Every picture tells a story: A food and travel blog

Embrace your inner tourist

2012-01-05T20:06:00.001-07:00

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)

2012-01-02T22:48:00.006-07:00

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

2011-11-19T10:16:00.008-07:00

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

2011-10-24T18:31:00.004-06:00

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

2011-10-10T11:31:00.010-06:00

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

2011-10-02T21:58:00.004-06:00

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

2011-09-24T16:34:00.005-06:00

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

2011-09-21T22:00:00.001-06:00

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

2011-09-19T22:21:00.000-06:00

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

2011-09-18T11:45:00.003-06:00

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

2011-08-07T11:10:00.001-06:00

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

2011-08-07T10:34:00.004-06:00

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

2011-07-24T09:18:00.005-06:00

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.

Love letter to Idaho Falls

2011-06-08T22:21:00.007-06:00

I have lived in (or near) Idaho Falls, Idaho for 16 of the past 21 years, and I love it. I plan to spend the next 20 here. It has an under-appreciated cultural diversity, a tremendous community spirit and is geographically blessed -- a couple of hours from Yellowstone, the Tetons, a half-dozen other major mountain ranges and more things to see and do outdoors than most places.

That said, our towns (Idaho Falls-Ammon) can do better. Because half of our grandchildren now live in Sacramento and other family lives elsewhere in California's Central Valley, we visit that part of the country often and have found our favorite town in those parts -- Lodi. Yes, the same town defamed by Credence Clearwater Revival ("... stuck in Lodi again ...").

For many years, Lodi was a small town tucked between Sacramento and Stockton just off of Highway 99, surrounded by walnut groves and vineyards, whose wine grapes were used to make cheap wine or were shipped to Napa and elsewhere to be turned into spendier stuff. In the last generation, though, the town has firmly grasped its bootstraps to become a really lovely place, home to wineries, restaurants, boutiques and a tidy, inviting downtown.

These things don't happen by accident. Recently, we spent a mid-day and evening in Lodi during the first of the summer's farmers markets. We did wine tastings, had a great light lunch on a Main Street patio, listened to live music, kibitzed with the locals and did a whole bunch of people-watching. The main drag had been closed to automobile traffic and was packed with people, many of whom were not from Lodi.

Besides a few wine tasting rooms in town, the countryside is dotted with dozens of wineries with their own tasting rooms and the whole area has the feel of a place where its residents and leaders care and work very hard to create a great place to live and visit. All one must do to know that this requires a cooperative effort is to visit any of a dozen unnamed towns elsewhere in the region, where that sense of pride and community spirit is not apparent.

Idaho Falls-Ammon does not have wineries or vineyards. It does, however, have a downtown with huge potential (larger in size than Lodi's) and is full of smart and caring people who could match or exceed what Lodi has accomplished (for another example, visit Walla Walla, Washington). We're doing some great things in Idaho Falls, but we don't compare favorably to other similar-sized towns that have set a higher bar. What's missing? I've not done a lot of hard-core research, but here are my suspicions:

1. There is not a good collaborative relationship between the people leading the city and those in charge of the surrounding county, which share space in downtown Idaho Falls. We need stronger leadership that both demands change and has the vision to make it happen. This lack of cooperation extends to Idaho Falls and its neighbor, Ammon, which can't even get a stoplight put into one of the region's most dangerous intersections.

2. Owners of Idaho Falls' downtown real estate seem not to be willing to work together to make progress happen. It takes money, effort, organization, cooperation and vision, all of which seem to be lacking to one degree or another.

3. What you sense in Lodi is a passion for the place. While I know that a good many people in Idaho Falls feel equally passionate about their hometown, it's not in as much evidence as it is in Lodi. Passion needs to be translated into action.

4. I suspect that it took patience and commitment to turn Lodi into the place it is today. We in Idaho Falls-Ammon need that same level of patience and commitment, focused on a practical but ambitious vision. For example, years ago consultants talked about turning several streets in downtown Idaho Falls into a pedestrian mall. Nothing has happened. We have a parking problem, real or perceived. Granted, Lodi doesn't spend four or five months buried in snow, but its weather isn't perfect -- summers can be sweltering, winters can be clammy and grim. You work with what you have.

5. This doesn't have to be led by governments. Competing farmers markets can combine into a single awesome one. Building and business owners can use their existing organizations to make real progress and demand more action from their elected officials. It seems as if we're all waiting for someone else to act.

