Embrace your inner tourist

Aw, just get on the bus.

San Francisco is one of the world’s great cities. You’ve been there, and you have done the whole tourist thing, hanging out at Fisherman’s Wharf, riding a cable car and gazing upon the Golden Gate Bridge.

I say, do it. Be a tourist. It’s fun. Don’t apologize.

So, we get on the bus with the open top deck and take the “two-hour” (it lasted nearly three and a half since the traffic was awful) tour of The City. I’ve visited San Francisco a couple dozen times but, I confess, this was my first visit to Haight-Ashbury and one of very few to the Tenderloin. From the relative safety of the bus, Haight was little more than a throwback to the summer of love, the Tenderloin little more than a movie scene, and SoMa an uneventful drive-through. A homeless guy cozies up next to Kathleen, and he’s so large that he sort of pools into her seat as well. She casually finds other accommodation.

Yes, yes, yes, Pier 39 is built for tourists and has nothing at all to do with San Francisco -- it could just as easily be a pier on Lake Erie. That would be true if the fresh fish were walleye instead of fresh mussels and crabs. Instead of whining about the artifice of tourist-based shopping centers, we should just embrace them. It’s fun -- there are street musicians, good food, interesting stores and usually good weather, and most of it is appropriately over-priced. 

From the bus we pick out cafes we want to try in Little Italy, catch a whiff of Chinatown, watch drug-addled teenagers in Haight-Ashbury and note the long line outside of Glide Memorial Church waiting for a free meal. There are seedy signs for topless bars, classic scenes of Queen Anne Victorians lined side by side, and the spectacular Golden Gate Park and Presidio.

Next time, I’m getting on the bus first thing in the morning, having an early lunch in Little Italy, going shopping in Ashbury Street, leaving a donation at the Glide, watching the sunset at the Golden Gate and having dinner in, well, probably at Fisherman’s Wharf, where I’ll stop at Boudin and buy some warm sourdough bread for the road. And that’ll be a fun day.

Locke (I am not making this up)

Locke is my favorite place in California, with the possible exception of San Francisco, and maybe San Diego, plus possibly Big Sur, Yosemite, Sequoia and maybe Carmel when I’m in an uppity mood. 

Anyway, we’re outside Al the Wop’s bar in Locke and the guy there starts his conversation talking about the vaginal infection his dog -- conveniently nearby on a leash -- once had. Now, there’s an icebreaker. I wander off, leaving Kathleen and sister-in-law Darla to deal with the dude and his formerly inflicted dog. It’s not much of a wander -- Locke is about two blocks long and two blocks wide, a decrepit town in the California delta founded by Chinese workers and, by the looks of things, mostly ready to topple over.

           

Al the Wop’s is fantastic. Inside, the floor slopes away from the front door and there are dollar bills sticking to the ceiling. Here’s how they do it -- you take a dollar bill, push a thumbtack through the nose of George Washington, wrap a silver dollar inside it, and toss it hard toward the ceiling. Skillful players will achieve sticking the dollar bill to the ceiling while the silver dollar falls back to the ground. We did not actually witness this, but we were told, in all sincerity, that it was done this way. Al the Wop's, by the way, has a little to go before it can graduate to seedy.

          

The condiments on the bar include an open jar of Jiffy peanut butter and some kind of homemade jelly. We did not eat any food, sticking to the more familiar Jack Daniel’s and boxed chardonnay.

Later, while I'm loitering at an ancient picnic table generously located at the end of the street in the middle of an open space only partially covered in weeds, the dude with the formerly inflicted dog asks me if I've seen two Japanese kids. He says he brought them and now he's misplaced them (this in a town that is four square blocks). I say that I saw them awhile ago, but not recently. He moseys along, formerly inflicted dog trailing behind.

           

Down the street, I walk into a used book, record and clothing store and the proprietor (a nice middle-aged lady with ink-black hair from a bottle) asks me if I remember “Oui” magazine. “You misread me,” I say, and everyone immediately thinks I’m very funny. A customer finds an old Bob Dylan vinyl record and asks Ms. Very Black Hair if she has a turntable.

