New Mexico Town Has Become a Great Escape

As the nation’s fastest-growing small city, this suburb of Albuquerque seems to be the perfect place for the Blue Goose Deli-Bakery, which features Earl Sanders’ freshly baked bagels.

The Milwaukee transplant, along with his wife, Kay, learned to bake in a city where bakeries are serious business.

“I bake the bagels fresh every day right here in the shop, with no preservatives,” Sanders said. “A lot of delis buy them ready-baked from big suppliers. I won’t eat those rocks and neither will my customers.”

I discovered the Blue Goose on a recent train trip to New Mexico, when we took what once was called the Super Chief and what Amtrak now calls the Southwest Chief.

My wife and I both love trains, possibly the most civilized way to travel on Earth. If we don’t get on a train at least every six months, we get very antsy.

As for Kay Sanders and the Blue Goose Deli-Bakery (4100 Southern Blvd. S.E., 505-892-9784), she isn’t one to snarl at customers like the stereotypical deli owner or waitress in a big city.

Kay and Earl are a mom-and-pop operation, and their deli-bakery serves as an informal community center for this city on the west mesa of the sprawling Albuquerque area.

On a wall in the deli are newspaper clips about Rio Rancho’s answer to David Mamet and Neil Simon, playwright/producer/director Joseph DiStefano, 79.

A native of the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, DiStefano has lived in the Albuquerque/Rio Rancho area for 11 years and is supremely at home in a deli. Every morning he holds court while having his breakfast at the Blue Goose.

The town itself, which is about 50 miles southwest of the state capital of Santa Fe, has become the escape destination of wealthy Californians and others who can live anywhere and conduct their businesses from a great distance.

Those seeking trendy areas near affordable Rio Rancho have only to drive to Corrales, a small community on the West Mesa, bordering the Rio Grande River, where gourmet restaurants and art galleries abound.

I was pleased to learn that the venerable Territorial House--everybody calls it the T-House--is still operating in the same Corrales adobe location in its latest guise as the Rancho de Corrales. The food is as good as ever--one of my favorites is the sopaipilla enchilada --and the margaritas, in my opinion, are the best in the state.

If you’re sensitive to altitude, be forewarned that Albuquerque is as high as mile-high Denver, with Santa Fe a thousand or more feet higher.

Also, if you’re traveling to various destinations in northern New Mexico, then Rio Rancho and the Albuquerque area in general makes sense as a base of operations.

It’s not that far to Acoma and other pueblos, and Santa Fe and Taos are easy trips on roads that are virtually empty by Southern California standards. Equally close is Los Alamos in the spectacular Jemez Mountains, where much of the development on the atomic bomb took place in the 1940s.

New Mexico may be the fifth-largest state in land area, but it has only 1.4 million residents.

American Demographics magazine is responsible for singling out Rio Rancho as the nation’s fastest-growing small city, ahead of Vero Beach, Fla., Hilton Head, S.C., Huntsville, Tex., and Myrtle Beach, S.C.

Before 1963, the city’s 180 square miles consisted of high desert, populated by rabbits and the occasional roadrunner. Now it has 34,000 residents--not far from the 50,000 that it took Santa Fe nearly 400 years to reach--and delusions of grandeur.

The Rio Rancho Golf & Country Club expanded from 18 to 27 holes. Now, Amrep Southwest is thinking about developing a 300-room destination resort similar to those in the Palm Springs--Rancho Mirage--Palm Desert area, on land around the course.

Golf appeals to the kind of middle-aged, high-income people that Rio Rancho and New Mexico want to attract, and a destination resort would make the area even more desirable.

We chose the closest thing to a destination resort in Rio Rancho, the Best Western Inn at Rio Rancho, owned by Harald Mueller.

A native of West Germany, Mueller moved to New Mexico from Chicago a decade ago. He is enthusiastic about northern New Mexico: “Where else can you play golf in the morning and ski powder in the Sandia Mountains in the afternoon?” he asked.

Or get a fresh-baked bagel from the Blue Goose.

For more information on travel to New Mexico, contact the New Mexico Tourism & Travel Division, Joe Montoya Building, 1100 St. Francis Drive, Santa Fe 87503, toll-free (800) 545-2040. The informative New Mexico Magazine, published monthly by the state of New Mexico and available through the same address, is a helpful guide for visitors.