I hope this comes across as it's intended -- a love letter. We have many great organizations that are doing amazing things. We have a remarkable museum that brings in world-class exhibits. We have an arts council that has renovated a beautiful old theater and brings in great artists, both performing and visual. Investors have turned a former gravel pit on our river's west side into a business park and potential retail and residential center. We have a spectacular greenbelt, a beautiful baseball park, an amazing symphony, a remarkable zoo and an admirable history of making things happen. The most recent example of the latter is this year's passage of an auditorium district to help build an events center.

Still, we can do better.

California's secret wine empire

2011-06-06T00:27:00.000-06:00

MURPHY'S, Calif. -- Back in 1981, UC Davis viticulturist Harold Olmo culminated more than 30 years of work when he commercially released a cross of Muscat and Grenache grapes that he called Symphony. A former row farmer from Lodi named John Kautz took a chance on the grape, eventually becoming the world's largest grower of the new varietal and producer of his version of a wine from that Olmo creation, Obsession.

From a start of 12 acres in 1948, Kautz has created one of California's largest wineries and wine grape producers called Ironstone. Except for the grapes used in some small batches of sparkling wine, all the Ironstone wines are from the estate. The name comes from the hard rock Kautz and his crews encountered when they blasted holes into the ground in the Sierra Foothills that are now man-made caves used to store Ironstone wines before bottling. With more than 6,000 acres under cultivation (nearly all near Lodi about an hour away from the winery), Ironstone is now one of the top 25 winemakers by volume in the world and one of the top 10 in California.

Never heard of them, right?

Ironstone's Symphony Obsession has a large cult following in America, combining a sweet, floral nose with a more acidic finish for a unique, interesting wine that sells for about $12 a bottle. Ironstone makes another dozen or so wines, most priced under $20, including a pretty good Lodi zinfandel. But Ironstone has become more than just a winery. Kautz and his family have created an enormous operation that includes an outdoor amphitheater (maximum seating: 6,000), a lake, gardens, a six-story building housing everything from the wine caves to a music room (housing the pipe organ from the Allhambra Theater in Van Nuys), and a historical museum that includes a 44-pound gold nugget. (How Kautz obtained the nugget from a mine in nearby Jamestown is a well-kept secret.)

We took the tour, from the immaculate gardens to the Disney-like wine cave to the spotless grounds that include the amphitheater. I'm probably way off, by I calculated in my head that Ironstone produces more than $100 million worth (wholesale) of wine a year, and undoubtedly makes another few million in its side projects.

All of this sounds pretty impressive, but here's the real news: You can taste up to six Ironstone wines for no charge, just like the olden days when wineries actually liked to have people drive by and taste their product. So long as you don't bring your own food and drink (there's a deli on site), you can use the grounds for free for a picnic, which looks like a mighty good idea. Among the acts performing at Ironstone in 2011 will be Willie Nelson (his fourth visit) and Sammy Hagar. The Lodi area and Sierra foothills are rife with wineries large and small nowadays, but Ironstone is one of a handful that is a must-see.

Braunschweiger on the house

2011-05-27T23:40:00.001-06:00

We're tooling into poor-man's Las Vegas (Reno) and Kathleen has a hankering for German food (red cabbage, in particular), so we ask Maxine (our GPS device) where to find an appropriate restaurant. Maxine comes up with Bavarian World, and we're off.

On the approach it's not promising. We're just a few blocks from downtown, but the neighborhood is a little, um, worn, and not in an acid-washed-jeans sort of way. The parking lot is empty, and so is the restaurant. To be fair, it's early -- before 5 p.m. on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

Behind the pastry case is a guy in a chef's hat who comes out of central casting -- think Chef Boy-Ar-Dee meets the Pillsbury Doughboy. This is Michael Cordle. In the small market that is part of the restaurant, owner Klaus Ginschel (willkommen!) talks to us about how to make a dinner of canned sauerkraut (it involves onions, bratwurst and a pinch of sugar). He also tells Kathleen that her red cabbage is more a Swedish dish than German, assuring that it is on the menu nonetheless.

Encouraged, we take a seat in the empty dining room and an amiable waiter by the name of Carl Eissmann (talk about central casting) with blond hair and a ready smile welcomes us to the cavernous place, and we're all set except for the oompah music and lederhosen. Thankfully, there is neither. Presently, owner Klaus arrives at our table and I confess my secret love for liverwurst. He says they have 15 varieties (how many ways can you make liver pate?). The special for the evening is a rolled veal stuffed with spinach, and Klaus assures us that Kathleen can have the red cabbage instead of veggies on the side.

