July 1, 2009

"Pie Town"

My mom and dad had recently traveled in New Mexico, and recommended two places, The Gila Mountains / Hot Springs and Pie Town. My mom had told the story of our impending trip to a pie lady named Becky, who had promised to make us a Honeymoon Pie with a few days notice. We had no way of contacting Becky to give notice of our arrival, but we wanted to meet her anyway. When we arrived in Pie Town it was everything we expected: a town with places where pie could be bought and eaten. We found such a place. (Surprisingly, only one of two in town, and the only one that was open.) Shelby had blueberry. I had peach. We split a piece of Chocolate afterward. When in Pie Town....
We asked the lady who served us the pie, if she knew Becky. She did not. I later confirmed with my mom, that Becky worked at the other pie place in town. I still find it hard to believe that two pie shops in a town qualifies it as Pie Town. But, it was good pie.

"Reserve"

When leaving Pie Town we decide to take a local "highway" to Reserve, the next town we were going to hit. On the map this was marked as a long winding dirt road that led straight to the paved highway to Reserve. A short cut if you will. In reality, it was a long winding dirt road with several unmarked forks. It did not lead straight to the highway. Instead, it led past several secluded ranches that were clearly posted as private property on which trespassing was not allowed. The implication from the signs, the characters in the previous town, and the movies we had seen was that trespassing was punishable by shotgun.

The first ambiguous fork in the road we chose right, left. That is correctly, the direction left. The next fork we chose right, wrongly. The direction, right, incorrectly....We got lost. We backtracked once we started to hear banjo music. (I know, wrong mountain range, Deliverance was set in the Appalachians, but you get the idea.) We finally found the right highway and Reserve and stopped for lunch. We took pictures of Ella's cafe, because one of our nieces is named Ella. I also took pictures of the statue commemorating a Mexican sheriff who held off a bunch of bad guys in a gunfight.

I can't remember the details that the plaque described but I do remember thinking it sounded like the opening scene of Tombstone.

"That's pronounced HEE-LA"

We decided to take the main highway around to the south end and up into the Gila National Forest. There were no roads on the map that took you in from the North. Shelby started driving and I dozed off. When I woke up we were somewhere in the middle of the forest we were supposed to be going around. Somehow we had gotten onto another "local", dirt and gravel highway. I didn't think it was that big of a deal.
"It's got to lead some where...right?"
We didn't really have an itinerary at this point and we kept passing campsites. Occasionally we'd pass a truck.
"Those people must have come from somewhere...right?"
Finally, we passed a couple of lime colored, trucks at a campsite, and we turned in to ask them where we were. The trucks had federal plates like the USDA cars at my dad's office. We got out and approached them for directions. It turns out these guys were USDA Forestry Service researchers and they had a very extensive map of the area. They pointed out the best places to camp and the road to take out of the park. With the pen and paper 20 feet away, all the way back in the car, we tried to commit their instructions to memory. Needless to say we did not find any of the campsites they pointed out. It was an absolutely beautiful drive and had been the entire time, but we were glad to find our way back onto the atlas.

"Mogollon"


As we were doing this, just on the edge of the forest we drove passed a tiny house on the back of a flat bed truck. The sign out side said "The Lady Lives Here" as we continued, thing got more bizarre. We passed one normal looking house with a newish car parked out front, but everything else looked like a 1920's mining town.
A decrepit old theater, a bunch of beaten up old cars, a boarded up saloon. Then, a sign that said "Ghost Town open Thursday through Sunday". Ah ha! We then passed a little gift shop and museum, both closed. We had come kind of the back way, we found out from the signs as we left, through Mogollon (mogie yawn) an old New Mexican mining town that was now run a kind of low grade, but quaint tourist spot.

"Glenwood"

Outside of Mogollon, We found our selves at a campsite in Glenwood, NM. We chose our campsite due to the proximity of a rustic looking watering hole named Blue Front. Actually, I had to look up the name of the place, but the owner was named Bucky, so to us it's Bucky's. After we set up the tent we biked the 100yards or so to "Bucky's" We got a couple of drinks and a plate of fried okra, played a little pool and watch VH1's pop up video. We learned a lot about Ray Parker Jr., Whitney Houston and Madonna. We talked to Bucky for a while too. He had been a session musician in Nashville and still played bass with a group of local musicians. He recommended that before we leave town we see the Catwalk. We went to back to the camp, dark by now, and went to sleep.