           

“Yes, but it sometimes takes awhile for it to remember what it’s supposed to do,” she replies.

           

“Sounds like me,” I say too loudly, and everyone, once again, thinks I’m very funny.

           

Soon, Dylan is playing from the ancient turntable, but the record is spinning a bit too fast.

          

 “He sounds better this way,” says I. You know the rest.

           

I eventually depart the place and run into a nice fellow in a ball cap and overalls who says he supplies the store with its used books. Kathleen and Darla join us soon, and it becomes all too clear that Ball Cap and Overalls is a lonely man desiring conversation in the worst way. He recommends Wimpy’s over in Walnut Grove for dinner, but we have our hearts set on Chinese food in Stockton and, when he’s distracted for the slightest moment, we make our escape.

           

The very pretty bartender at Al the Wop’s, by the way, says they take the dollar bills down once a year and use them for a “liver feed.” That, says I, is pretty darn appropriate for a place that has undoubtedly killed a few livers in its time.

           

You know the rest.

Idaho's sunny slope

The view toward Oregon from Ste. Chapelle.

It's overcast and the morning spat a bit of snow, but we're on Idaho's sunny slope and all's well.

It's a wine-tasting day. In Idaho. With snow in the forecast.

There are more than 40 wineries in Idaho (ranking it 22nd in the country), many of which are southwest of Boise on or near the region referred to locally as the "sunny slope" -- a place where the land begins sloping toward the Snake River. Ste. Chapelle has been here a long time, producing cheap and sweet Idaho reisling. In the last 20 years, however, wineries have been replacing orchards all over the region and Ste. Chapelle has expanded its local grape selection.

The slope tilts southwest and in the summer the sun doesn't set until well into the evening, making for long, hot days, warm evenings and cool nights, thanks to the 2,700-foot elevation and a latitude similar to that of Burgundy in France.

So, over the past couple of decades orchards and cornfields and have been subsumed by chardonnay, merlot and a wide variety of other types of grape varietals.


Having done our research, we start at the delightful Orchard House restaurant southwest of Caldwell and smack in the middle of the sunny slope. It's basically a homey coffee shop that features a lot of the local wines, plus homemade baked goods like pear pie (which I took with me and ate for breakfast the next day). After a lunch of pulled pork (Kathleen) and portabella (me) sandwiches (with tater tots, of course), we plug in the GPS unit (you'll recall her name is Maxine) and head toward Koenig vineyards and distillery. Yes, distillery.

Inside the Orchard House.

In the tasting room we meet the nice young lady who's pouring today and a couple of University of Utah language professors who had to leave the Beehive State to do some serious wine tourism. The night before they'd attended a pour party in downtown Boise and had somehow recovered enough to visit some of the wineries today. The two ladies left with wine, ice wine and vodka, well stocked for the holidays. (We ran into them later that evening at the Red Feather, a famous Boise watering hole that has one of the world's most remarkable beer menus and just enough food to make it work as a dinner stop.)

The stills at Koenig.

Back to Koenig. We try a wide variety of wines (no tasting fee!) and some of the Huckleberry vodka, which comes from the distillery side of the operation. Surprisingly, since Kathleen doesn't like sweet wines, among our purchases are two bottles of the super-sweet ice wine. Kathleen decides there's enough nice flavor in the wine to overcome the brix level of 41. (Ice wine is made from grapes that have been allowed to stay on the vine well past usual harvest time -- until they can be harvested and crushed in their frozen state.)

From there, it's a five-minute drive to Ste. Chapelle, the name that most folks think of when, in a highly unlikely scenario, they think of Idaho wine. Besides sweet reisling, Ste. Chapelle makes a pretty impressive selection of reds and whites, including a blend called Soft Red, which is clearly a red wine for people who don't like red wine. It's not sweet, but it lacks the typical tannins and dryness of most red wines. The very, very talkative woman who served us in the Ste. Chapelle tasting room said Soft Red is Idaho's best-selling wine, which is tragic but probably true. The Ste. Chapelle grounds look more like a traditional winery and vineyard than the other small operations nearby. It generates average, inexpensive wines, but it's worth a visit if you're touring the sunny slope -- the tasting is only five bucks and you keep the glass.