Germans are great at beer, but their wine tends to be on the sweet side. This is good news for me, not so much for Kathleen, who likes her wine dry. Klaus assures her, however, that he can scrounge up a California chardonnay. He gives Kathleen a sip of a sweet German wine and she asks for the chardonnay. I order a glass of Spaten Optimator, served from the tap. It's a classic German dark beer and it alone is worth the stop.

Anyway, Kathleen gets the special with red cabbage and I stick with the traditional schnitzel with spaetzel. While we're waiting on the orders, Klaus brings out a complimentary appetizer of two kinds of liverwurst on a pretzel bun. It's spectacular. The rest of the meal is really good, though not quite up to the standard of the Mozart Cafe in Leavenworth, Washington. How it stacks up to your typical restaurant in Munich I haven't any idea.

We finish our meal still alone in the restaurant, cajole Michael and Carl into posing for a picture, and pick up a six pack of Opimator (one of the great names in beer), promising to come back in the morning for coffee and pastries, with a liverwurst sandwich to go for lunch. Bis morgen!

Lewis and Clark didn't eat here

2011-04-21T21:47:00.003-06:00

Lewiston, Idaho is the lowest spot in our fair state at a mere 700 or so feet above sea level, squeezed at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers at the base of much higher land in all directions, and home to a foul-smelling but economically significant pulp mill.

It also is -- or, so claims the publisher of Lewiston's fine newspaper, the Tribune -- the home of the original bite-sized steak. When I suggested that finger steaks are common throughout our country, he disdainfully suggested that finger steaks and bite-sized steak have as much in common as fingerling potatoes and potato flakes. Fine, whatever. Publishers lie about their home towns. I once told a job applicant that you can see the Tetons from Idaho Falls.

Lewiston has a sister city across the Snake River in Washington called Clarkston. Get the picture? This is Idaho's banana belt, where one can golf year-round and wine grapes are finding a home. You can't get there from anywhere -- the nearest freeway is a couple of hours' drive away. If you fish, it's about as perfect a place as there is on the planet. It's also a fine town for the blue-collar food bon vivant.

There is Bojack's, where the smoky bar is on the main level and the restaurant is downstairs. The house specialty is the 50-50 -- boiled shrimp and deep-fried steak bites, served with potato and spaghetti. Why spaghetti?

"We only have one deep fryer," explains the waitress. "When we're busy it takes awhile to get the fried food done, so we serve spaghetti first." That, dear reader, is genius.

Publisher hyperbole aside, I must report that the bite-sized steak is far more delicious than finger steaks and can even be ordered medium rare. I stand corrected.

Another place one must visit while in Lewiston is Effie's, home of hamburgers the circumference of a small pizza, Strangely enough, they are also delicious, with a sort of Big Mac thing going on. Four of us split two burgers, so there can be little doubt that our caloric intake was reasonable and prudent.

Lewiston is a lovely, unpretentious sort of town on the edge of the Palouse and the Camas Prairie, an inland port made accessible by dams and locks on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Highfalutin it isn't, and that's a good thing.

Barbacoa

2011-03-27T18:19:00.002-06:00

BOISE -- Barbacoa is as subtle as a gold-plated Hummer. It's all dark wood, enormous chunks of granite, stacks of wine bottles and exotic liquors, all strategically placed next to a duck pond a short bike ride from downtown Boise.

This is Boise chic, complete with a story. In January of 2010 it burned down, darn near to the ground. It reopened on New Year's Eve the same year, all full of piss and vinegar, which may not be the right phrase for a restaurant, but you get the point.

The cocktails come in ice glasses (not iced glasses -- glasses made of frozen water). It's a gimmick, to be sure, but it does truly keep the drink cold. Anyway, on any given night, Boise's young and hip gather at the Barbacoa, because it has two bars, an inventive menu and, rather shockingly, reasonable prices. In warm weather, the windows next to the duck pond come down and the dining can be done alfresco.

For heaven's sake, don't go to Barbacoa and order the nachos. Look for the most exotic-sounding items on the menu. We started with a crab-rum-coconut-milk-and-fresh-mint appetizer that was spectacular. Kathleen ordered the trout and I got the sturgeon. Yes, sturgeon -- that ancient monster fish from the depths of the Salmon River. It came on top of a spicy lobster sauce and was a put-down-the-fork-and-savor-the-moment moment.

