For Memorial Day weekend, we rolled like tumbleweed up the Turquoise Trail (Hwy 14) to Santa Fe.
It's a sixty-some mile trip. We took a day to get there, a day to hang out in Santa Fe, and a day to come back. You gain about 3,000 feet in elevation, so going Santa Fe should be the more difficult direction, but it turned out we had a nice tailwind for the last third of it. And we had a nice headwind for about half of the return trip, so it felt harder coming back.
The place to stop for lunch on the Turquoise Trail is the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid. Madrid (stress on the first syllable) used to be a mining town, then a ghost town, then it was resettled in 1970 as an artists' community. More recently, it was the setting for the Disney movie "Wild Hogs." As it happened, Chad and I rode through Madrid last year during the filming. Our first clue that something was up was when we encountered the scariest looking biker gang we'd ever seen riding toward us as we approached Madrid. I smiled and nodded in greeting, but got just blank stares from the scary bikers. Later we discovered that these were the "Del Fuegos" of the movie, rehearsing. I guess it would've been out of character for them to give a friendly wave to a couple of bicycle tourists. Once in town, we could see that the place was hoppin'. At first we thought it was because of the "Madrid Chile Festival" advertised by large banners over the street. But no one seemed to be actually selling or eating chile. Finally we got the story from the lady who runs the general store. The movie crew had been in town for six months by this time, and the locals were hoping to be rid of them soon.
This is Chad last summer in front of a "Madrid Chile Festival" banner -- there's no such thing.
On the Plaza in Santa Fe.
Detour to the south end of town to watch "Pirates of the Caribbean 3" (fun to watch, but the plot was baffling).
Headed home.
Headed home. 
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