We had intended to make four tasting stops on our tour, but we were way too chatty for that and had time left for just one more after Ste. Chapelle. Arbitrarily we picked Huston, about 10 minutes back toward Nampa. At the address from the web site, we found a home, a gravel drive and a large metal outbuilding. Looking carefully, we spotted a sign indicating Huston's tasting room at the corner of the corrugated building.

Inside, we met owner Gregg Alger, who was pouring. Huston is Idaho's newest winery, selling its wines for about a year. Alger, a former business owner, had sold his business and house in the Boise area some years ago and decided to enter Idaho's burgeoning wine business. And here he was.

The Huston wines -- particularly the Private Reserve Red -- are a higher quality than, say, the recently tasted Ste. Chapelle product. The property is on Chicken Dinner Road, which lends its name to Huston's Chicken Dinner White and Chicken Dinner Red. The Private Reserve Red is a grape bomb -- huge nose, big fruit, bold but not overt. (I don't know what that means, but it sounds like sophisticated wine talk.)

Presently, Gregg's wife, Mary, arrives in the tasting room, and the talk eventually turns to violas and such. At closing time we take our purchases and some dining recommendations back to Boise. The Private Reserve will probably go into the cellar for a year or two.

There are enough tasting rooms on the sunny slope for another couple of visits. How delightful.

On contemplating limblessness

To be a photographer -- even just a hobbyist like myself -- or, dare I say, a true flâneur (look it up), is to be patient and intrepid.

Patient because photography is all about light, which changes from moment to moment. A flat landscape can become vivid when a sun comes from behind a cloud. Intrepid because the difference between a lousy photo and a good one might be a walk onto a ledge or getting just two steps closer to that mama grizzly (joking, really).

And so I find myself at the top of Fall Creek Falls, a gorgeous waterfall where Fall Creek tumbles down travertine  terraces into the South Fork of the Snake River in Swan Valley. From the road above the falls you can see it from the side, which exposes only about a third of the beautiful scene. I have been in front of the falls before during low water, when you can gingerly make your way over marsh to a small island (as pictured above).

It's late October when the river is at its lowest (though twice as high as the same time the year before), so I figure, what the heck. I secure my camera to my tripod and pick my way down a nearly vertical opening in the vegetation about 200 yards from the falls. I make it down without injury and start picking my way through the willows and shrubs toward the falls.

I'm closer, yes, but I can see less of the falls than I could from the road. The only way to open the view is to head out toward the river. There is about 10 feet of muck between dry land on the road side and the dry land of the island. I can see footprints in the muck, so I think, "what the heck?"

Two steps in and I sink in to my calves. I'm maybe four feet from one edge and six feet from the other, camera and tripod in my left hand. My first thought is, "It's 127 Hours all over again." You know, the guy who had to chop off his hand when it became wedged between some rocks in southern Utah. Then, the image of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail appears. This is the spew-milk-from-the-nose-funny scene in which King Arthur literally disarms the knight by chopping off all four limbs. The knight eventually offers to call it a draw as the King rides away.

I just know at this point that I'll have to chop off my legs -- hopefully below the knee, to make fitting prosthetics easier -- to save my life. However, before hacking (it would have been fruitless, as I had nothing sharp on my person other than my wit), I decided to take a step back toward dry land.

What followed was a giant sucking sound, followed by my foot coming clean out of my boot, which was one of those cheap slip-ons. I had no choice but to put my stocking foot into the mud; I only sank in about four inches. I reached out and put my camera and tripod on a dry spot, reached back and pulled my shoe out of the muck. One knee now on dry land, I pulled my other foot free (sans slip-on boot) and repeated the process. Eventually I stood, in my stocking feet, back on a dry spot in the marsh, mud-covered boots in one hand and camera/tripod in the other. I had the presence of mind to stop and snap a few pictures, which mostly succeeded in covering my camera in mud from my hands.