Dessert, dear reader, was a disappointment Four -- no, six -- dollops of ice cream rolled in Special K and stuck on the end of lollipop sticks, served on what one friend said looks like a weird hookah pipe. Two bucks' worth of ice cream for about $12.

Otherwise, the food is great, prices reasonable (including the wine) and the the setting is over-the-top but comfortable.

Not exactly a food or travel post: Odes from 1976

2011-03-06T10:19:00.039-07:00

UPDATE: The 20 WORST songs from 1975-76 -- see toward the end, just above the official top 20 pop songs from June, 1976.

If you didn't grow up in it, the era of the high school class of 1975-76 might seem musically dreary. It was not.

One blogger refers to it as the "Worst Year for Pop Music Ever." With such awful songs as Disco Duck, Afternoon Delight, I Write the Songs and anything by those cute kids, the Bay City Rollers, one could be forgiven for thinking that 1975-76 was tone deaf. Those who experienced the time might think so, too, if they weren't listening to good FM album rock stations.

Toward the bottom of this post I'll provide a list of more than 50 really good songs to come out of the year, and I'd like input to add more. But more important than any single record, 1975-76 (I write this now because Provo High School's 35th reunion is this summer) was notable for a body of truly momentous music. At the very bottom is the Pop Top 20 for graduation week -- a weak selection, indeed.

Oh, before I go farther, here's my food contribution to this post: Jerry's Hamburgers (with chili sauce, probably responsible for taking 1-3 years off of my life expectancy) and the Italian Place (with its own brand of cheese steak -- take another 1-3 years away). Plus, I had such a crush on a girl at the Pizza Palace that I once went there 31 consecutive days. Nope, never got a date. That's all I need to say about that.

So, to the music. Start with "Rainbow Rising." Former Deep Purple founder Ritchie Blackmore recruited Ronnie James Dio and produced 33 and a half minutes of beautiful heavy metal, complete with goofy fantasy-based lyrics: "All eyes see the figure of the wizard/As he climbs to the top of the world/No sound as he falls instead of rising." Blackmore was all into fantasy and stuff, but he couldn't write clever lyrics to support his habit like Robert Plant could.

And speaking of Plant, Zeppelin came out with two albums: "Presence" and the live concert album, "The Song Remains the Same" (basically the sound track to a movie of the same name). The latter is memorable to me for Plant's ad lib, "Does anybody remember laughter?" Because of bassist John Paul Jones' superb production work, I've always thought that Zep was better in the studio than live. Still, in the space of about a year they put out substantial recordings of both. As always, the studio album needs to be listened to entirely, not as a series of single tracks.These two albums followed closely on the heels of "Physical Graffiti", released in early 1975 and played on FM radio for years thereafter. Made up almost entirely of music Zep recorded in 1970-74, it included this memorable vinyl side of music: Houses of the Holy, Trampled Under Foot and Kashmir (the latter being the "Bolero" of rock music, if you know what I mean). Physical Graffiti is Zep's second-greatest album, topped only by the nearly perfect ZOSO.

And then came Boston. They had been recording at Tom Scholz' high-tech home studio and playing around the Northeast for years. They put it all together in 1976 with great pop hooks, organ and guitar riffs and the unforgettable voice of Brad Delp. I still remember going into the record store on University Avenue, where all new vinyl LPs sold for $3.99. Don't know how many needles I burned up playing that record, but it became the soundtrack for my freshman year of college.

In those days in Provo, Utah, there wasn't much taste for subversive rock and roll (fast forward to 2011 -- some things never change), so there wasn't much local interest in the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, or Warren Zevon, but they all emerged in 1976 with singular works. For every Captain and Tennille there was a "Wind and Wuthering" by Genesis. Barry Manilow is countered by AC/DC; Boz Scaggs makes up for ABBA. There were really interesting albums by Supertramp, Dylan (though I never have been able totally get him) put out "Desire," with the terrific track, "Hurricane." Yes, disco was hitting the air, but so was punk. A wide variety of punk is still around, it should be noted, while disco -- well it died hard and fast, returning to its roots in funk, R&B and soul.

Paul Simon came out with "Still Crazy After All These Years," which won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1976, still one of his best records. ZZ Top put out a live album and toured through Salt Lake, complete with live longhorn steers on the stage. This was back when they were still playing stripped-down blues guitar rock and hadn't discovered synthesizers yet. (If you think "Eliminator" is the real sound of ZZ Top, go back and listen to "LaGrange.")

