Pie Town....long overdue but to the best of my recollection, this is the story.
Nat and I pulled onto the main road and it was nothing like I had imagined it. In fact, it was almost nothing besides two pie cafes and a post office.
We pulled past the first cafe on our right, The Pie Town Daily. Nat asked me if we were stopping there and I replied, "We will go there next." We continued up the hill with Nat puzzled on why I didn't want to stop at the first pie place we saw. Ever since I started planning the trip I had heard about the wonderful hospitality towards cyclist and hikers at the Pie-O-Neer cafe and I knew that would have to be the place that we got our first slice of pie in Pie Town. We pulled up to the front of the building that looked similar to an old saloon and took off our helmets. There was a biker (not the pedal kind) standing on the porch and asked us where we were going. We told him and he mentioned he was heading across country on his Harley and checking out the small towns along the way. He told us that he has hiked the Appalachian Trail when he was in his mid-twenties and that he knew how we felt. I had to chuckle because he had hiked right through NH and when I told him that is where we were from, he pulled up his sleeve to reveal a "Live Free or Die" tattoo. We thought that was pretty cool as we parted ways and headed inside.
Inside was similar to the saloon we had visited in Polebridge Montana. There was a huge cast iron wood stove set in the middle of the tiny cafe was several booths and tables in front of a counter.
We had arrived there around 10:45am and sat down to order some lunch. We knew we were making good time and could sit down to a burger and some fries. We both ordered up Mountain Dew as caffenine was quite scarce when you are in the middle of the desert. As soon as the waitress had taken our order, a lady walked over and introduced herself as Kathy. She was the owner of the Pie-O-Neer and told us that Nita, the trail angel in town, would be right in. She brought over a guest book for us to sign and that not to worry, we would be taken care of well we were in Pie Town. We thanked her and within minutes, we were chowing down some fresh cooked hamburgers. They weren't 1lber's but they tasted great and really filled our stomachs. As soon as we were finished our waitress, Autumn, asked us what kind of pie were wanted to start with. I ordered up some apple as Nat ordered a slice of pecan-oatmeal. The pie was still warm as we started in and it was everything I dreamed it would be, delicious! As we were eating our pie, a woman approached us and introduced herself as Nita. She invited us to spend the night at the "Porch" and asked us how long we planned to stay in town. We hadn't planned to stick around and this caught us a little off guard. We finished our pie and as Autumn came to gather our plates she asked, "So you guys spending the night?" Turns out that Autumn was Nita's daughter and that they had been having hikers and cyclist stay with them since 1976. We thought about it for a moment as we ate another slice of pie and without any further hesitation, accepted the invitation.
We walked out and sat on the porch of the cafe for a few minutes and re-figured out how many days it would take us to finish and if we would still be able to catch our bus out of Deming on the 16th. We figured we would have some longer days, but was definetley possible. I quickly changed out of my bike shorts and put my feet up and waited for Nita to take us to "the porch". As she walked out she asked us the usual questions about where we were from and how long we had been out. She then asked if we had heard about the VLA (Very Large Array). We told her we had and that it sounded pretty fasinating. She offered to drive us to a "secret" sateilit that is located down some dirt roads. We took her up on the offer and rode in our first car in over a month. Desite it's size, the sateillet was well hidden and quite a marvel of engineering.
part 2: to be continued...