Shoes in one hand (why did I bring them back?), camera in the other, I slogged back to the base of the hill and, spotting a shortcut, started up the near-vertical climb back to the road -- about 30 feet in elevation gain. First, I had to fight through a thicket (shortcuts are always a bad idea), where I undoubtedly picked up the two ticks that Kathleen found on my shirt when (spoiler alert!) I returned home. Flinging my ruined shoes ahead of me (inevitably they would tumble back nearly to my position), I scraped my way up the mud and slate, eventually emerging with sore feet and quad muscles and a sheepish look.

I gingerly put my shoes in the back of the car, peeled off my socks, and used my tennis towel and drinking water to get most of the gray, stinking mud off my hands. I was home in 40 minutes, driving barefoot with the heat blasting.

The pictures weren't worth it. I did, however, have all my limbs. The shoes and socks went into the trash.

The last good day in YNP

The second Sunday of October is traditionally the last day that all of the main services at Yellowstone are open until the following spring. The next day, most of the major lodges and stores close for winter.

That makes it an ideal time to make a last visit to the park, so off I went for my last YNP day trip of 2011. Kathleen thought the idea of 10 hours in the car interspersed with short hikes and walks at various stops didn't sound like fun, so I made the trip solo.

The goal was to visit some of Yellowstone's less popular thermal features -- Norris Basin, Black Sands Basin, some individual stops at places like Chocolate Spring, and a half-hour at Fountain Paint Pot with my long lens. After that, I figured I'd head back to West Yellowstone for dinner and be home by around sunset.

By around 3 p.m. I'd accomplished my mission and was finishing up at Black Sand. Don't tell Kathleen, but I'd smoked a cigar while driving from Norris to Black Sand, windows down and Led Zeppelin blaring from the stereo. I'm sure she'll never know.

Anyway, it was still early and I'd heard reports that a grizzly mom and her cubs had been spotted near the road  in Grand Teton National Park the day before, so I headed for the south entrance on the slim odds of catching a photo. Coming into Grand Teton, the first thing I noticed was that a lot of the fall leaves were still on the trees -- a little late in the season for these parts. I snapped a few pretty pictures. To the south, dark clouds were gathering over the Tetons and the sun disappeared.

I connected with the main highway into Jackson and started heading south, then southwest. Coming around a bend, I looked up and saw the most remarkable thing. The clouds over the Tetons had parted slightly, sending streams of light shining through the smoke of a prescribed fire between my location and the mountains. I pulled over and just stared, certain I couldn't capture the shot with my camera well enough to do it justice. Nonetheless, I shot about a dozen images, drove ahead a mile or two and took another dozen or so (it's not like the film days -- digital images are free for the taking).

Surprisingly enough, a couple of the images did reflect the moment and in some ways, with a little cropping and a little dodging and burning with PhotoShop, even enhanced it. After seeing the photo on Facebook, one of the folks in the office said he expected me to come to work on Monday looking like Charlton Heston returning from picking up the 10 Commandments.


Just goes to show -- when in doubt, take the shot. You just never know.

Legend of the fall

The only potentially tricky part of our leisurely float trip down the Snake River was supposed to be the Class III rapids at Kahuna and Lunch Counter, just before take out. Kathleen had other ideas.

Pretty early into the float we enter a benign whitewater stretch called the Esses (you know, plural "S"). I'm trying to figure out how to operate my cheap credit-card-sized video camera when there's a jolt and Kathleen's foot is somewhere up around my chin. I turn to my right and, sure enough, the rest of her is about halfway out of the boat.

Sharon, who is sitting in front of Kathleen mostly facing her, is grasping at whatever part of Kathleen she can reach. I have the camera in my left hand and, not wanting to damage this $40 piece of technology, I'm grabbing mostly with my right, trying to haul her back into the boat.

"Grab her vest!" yells Martin, our guide, who is busy with the paddles. Makes good sense, so I grab the back of Kathleen's vest and Sharon and I help her get vertical again.