Four years before he gave us the classic line, "They do respect her butt" in his song, "Her Strut," a slightly more restrained Bob Seger released "Night Moves" that includes these truly classic rock songs: "Night Moves," "The Fire Down Below" (I did say only slightly more restrained), "Main Street," "Come to Poppa," "Rock 'n' Roll Never Forgets." Steely Dan warmed up for two of the finest pop/rock albums ever (Aja, 1977, and Gaucho, 1980) with the only slightly weaker "Royal Scam." Blue Oyster Cult announced "This Ain't the Summer of Love" on its critically acclaimed album, "Agents of Fortune."

Meanwhile, when he wasn't producing Warren Zevon's work, Jackson Browne put out his finest album, "The Pretender." If you think you know Browne's work from radio, guess again. And, about the time the '75-'76 school year began, a relatively unknown guy from New Jersey released an album called "Born to Run." Bruce Springsteen had come to the masses.

One of the big events of 1975-76 was the release of the film, "Tommy," based on the rock opera of the same name from a few years earlier by The Who. Nice idea. Bad execution. It did give us a few memorable moments, including Elton John's version of "Pinball Wizard," lip-synced to perfection in a senior year assembly (or was it Homecoming that fall?) by Mark Wiest. The movie was awful, as were most of the musical performances, falling far short of The Who's original masterpiece. The only good news was that it wasn't as bad as the truly awful movie version of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1978.

Dominating the FM airwaves in 1975-76 was the bombastic, brilliant, bizarre, Bohemian Rhapsody. Name one song released in the past 25 years that has had the cultural impact and universality of Bohemian Rhapsody. Just one. No?

Aaah, the Floyd. Dark Side of the Moon was still playing all over FM radio, and then came Wish You Were Here in September of 1975. Never meant to be played as single tracks, this was never more true of what is all-but-certainly Floyd's second-greatest album. Still, the title track somehow became an encore number, while the multi-track "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" turned into a concert opener. Brilliant, dark, musically sophisticated and a pinnacle the Floyd never approached again, even on "Another Brick..."

And, finally, what can one say about Aerosmith's two stop-the-world-and-listen albums of 1975 and 1976: "Toys in the Attic" and "Rocks?" Can you imagine a world without "Dream On," "Back in the Saddle," "Last Child," "Home Tonight," "Walk This Way," or "Sweet Emotion?" No, I think not.

Did I mention, "Hotel California" came out in late 1976? Yes, yes, yes, it got too much airplay and became a parody of itself. But just put all that aside for just a minute and give the music a listen. It's really, really good.

So, joke about "The Convoy" all you want -- 1975-76 made up for some truly awful music by giving us some of the greatest stuff ever recorded. (Note: I'm cheating a little, including some songs and albums that were released in early 1975. But you can't have a list of songs from the school year of 1975-76 without Kashmir.)

Don't Fear The Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
Breakdown, Tom Petty
More Than A Feeling, Boston
Free Bird (live version), Lynyrd Skynrd
Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd
I'll Be Good To You, The Brothers Johnson
2112 Medley: Overture /The Temples Of Syrinx / Discovery / Presentation / Oracle: The Dream / Soliloquy / Grand Finale, Rush
The Boys Are Back In Town, Thin Lizzy
Tonight, Elton John
Love is the Drug, Roxy Music
Sara Smile, Hall and Oates
50 Ways To Leave Your Lover, Paul Simon
Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker), Parliament
Kid Charlemagne, Steely Dan
Here Come Those Tears Again, Jackson Browne
Crazy On You, Heart
Stargazer, Rainbow
New York State Of Mind, Billy Joel
Harbor Lights, Boz Scaggs
Anarchy In The U.K., The Sex Pistols
Get Closer, Seals and Croft
Dream On, Aerosmith
If You Leave Me Now, Chicago
Jailbreak, Thin Lizzy
Win, Lose or Draw, Allman Brothers
Lowdown, Boz Scaggs
New Rose, The Damned
Haitian Divorce, Steely Dan
Kashmir, Led Zepplin
Feel Like Makin' Love, Bad Company
Dream Weaver, Gary Wright
The Pretender, Jackson Browne
It's Over, Boz Scaggs
Couldn't Get It Right, Climax Blues Band
Rhiannon, Fleetwood Mac
Pinball Wizard, Elton John
Trampled Under Foot, Led Zeppelin
Walk this Way, Aerosmith
Carry On Wayward Son, Kansas
Victim Of Changes, Judas Priest
Slow Ride, Foghat
Too Old To Rock And Roll, Jethro Tull
Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word, Elton John
The Fez, Steely Dan
Long May You Run, Neil Young
Hotel California,The Eagles
Sweet Emotion, Aerosmith
Takin' It To The Streets, The Doobie Brothers
Tush, ZZ Top
Achilles Last Stand, Led Zeppelin
What Can I Say, Boz Scaggs
Year Of The Cat, Al Stewart
Play That Funky Music, Wild Cherry
Houses of the Holy, Led Zeppelin
Getaway, Earth, Wind and Fire
You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine, Lou Rawls
Do You Feel Like We Do, Peter Frampton
Lido Shuffle, Boz Scaggs
This Masquerade, George Benson
Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen
Smokin', Boston
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, AC/DC

