After the wedding, we drove down the Rio Grande Valley. Our intentions were to lunch at Embudo Station in Embudo, NM. It lies somewhere between Taos and Espanola along the Rio Grande. It's formally known as a ghost station as the trains no longer travel along these parts. Alas, the restaurant was closed, but I had to get out of the car and take in the breathtaking scenery and daydream about what once was a thoroughfare in the middle of nowhere. Since the restaurant was closed, the area was completely deserted. It was eerie.

Once we were done basking in the stillness of Embudo, we headed to Santa Fe. It needs no introduction. It's a melting pot of sorts. It was one of the very first settlements by the Spanish. Pueblo Indians set up shop around 900 and in 1598 the Spanish officially claimed it. You have the old pueblo style buildings interspersed with old Spanish colonial. The Plaza is a hub of activity and that was our first stop.

If you missed Anthony Bourdain's New Mexico episode of Parts Unknown on CNN a couple years back, you didn't miss much. It wasn't my favorite. He focused too much on the lore of cowboys and shot some automatic rifles in the desert with some rednecks. He barely talked about the food, except when he went to the Five and Dime in the Plaza. It's a basic convenience store. You can easily miss it, but if you do wander in and walk past all of the tacky postcards and knick knacks that prove you were in Santa Fe, you'll find the world's best Frito Pie. They just slice open a bag of Fritos, pour in some spicy, greasy chili and top it with shredded cheese. Worth the mess.

After watching the Eagles blow their playoff chances by losing to Arizona, we had to drown our sorrows. We dined at Santa Fe Bites, a diner-type establishment famous for its green chili burgers. Three please.

Sadly, this is the last New Mexico blog...for now at least. I swear to not let 10 year go between now and my next visit.

So much has happened since October that I haven't been able to bunker down and write this crucial post. For those of you that don't know, I was born and semi-raised in Los Alamos, NM. Yes, it's the scene of the Manhattan Project and the basis of the new WGN TV series Manhattan. (A great show.) It's a small town in Northern New Mexico, about 30 minutes away from Santa Fe, at the foothills of the Jemez Mountains. It had been 10 years since I graduated from high school and moved Philadelphia.

We ventured throughout Northern New Mexico: Albuquerque (briefly), Los Alamos, Santa Fe, Taos, and Angel Fire. The food is naturally amazing, the scenery so beautiful, the architecture so unique, and the way of life so laid back. It's a wonder how I turned into the city slicker I now am.

I'll break the New Mexico posts into as many manageable bites as deemed appropriate. For now, here are the Los Alamos photos.

Chili Works, be still my heart. This place is literally a shack, but hands down the best breakfast burrito I will ever have. For $6, you get a behemoth breakfast burrito. For every day that we spent in Los Alamos, we ventured to Chili Works for one of these bad boys. A creature of habit, I stuck to my usual (even ten years later): Bacon, Egg, Cheese, Potatoes, and 2 cups of authentic NM green chili. After this, I could leave the Los Alamos post be and let the chili speak for itself, but here's more chili and some scenery.