That was fun! (Actually, it really was.)

Sadly, not only had I not figured out how to operate the camera, but I never did. The rest of the trip includes another half-dozen whitewater sections and all we have are memories.

This section of the Snake River above Palisades Reservoir is packed with commercial float trippers all summer, but this is early October and we have the river nearly to ourselves. There's a light rain at lunchtime, but otherwise it's unseasonably warm and the fall colors add to a beautiful day. The river is running at 5,000 cubic feet per second (compared to the early summer peak of 20,000 cfs), but we still encounter plenty of four-foot waves and we giggle our way through the float.

Kahuna and Lunch Counter seem relatively tame, perhaps because by the time we reach them we've learned to actually hold on with both hands. Sharon has taken to crouching at the bow of the boat and facing the river head on (which we liken to bull riding), so she usually takes the brunt of the big splashes. Kathleen grabs the inside of my thigh with her left hand and a rope on the side of the boat with her right, which is just fine with me.

At the end, there are champagne, strawberries and dry clothes. Eventually, the legend of Kathleen's fall will grow epically in the telling.

Grapes, no wrath

BUHL, Idaho -- When you order fresh trout from a restaurant -- almost regardless of where that restaurant is -- odds are your meal originated in the spring waters of a trout farm in Buhl (sorry, they aren’t pulled one at a time from the rushing river by fly-fishermen who look like Brad Pitt).

           

On downriver a few miles, water from one of America’s largest aquifers gushes from the volcanic rock of the Snake River Canyon in the region known as Thousand Springs. The area also is Idaho’s largest producer of dairy products -- just take a deep sniff on a hot day. That’s no grilled cheese sandwich. Then there are the beets, which feed a sugar factory just southeast of Twin Falls, creating its own special odor (not to mention crystalline sugar every bit as sweet as the stuff from tropical cane).

           

Out toward the southwestern desert on the fringes of the Magic Valley, the scent turns to sage. Pocketed within this unique land o’ plenty is Idaho’s newest wine grape region. Yes, wine. Grapes.

           

The area southwest of Boise is home to a couple-dozen wineries, and now Buhl is becoming its own identifiable wine grape region, for now part of the Snake River Valley appellation. The loamy volcanic soil is ideal for certain varietals, though the process of learning to deal with the temperature extremes here is a work in progress.

           

 There’s now a destination winery near Buhl, a “12-year money pit” according to its owners Russ and Claudia Snyder. On a north-facing slope, the Snyders nurture 14 acres of grapes that they turn into various red, white and pink wines in their small winery. They have a weekend-only steakhouse and a huge patio and garden that are increasingly popular for local weddings. It’s a happy surprise to run across this viticultural oasis squeezed between hay fields and Angus ranches. (The obviously amused locals in Twin Falls refer to Claudia as “the grape lady,” she says.)

           

From the patio on a hot first day of autumn, we could follow the sloping ground for miles down to where the Snake River Canyon leaves an opening in the landscape; from there the ground slopes gradually higher again, leading to the mountains of south-central Idaho beyond. The grain elevators of Buhl are just down the road and down the hill.

           

We are here to do more than gawk, so we spend five dollars for a tasting (a pretty stingy three sips) and buy a bottle of gentle Merlot, which has just enough cherry sweetness to make for a good warm-weather sipper. Compared to our several tastings in Washington and Oregon, the Snyder wine is quaffable but doesn’t quite stack up to the Columbia River or Willamette Valley products. But, here’s the thing -- it’s just fine, and it’s coming from Buhl, Idaho. This requires certain allowances.

           

Combine this with surroundings that send any tension you came with melting away (they also run an on-site bed and breakfast with a single room in a remodeled cabin if you need additional therapy), and Snyder Winery is worth the time to get off the freeway, meander through Thousand Springs and stop in for a bottle or two.

Hood River

Hood River is crawling with young people who look like a cross between surfer dudes and skateboarders. The explanation is that this is the North American capital of windsurfing on the nearby Columbia River, where the wind tends to blow in a narrow spot of the Columbia River Gorge.