Let's Stick Together, Bryan Ferry
Blitzkreig Bop, The Ramones
Somebody To Love, Queen
Rich Girl, Hall and Oates
Blinded By The Light, Manfred Mann
Say You Love Me, Fleetwood Mac
And … any five songs from Night Moves by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band

Plus ... Warren Zevon's entire eponymous album.

Added: On the recommendation of classmate David Duke: Never Been Any Reason by Head East, Long May You Run by Neil Young and Freeway Jam by Jeff Beck.

UPDATE: Here, I add the worst 20 songs from 1975-76. It's trickier than it sounds. One shouldn't include obvious tracks like "Disco Duck," which were never meant to be taken seriously. For this list, only ostensibly sincere attempts to make good music will be considered for inclusion in the worst list. And so, in reverse order (saving the very worst for last):

20. I Write the Songs, Barry Manilow. Surely, Barry must cringe when this comes up on the Muzak at the grocery store (and, don't call him "Surely"). And, no, he didn't write it.
19-16. And now, we enter the Olivia Newton-John zone. Loves me some Olivia N-J, she of the breathy voice and big eyes -- not hard to look at, particularly if she's jumping around in Spandex, etc. But she put out some cringe-inducing, "did I just hear what I think I heard" tunes. And, so:
19: Please, Mr. Please, ONJ
18. Have You Never Been Mellow, ONJ
17. I Honestly Love You, ONJ
16. Come on Over, ONJ
15. Shannon, Henry Gross (I dare you, DARE YOU, to listen to this thing all the way through). This song is about a dog "drifting out to sea." I'm not kidding.
14-12. Captain and Tenille. I think I just threw up a little. They had their own TV SHOW! Their contributions to truly bad pop music of 1976 include:
14. Lonely Night (Angel Face), written by Neil Sedaka and performed by C and T.
13. Shop Around (an old Smokey Robinson tune that could have been listenable in other, more capable, hands), C and T
12. Muskrat Love (Oh, the horror, the horror). It was bad enough when America performed it. In C and T's hands it became epic.
13. Rather than giving Barry Manilow his own block, I'm sprinkling him throughout the list, as his contribution unbearably bad pop music is on a scale all by itself. At No. 13: This One's For You. (Manilow's secret -- production values that take us from pianissimo to an enormous crescendo in 3:45, backed by full orchestra, aided by a lot of echo for the voice.
12. Oh, what the heck, here's another: Looks Like We Made it, Barry Manilow.
11.Tonight's the Night, Rod Stewart. He actually sang these words, ostensibly to his "virgin child": "Spread your wings and let me come inside." Dude. That's sick.
10. Afternoon Delight, Starland Vocal Band. Don't think so? Listen to this version.
9. Confession time: I LOVE Ambrosia (the band, not the delectable dessert). I think "Holding Onto Yesterday" is one of the great pop songs ever. However, in all fairness, there is significant disagreement out there among those less cultured than I, so I include it on this list, from 1975. Just remember that if you agree, you're wrong. Listen to this version, done in the blues.
8-6. For the next three, I give you: The Carpenters. Oh, stop. She had a lovely voice and he had a nice touch for production and arrangement. But, please, could you really just listen to that stuff without keeping yourself busy doing something else, out of fear that some part of some tune would worm its way into your head and never leave? Ever? So, here they are, the worst of the worst, the Carpenters' three worst songs from 1975-76:
8. Only Yesterday.
7. Please Mr. Postman.
6. There's a Kind of Hush.
5. Kiki Dee, for whatever reason, became a protege of Elton John, to the point that he put out an unlistenable duet with her called "Don't Go Breaking My Heart." Elton, ya done broke mine with this abomination
4. You must respect a man who's been in the business for decades, but when Neil Sedaka released "Bad Blood," I had to listen to it in my pizza delivery truck for months. This, in turn, led to therapy as an adult and I still hold a grudge. So, Neil, you get No. 4 for Bad Blood.
3. I close with three terrible songs that made it to No. 1 on the pop charts in 1976. First, "Saturday Night," Bay City Rollers. No explanation required.
2. Theme from SWAT, Rhythm Heritage. (It was a bad TV show made worse when its theme song went to No. 1).
1. And, finally: A Fifth of Beethoven, Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. First, you don't mess with Beethoven, period. But turn the most famous four notes in the history of Western music into a disco tune? Just go away. Don't ever talk to me again. Ever. Not even to say you're sorry.

