GO WEST YOUNG MAN: Day Three Part II: Taos, the Road to Los Alamos, and Old Town Santa Fe (Again) -or- Drinking a Cup of Joe in an Ancient Village Before Getting Irradiated (Possibly but Not Likely) and Walking Around The Square

Good day to you my dear readers who are few and far between but still clinging loyally to this erratically updated blog!  As mentioned before in a previous post a good deal has gone down in my world since taking this trip and starting this blog and it prevented me from updating this as much as I would have liked to.  Now I guess we're making up for lost time!  So here we go, on to Day Three Part II!

Matt and I rolled out of the Tent Rocks National Monument and headed for our next destination:  Taos! 
Now to those of you who are not familiar with it, Taos is a Native American pueblo village that has been in constant operation for somewhere in the ball park of 1500 years.  People have actively lived, worked, played and a host of other things for the past one thousand five hundred years.  I am pretty sure I read somewhere that it is the oldest populated city in the United States.  Which is pretty dern cool if you ask me.


WELCOME TO TAOS!!  I'm really not sure as to whether I would play some music from a travel channel show here or perhaps the opening theme of National Geographic.  I'm pretty sure I could get away with either...

 Matt and I really didn't explore the city of Taos that had grown up outside of the ancient yet still inhabited village.  We were more interested in what was inside where the adobe was.  I suppose I could go on and on about how neat things were and how mind boggling it was that homes were still maintained and handed down from generation to generation, but I think for this part of the post I will let pictures do most of my talking.

It is worth noting however, that Matt and I stopped in at this little cafe that was situated in the ville.  The Adobe Cafe is run by a lovely woman with help from her son from time to time.  She has a small but delicious menu that offers a fantastic taste of cuisine from this area of the South West.  All of the offerings are made in house and are full of wonderful southwest flavor.

 She also sells Pinon Coffees and had a little air pot standing at the ready with creamers and sugars on standby.

I ordered a cup of coffee a a blue Corn Fry bread Taco and Matt had the Ground Turkey Black bean Chipotle Soup and a Quesadilla.

OK.  I need to get kind of serious for a moment here.  I really have nothing to adequately describe the deliciousness of the foods we ate from this little gem of a cafe.  I'm being honest.  My vocabulary is escaping me.  What I can say is this:  If you go to New Mexico and are near Taos, GO to the pueblo, go to this lady's cafe and order her food! It's fantabulous, you wont regret it.  I enjoyed it so much that I made a very poor attempt at trying to recreate the Turkey Black bean Chipotle soup for a gathering of friends and it turned out awesome and everyone loved it.  there were like ZERO left overs.  So seriously.  Eat there.

Cozy and friendly little hole in the wall!  All power is supplied via batteries, a generator and the fridge runs off of propane of all things!

the Blue Corn Fry bread Taco....OM NOM OM NOM NOM

Ground Turkey Black Bean Chipotle Soup....OM NOMNOMNOMNOMNOM ALLLLL THE NOOOOOOMMMMMS!!!!

Yup, just sittin' here in this ancient Native American village, drinking some coffee....

The structure with the two rampart-y looking structures is a Catholic Church. It's been there for a couple hundred years. It's pretty crazy. the inside is absolutely amazing, unfortunately they didn't allow photography inside :-(

This place was pretty amazing and I very much hope that I can visit it again and explore more of the village as well as the city that grew up outside it's walls.  It was so interesting to be able to experience a very different culture within the borders of my own culture.  I highly recommend the experience to anyone and everyone who is even the least bit curious about things like this.

After we had finished up our lunch and looking around we headed back out on the road.  Our next  places of interest were going to be a sweet stretch of ride through some awesome canyon-y territory and then on up to the Valera Caldera via some very fun mountain-y passes and then into Los Alamos before finally heading back to Old Santa Fe for the evening.

 The Bandera Caldera was quite impressive to view:The floor of it now fields and grasslands while the rim is covered in fir trees stretching high into the sky.  Matt and I stopped briefly at the turn in for the fenced in area to snap a couple of pics before driving on to Los Alamos.

 

Los Alamos was interesting but really the remarkable thing about the place wasn't the city itself or the buildings, but rather it's history revolving around the military and it's nuclear program back in the second world war.  Now today the town is MUCH different than it was back in the 1940's so its not like there are a plethora of reminders that are obvious to the average passerby.  I did have a fantastic burrito there though.  Damn that was a good burrito. The ride out of Los Alamos was very impressive!  the twisties and turnies coming down out of the higher elevations was pretty incredible, unfortunately my GoPro's battery has managed to give up the ghost by the time we got to that particular part of the ride back to Santa Fe.  At least I got a shot of the burrito...


We rolled back to the KOA campsite and did a quick freshen up before heading back into Old Santa Fe to see what was what while there was still a lot open and a lot going on.  I had a crazy craving for sushi and we managed to find this little number.  San Q, Japanese Sushi and Tapas and Japanese Pub.  The sushi was great, they had a good selection of saki and I chose a nice Nigori that was sweet and refreshing.  They brought out a salmon skin salad and the sushi was served with a "hand chopped" wasabi which had flavor but was rather lacking in the zing department.  No sinus clearing properties with this stuff.  They brought me the Chef's choice which landed me with a decent selection of fish and.... a scallop.  Yeeeah.... I managed to choke that one down, not due to an unpleasant flavor but rather due to the unpleasant TEXTURE of raw scallop.  yeah.... not doing that one again.

Mmmmm Nigori saki.....



Here is my plate o' sushi... the to piece just below the pickled ginger... yeah... thats the scallop...

 Our next stop was at the Santa Fe Espresso Co.  We had some fantastic Mexican Drinking Chocolates and we even caught a sighting of the guy who hit us up for money in a drug or alcohol fueled state! We also managed to duck past a few panhandlers who decided that we looked like likely targets for a hand out. Sorry guys, not this time.

After  we finished strolling around Old Santa Fe, we headed back to our bikes and then back to our bunks at the KOA "Kabin".  It was a good day and we'd be starting our return leg and final day in New Mexico in the morning. 

A few more pictures from this day's journey are posted below!  Enjoy and remember to stay tuned for more tales from the road covering our journey home!