For old farts like us who wouldn't think of pasting a sail to a surfboard to catch the wind in the middle of a river, the resulting culture is a blessing nonetheless. Funky, home to one huge brewery (Full Sail -- get it?) and as many microbreweries as Seattle has Starbucks, Hood River has been overlooked on our previous frequent visits through the area, except for regular stops at the Naked Winery. Naked Winery makes reasonably good wine but comes up with great names for them (Penetration is one).

Anyway, using our GPS device and a BlackBerry, we had booked a last-minute room at the Hood River Hotel, a century-old place that has been remodeled to include central plumbing and heating. It's also one of the cheapest rooms in town (the historic Columbia Gorge Hotel just down river runs $200 a night) and we are relieved that it's clean and comfortable.

Katheen and I like the romantic sound of a distant train whistle as much as the next romantic couple, but listening to the screech of train wheels on trains a half-block away -- well, not so much. This must be why the rooms are so cheap. We adapt, but, golly, trains are loud.

Dinner that night is upscale -- Nora's, recommended by the nice young lady at the Naked Winery. The food is delicious, including some things we can't pronounce. The highlight, however, is a caramel cocktail (yes, caramel). It turns out that you can buy caramel-flavored vodka and turn it into a cocktail. Suhweet.

A day on the coast

Let us be clear -- this post is an excuse to post some pretty pictures.

We awoke this morning to fog shrouding Depoe Bay, which was an improvement over the rain from the day before. By late morning, however, the fog burned off and left a spectacular blue sky. We dropped our original plan to visit the Newport aquarium and headed toward Cape Perpetua, where we sat on a bench several hundred feet above the Pacific and bathed in the sun.

From there, we headed few miles south to Cook's Chasm, a famous blow hole, arriving just before high tide. It reminds one of Yellowstone's geysers, only more frequent.

Then, it was back to Newport for Yaquina Bay oysters, then to Yaquina Head for the sunset.

That is a good day.

Astoria

Journalists, we all know, may be trusted implicitly in all things, but in two things in particular: food and liquor.

This is especially true of British journalists who, as well all know, are even more above-board than we American sorts. So, when the managing editor of the Daily Astorian recommended a particular fish restaurant to us in his home town, there was little choice but to have dinner there.

Patrick Webb is a Brit who somehow landed at this wee paper at the mouth of the Columbia River. We met at a newspaper conference in Tacoma and, as we were headed to Astoria the next day, inquired of the food. Perhaps not surprisingly, he suggested the only English-style fish and chips pub.

As it happened, Mickey Cox, our B&B hostess (a nice lady in her late 60s or early 70s) confirmed Patrick’s suggestion of the Ship Inn down on the water next to the trolley. Off we went.

We dropped Patrick’s name with the waitress, who confirmed that he’s a fan of the scallops. This did not, however, get us a free or discounted meal. (It’s OK, Patrick, you’d have the same experience using my name in Idaho Falls. On second thought, using my name might get you tossed right out.)

I ordered my pint o’ Guinness (one does not eat fish and chips with anything but Guinness), and was disappointed that it didn’t come with a clover carved into the foam. (Patrick, they do this for me at my pub in Idaho.) This being the Oregon coast, I got the breaded oysters and Kathleen played it safe with the halibut. A half-order each (see, Patrick, not all Americans are gluttons).

But first, a cup o’ the chowder. (This is where my eyes roll back in my head, the spectacular salty-creamy taste of the chowder still fresh in my mind.) If not for Mickey’s spectacular and filling breakfast of apple German pancakes, fruit and sausage the next morning, we’d have headed back to the Ship Inn for another cup before heading southward down the coast.

Long story short, dinner was delicious and was followed by a stroll down the trolley track (there were no tragic collisions, the trolley having retired for the evening). 