I close by paying homage to the top 20 singles during the week of our graduation, dreck and all:

1. Silly Love Songs, Wings.
2. Tryin' to Get the Feeling Again, Barry Manilow
3. Fooled Around and Fell in Love, Elvin Bishop
4. Shannon, Henry Gross (nominated for one of five worst songs of the year by me)
5. Love Hangover, Diana Ross
6. Get Up and Boogie, Silver Convention
7. Strange Magic, Electric Light Orchestra
8.Rhiannon, Fleetwood Mac
9. Happy Days, Pratt and McClain
10. One Piece at a Time, Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three ("Boy Named Sue" was his only worse song)
11. Boogie Fever, The Sylvers (Wait for it, here comes disco)
12. Welcome Back, John Sebastian
13. Sara Smile, Hall and Oates
14. Show Me the Way, Peter Frampton
15. Misty Blue, Dorothy Moore
16. Sweet Love, Commodores
17. Young Blood, Bad Company
18. It's Over, Boz Scaggs
19. Fool to Cry, Rolling Stones
20. Love in the Shadows, Neil Sedaka

Smoking cigars and the discriminating palate

2011-02-26T18:34:00.005-07:00

Puerto Vallarta Cigar Factory.

Cigar smoking is very sophisticated and, in moderation, poses few health risks.

No, seriously. And I have just the story to prove the former.

We're on a cruise with stops in places in Mexico where one can buy Cuban cigars -- mostly fake, but, with proper care, authentic ones can be had. Of course, such ships have wood-paneled salons set aside for the handful of passengers who are discriminating enough to smoke the occasional cigar, enjoy a good cognac and share a story or two. Meanwhile, the other passengers are stuck in the equivalent of steerage, swilling Bud Light and eating at the buffet.

That's usually true -- except, it turns out, on this boat, where cigar smokers are banished to the 13th deck above the pool -- outside. Even in the tropics, evenings can be breezy and a tad nippy, neither of which is conducive to burning a stick and enjoying like-minded companionship. Ah, well, it'll be OK.

First night at the "cigar bar," I meet an English gent named Dave from Dover, a former pub owner who's now a civil servant counting the days until retirement. I enjoy an enormous CAO MX2 (that's a cigar) while he smokes small Belgian cigars, and I show up late for dinner with Kathleen. Dave and I meet up again a night or two later and he schools me on "malts" -- single-malt Scotch. It's lovely.

At one of our ports I buy a few cigars and am told by one of the experts at the store that a mild cigar can be enhanced by dipping its end in cognac. I'm really getting hoity toity now, for sure.

Anyway, that evening, it's particularly breezy but Dave shows up and I order a cognac from the bar -- VSOP, of course -- eager to show off my new-found expertise. I dip the tip of my cigar in the cognac and then proceed to go through an entire book of matches attempting to light the thing. It's too windy, I think -- it just won't fire up. Dave is amused and brings over his lighter, even cupping it around his hands and holding it for me. After many misfires, it lights up from the inside out, eventually starting to burn normally but never igniting the area that had been dipped in the liquor. I'm perplexed and more than a little embarrassed.

I get home and do some Internet research. Turns out, you're supposed to dip the unlit end in the cognac -- not the end you light. Dave, I am quite sure, will be telling this story to his English friends for many years to come.

Cheers, Dave. Glad I could be of assistance.

P.S. Dave's malt recommendations were Bunnahabhain and Caol Ila.

Food that looks like animal parts

2011-02-20T17:44:00.002-07:00

The trick with chicken feet is to steam them long enough to tenderize the joints so they can be easily pulled apart.

