Road Trip #2 (day 3) Father's Day Pizza Ride

June 17, 2012
Colorado, USA

After another restful night at the Laguna Vista Lodge in Eagle Nest, NM, we woke to clear, sunny skies and warm temps. I made the Father's Day call to Dad and wished him a great day. Ready for a cup of coffee, we strolled across the street to the D&D Cafe for a Father's Day breakfast and discussed what we thought we might do with the day.

We loosely decided to ride in the direction of Los Alamos. Rolling out on a nasty bike, we travelled Hwy 64 through Taos Canyon which was an easy, pleasant ride... a great way to start the day. Even better - we encountered little traffic. Approaching Taos we made a quick turn on a small road (I think it was Hwy 585) that turned out to be a nice bypass around the busy downtown always-a-traffic-jam plaza area of Taos. We rode Hwy 68 alongside the Rio Grande River to Hwy 30 and traveled the scenic winding road through the White Rock Canyon area to Los Alamos. What a beautiful ride! This stretch of road is known as the Senator Clinton Anderson scenic route. And Los Alamos itself is situated on the Pajarito Plateau. Very scenic. We had not expected the ride to be anything other than flat. In Los Alamos, we checked out a few of the streets in town but not wanting to spend such a gorgeous day in stuffy museums and gotcha shops, we found ourselves rolling back out the way we came in. Since we were so close we thought we might as well check out Santa Fe.

We have not been to the Santa Fe area since the 1980s and much has changed. It is bigger and busier than we remembered. The day had gotten hot as we were rolling into Santa Fe and Tim said his breakfast had purt near wore off. We decided to try and find Back Road Pizza. We knew about this place because of an episode on Triple D (Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives). I guess we took what you would call the scenic loop through the suburban shopping center nightmare of Santa Fe but we finally found second street and because it sits in a small nonchalant business park we almost missed it (I caught the sign out of the corner of my eye as we rode by). We made the block and parked the ride, ready for something cold to drink and something good to eat.

Back Road Pizza's claim to fame is serving up New York style thin crust pizza with a New Mexican twist. The secret to the crust is they roll it out in corn meal. We ordered the New Mexican of course, with green chile, red onions and pepperoni. Since it was the middle of the afternoon, we had the place almost to ourselves and we had fun looking at the decor and checking out the signed poster of Guy Fieri. Needless to say - Guy is one of our heroes. We think he has one of the koolest jobs on the planet - ride to eat (even if it is in a convertible) and get paid to do it. Ha! Back Roads Pizza is clean, neat, nicely appointed and downright comfy. We loved it. Back Road Pizza delivers and GF of Triple D was dead on - the pizza is awesome!

After consuming every bite of our Back Road Pizza we backtracked to Taos, filled the bike up at the Shell station conveniently located at the junction of our little bypass, traveled through Kit Carson National Forest and Taos Canyon eventually rolling into Eagle Nest more than a little satisfied with the day's ride.

We capped the day off with a stroll through the town to stretch out the ride kinks and made an ice cream stop at Kawliga's. Yum! Apparently, Kawliga's is a favorite stop for people passing through and the food smelled really good. We are thinking this might make a good place for supper tomorrow.

The evenings are so nice and quiet in Eagle Nest, especially when the pass-through traffic eases. The day cooled quickly once the sun went into decline.

Tomorrow we will pay a proper visit to the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial at Angel Fire. I am looking forward to it. Yawn!

Today's ride = 262 miles

Slide show of today's ride (125 photos):

Alternate link to this slide show