The next morning there was coffee on the Astoria Inn's porch overlooking the cargo ships on the Columbia River as a soaking rain fell and the sea lions barked away (as they had all night) We made a couple of obligatory stops the next morning -- the Goonies house (look it up), a local shop for smoked salmon, the Columbian Café (for cayenne and jalapeno jellies). Before leaving Mickey's place, however, she pulled out a bottle of her son's pinot noir, suggesting it would go well with our smoked salmon that evening. Much more of that and she's going to seriously eat into what must already be modest profits. (Mickey, it seems, was taken with my knowledgeable and passionate monologue on fine cigars and good whiskey -- bad habits I share with her son.)

 

Despite our Cadillac sharing a B&B parking lot with a Lincoln Continental and a Towne Car, Astoria is not just a town for old farts -- there seemed to be a fair share of perfectly harmless but dangerous looking young people rambling around with unwashed hair and jeans. We’d have stayed longer, but the clarion call of the Oregon coast was too much to bear. And there were the reservations in Depoe Bay that we couldn’t cancel. And, Mickey, the pinot was the perfect pairing.

Maddox

PERRY, Utah -- It’s not even 4 p.m. on a Saturday in August when we pull into Maddox, but the parking lot is full. 

Waiting for a table at Maddox is pretty typical, but 4 p.m.? Sure enough, there are people in the waiting area and Kathleen puts our name on the list while I park the car. The wait is a short 15 minutes, but it’s still remarkable for a restaurant in a tiny town an hour north of Salt Lake City.

Or is it? Maddox has been around since 1949 and is considered by many Utahns as the No. 1 restaurant in the Beehive State. The menu is filled with comfort food, particularly fried chicken and chicken fried steak, which happens to be what Kathleen and I ordered (my chicken fried steak came from bison, a tiny nod to healthy eating).

Do not even think about asking for an adult beverage. Maddox has never served anything containing alcohol and certainly never will. You can, however, get an iced tea or homemade root beer, but the drink of choice is ice water from Maddox’s very own deep well. Besides being good for the traveler who will leave the restaurant and hop back into a car, the liquor-free menu helps keeps the cost down. Our bill came to $26 (including tax, not including tip), and we brought an entire chicken breast home for the next day.

Maddox is one of those places where you can fill up on the homemade rolls and cornbread long before your food arrives. In contrast to Col. Sanders and his 11 herbs and spices, Maddox's fried chicken is skinless and very lightly breaded. All the breading at Maddox is done with a light touch. The Maddox difference is that they grow their own beef (some on the other side of the restaurant's parking lot), and simply take great care to make consistent, delicious food and provide quick, friendly service. Honest, that's it.

There have been a few concessions and changes over the years. The shrimp cocktail has morphed into a "seafood salad," for example, no doubt a decision to keep prices low. The restaurant has expanded from a log cabin on skids (so they could move the building if the restaurant didn't work out, so the legend goes) to a huge building, a drive-in section, and a big reception center.

For consistently tasty comfort food served efficiently by nice people, Maddox gets Roger and Kathleen's four and half stars in the winter, five stars in the summer. The extra half-star is for its location on the north end of the Perry "fruit way," where fresh fruit and vegetable stands abound in July through September.

Whiskey from inside the doughnut hole

PARK CITY, Utah -- Inside Utah’s doughnut hole that is Park City is the state’s lone distillery, churning out a startling array of whiskeys and developing a national reputation.

Yes, doughnut hole. Surrounding Park City is the rest of Utah, one of America’s most politically conservative states and home to some of the country’s most bizarre and restrictive liquor laws. Park City, of course, hosted much of the 2002 Winter Olympics and continues to be home to Robert Redford’s annual homage to independent film-making, the Sundance Film Festival.

Naturally, we took a tour of High West (and when I say, "we," I mean the lost, brave and/or curious from our mostly Mormon family reunion).

The distillery is housed a block from Main Street in a restored Victorian home and a next-door historic building that has been home to everything from a livery stable to a gas station. The still sits between the two in a custom-built narrow space. The product ranges from a clear, un-aged spirit that is tastes like a cross between vodka and tequila, to a smooth 21-year-old rye aged is used oak barrels. High West also is part of the resurgence of rye whiskey, including a unique blend of bourbon and rye called “bourye.” High West also makes several vodkas from grain.

