especially Albuquerque. Albuquerque is at least half hotels. Or else motels. All of which ask you if you have triple-A when you call to request their rates. As a child, my favorite thing about AAA were the Triptiks my parents would order, those three-ring-bound portions of full-color maps, your route highlighted in friendly, blazing yellow. Ah, Triptiks, mapquest has nothing on ye. But also: Who the hell has triple A anymore?

Central Avenue, home to the resident Hipster/ Expensive as Hell/Then Sketchy district©, also used to be part of Route 66, so it’s lined with a gazillion old motels with in a parade of colors and lights from the ‘50s and ‘60s. So many of them, we stopped pointing out places like the Gung Ho Inn after awhile. We stayed at the Hiway House our first night. The Hiway House has an amazing vintage sign, cheap rates and lacks room-controlled air conditioning.

2. Nice people.
In the tiny, Old-Westy burg of Las Vegas, NM (not to be confused with the monstrosity: this Las Vegas was the Official Film Site of Portions of Movies of 2007, including No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.): We soak in hot springs, breathing in sulfur and some insanely sweet flower, eyes closed, breathing fast to abide the heat, listening as the crickets and cicadas start up. As we towel off and put on tennis shoes, our muscles lazy and langourous, a man, apparently a local gentleman, arrives. “Did you enjoy the springs?” he asks eagerly, setting down his own towel, and we nod like crazy. “Good,” he says, with seemingly real satisfaction. As we leave, he tosses out a genial “Careful out on the roads, tonight. A lot of locos out there!”

We arrive back in town to find that all the restaurants have closed. Sheepishly approach a man and woman smoking cigarettes outside the tattoo place. When we tell them our plight, they’re immediately outright apologetic that nearly all the town restaurants are closed. We soon find outselves waited upon by the Most Conscientious Teenage Boy Server ever to work a Pizza Hut.

Over the next two days, same deal in the very nice and crazy-picturesque towns of Madrid and Cedar Crest (where we stay in a hostel with goats. Not in the same room. With the goats. Not each other. Never mind.) But arriving in Albuquerque, the biggest, sprawlingest city since Atlanta, our luck's sure to run out, right? No. Enter hardcore night at local bar, where we talk to the nicest-ever metal drummer for a good 20 minutes. He turns out to be from a town near Pittsburgh, though.


3. Food. That's really. Really, Really good.
(With portions like the very desert horizon.)

Frontier Restaurant (Central Ave. Albuquerque)
It’s shaped like a barn, a yellow barn, with willy-nilly annexed rooms, each decked out in splashy western paintings of John Wayne, Noble Horses, Noble Natives and even a Noble Native Elvis (but no Noble Elvis Riding Horse or even Noble Horse Elvis.) When you get to the order window, the cashier, who’s really nice on both occasions you go, is wearing one of those old-style paper diner hats. But beyond all this: green chile stew. It is cheap. It is addictive. It arrives with fresh-baked, warm, thick flour tortillas and honey. How to convince the owners to move the Frontier to the east coast so I can eat this every week? I mean, despite the whole, um, southwest cuisine thing. And the however-many-years-in-this-exact-spot tradition-thing.


Olympia Cafe. (Um, also Central Ave. Albuquerque)
Oh. My god. So, first: I grew up in Pittsburgh, which, among other things, means this: I have consumed more than my earthly share of Greek dressing, spanikopita and gyros.

(Flashback! To Three Rivers Arts Festival, circa ’85: Mother of a Really Good Childhood friend flaunting her NPR-worthy pronunciation abilities--in a town whose local dialect proscribes that you order “JIE-roes.” In stage-voice, to cashier at stand: “We’ll have three ghhhhheeeeeros, please!” Full, gutteral thrust that caused Maria Hinojosa, wherever she was at that moment, to bow her head in amazement and envy. End flashback.)

The term “succulent” is overused, but what else have we got? I mean, without it, where would Lynn Rossetto Kasper be, week after blessed week, right? But still, let’s see. Our alternatives, according to Mister Oxford, are: “juicy, moist, luscious, soft, tender; choice, mouthwatering, appetizing, tasty, delicious; [informal] scrumptious.”
Yeah.

Our two plates of gyro meat, pork souvlaki, stewed potatoes and accompanying Close Encounters-like dollops of tzadziki sauce put us in instant twin foodrapture paroxyms. Meaning: We ceased both speech and eye-contact as we ate, save for the occasional helpless lifts of the eyebrow, pregnant with meaning, that meaning being, “Oh, mygoodLordinHeaven.”
We fed.

And yeah, to be fair: this was a post-campout meal: First non-energy bar or raisin-based meal of a day whose previous morning and afternoon had seen us hiking the astonishing cliffs of Chaco Canyon. (I mean "astonishing" like beautiful, not like we were using crampons and rope or anything.)

True. But also the best post-camping meal I’ve ever consumed. And, I should note, that I, who was raised in a childhood twistedly based on Clean Plate Philosophy, couldn’t finish this portion, it was so generous, and so rich.

I’d have shared it with you, though, Henshaw, had you come. Next time, maybe.


(Not noted: delirious/delicious cookout grub, above. Nor nearly equally delicious pre-grub high-gravity beer of which author took two sips at high-altitude after full day of desert hiking and got immediately giggly and ridiculous from, but still managed to snap this Bon Appetit-worthy photo.)