Regrettably (and, for a journalist -- even one off-duty -- unforgivably), I didn’t get the name of our delightful tour guide, but I do know that he’s originally from Charleston, South Carolina and moved to Park City to (what else?) ski. Part of my excuse is that I started the tour with a double rye (neat, no water) and ended it by sampling four other products, so the visit was enjoyable but the memory is a tad fuzzy.

High West is fairly new, so the older whiskeys are brought in from Kentucky for blending and casking. Some folks might not know that all whiskeys start out clear (just like moonshine) and get their color from spending years in barrels of American white oak that have been charred on the inside. The oak lends bourbon, rye and other American whiskeys their characteristic hints of vanilla and caramel. The un-aged stuff -- not my thing -- is pretty bland.

The middle-aged High West whiskeys are a combination of spicy and sweet, and they get smoother as they get older. The really good stuff -- 21-year-old rye -- runs 130 bucks a bottle. Why, you ask? Same reason older Scotch and Irish whiskey is spendy. As the whiskey ages inside the barrel, it loses about 2 percent of volume per year in evaporation (called the “angels’ share” in Scotland), so the longer it ages the less there is to sell.

The mash is prepared before distillation.

High West makes a wide variety of quality stuff, but the company may better at marketing than anything else. The location, the tours, the complete excellent web site, all indicate that someone has given a lot of thought to the sales side of the business. High West even got legislation through a pretty persnickety Utah legislature allowing them to sell their whiskey on ... gasp! ... Sunday.

We visited High West the same weekend as the annual art festival in town, so the High West restaurant was booked solid that evening and we had to dine elsewhere. However, we’ll go back one day, particularly because our unnamed tour guide said the chefs there use whiskey in everything they prepare. That is powerful motivation to make a return visit.

Clayton, hot dogs and chili

CLAYTON, Idaho -- The first-place entry in the chili cook-off had hot dogs in it.

           

 Since Kathleen and I were the judges, this couldn’t have been some sort of miscarriage of justice, right? No, let’s just say that this outcome indicates that Clayton is no run-of-the-mill town. Second place, by the way, was a “white chili” made with chicken and white beans. We may not get invited back for a second year of judging.

          

Clayton is quite literally a wide spot on the road about 25 miles up the Salmon River from Challis in central Idaho. Once a mining community, Clayton is home nowadays to about two dozen people in a county with 4,000 total residents.

         

The occasion was the 2011 Clayton Heritage Days. We started tasting the seven entries of the chili cook-off around 10:30 a.m. and handed out the cash awards (50 bucks for first place, 30 for second, 20 for third) at 11:15 and by noon or so it all had been consumed by attendees.

           

There was a log-sawing contest (won by two out-of-state guys who were spending the summer working at a local guest ranch). We had to head home before the old-time fiddlers fired up around 2.

           

Unlike a lot of tiny towns, the people of Clayton have kept the village alive through a historical society that maintains a gorgeous museum and sponsors a number of events, including the Heritage Days. The driving force behind all of this is a skinny cowboy named Mike Kalenik, who makes bowls of exotic woods when he’s not preserving local history.

OK, Mike’s not a cowboy. He’s a transplanted Californian who settled in Clayton He writes on the town’s web site: “What impressed me the most is the ability to sit down with someone, usually over a cup of coffee, and you might bullshit for 45 minutes and never learn their name.”

         

Mike also notes, almost certainly correctly, that there are more cattle than people in the county.

           

Here’s another thing -- while Clayton got its start with silver mining, it’s now the world’s most significant source of something called “lube-grade molybdenum,” which is used to harden steel.

          
Anyway, the lady who made the winning chili wasn’t even in the judging barn when we announced our decision, so sure was she that she wouldn’t win. She’d just thrown it together the night before, it seems. Here’s the secret -- in addition to hot dogs, she threw in big bunch of bacon. Just goes to show -- bacon makes everything better.