It's entirely obvious that chicken feet have precious little meat. They are eaten by people for whom big portions of meat are hard to come by or in restaurants catering to people wanting something a little exotic, like traditional Cantonese tea houses serving dim sum. Fixed in various ways, the eating is done the same -- place a portion of the foot in your mouth (please, don't get cute), gnaw gently on the skin and sinewy meat underneath, pull or bite the joints until they separate, and gnaw some more. Tastes like chicken. No, actually, it tastes like whatever sauce was prepared. Yes, it's dark meat.

For whatever reason, Americans are prissy about our food. For the most part we won't eat ears, noses, feet or other parts that look too much like the real animal. No, we want to pretend that our food comes from somewhere other than its actual source.

In some cases, our delicateness is for a good reason -- I ate pig snout once, and it had the texture (and, flavor, I suspect) of a large eraser, with hair. Stir-fried sparrows are pretty disgusting, too. Fish head soup is delicious. Sweetbreads (consisting of the thymus, usually) are wonderful but not worth the expense. Never had brains (keep the jokes to yourself), but I'm gonna some day.

So, anyway, all of this is just an excuse to mention that we ate at a Chinese dim sum restaurant in Sacramento today and I ordered some chicken feet just to show off. Brother-in-law Steve ate one without gagging and was a really good sport. I ate the other two. Where they found a three-footed chicken I'll never know.

Burned out on this inexpensive, effortless and mostly interesting travel option

2011-02-20T12:13:00.003-07:00

It took 10 trips in eight years, but I'm temporarily burned out on cruising.

Part of the problem is that cruise lines, like every other business, have been trimming some of the frills to remain profitable during a down economy. Whether because of concerns over crime or for other reasons, our last stop in Puerto Vallarta was six hours shorter than the first time we went, even though the cruise itineraries were otherwise the same. The food and entertainment have become increasingly more pedestrian and the up charges more common.

Of course, the fascination with cruising can wear off after the first half-dozen trips or so. The ships are all lovely, the experience almost always pleasant. I want something else.

The last straw was our most recent Mexican Riviera trip, which was pleasant and relaxing in nearly every way. It was our fourth cruise on Norwegian, and they've all been fine. I do, however, have gripes:

1. The only place to smoke a cigar on the boat is the most inhospitable place imaginable outside on the 13th deck. Really?

2. The performers for the nightly variety show were talented and all, but you can only milk so much over seven nights. Clearly, this is an area where corners have been cut.

3. It used to be that the dining room food was a cut above the average mainland restaurant. It's slipped to a cut below.

4. The port stops were unnecessarily short. Riding on the boat is fine, but we travel to see stuff.

So, it's time for a break from cruising. Here's a completely unfair, biased, possibly inaccurate and overly simplistic review of our experience on six cruise lines. For any cruise lines CEOs reading this, I will gladly change my negative review in return for a free trip.

Norwegian (four cruises): Ships are generally clean, well-run, easy to get around and NCL has a good selection of trips out of southern California. We like the freestyle idea with no set time for meals, though the food in the dining room is so average that we spend extra money a time or two on the "upgraded" restaurants. Overall score: B+.

Royal Caribbean (two cruises): Our favorite line, by a long margin. Beautiful boats, great staff, above-average food and top-notch entertainment. Our Royal Caribbean trip to Mexico is my second-favorite cruise ever. Overall score: A.

Celebrity (one cruise): My all-time favorite trip of any kind; the ports of call were Cozumel, Costa Maya, Costa Rica, Panama, Jamaica and Grand Cayman. A very rough day in 18-foot seas across the Caribbean left Kathleen down for the count, but she recovered when the seas calmed. Beautiful ship, fantastic itinerary, great crew and staff. Overall score: A-.

Holland America (one cruise): Skews "old", as they say. Average age was about 70 and the musical selections seemed older still. Designed for people who want a traditional cruising experience, complete with music from the Titanic. Overall score: C+.

Carnival (one cruise): We were pleasantly surprised by the ship (better than the Norwegian ships we've been on) and the trip was made spectacularly fun by the 50-plus members of the Wilder clan that came along for the ride. All in all, a better experience than we'd expected from the party cruise line. Overall score: B+.

Princess (one cruise): Our only really bad experience cruising, made perplexing by that fact that most people rave about Princess. It was the last Alaska cruise of the season and a lot of the staff was heading home afterward. It showed. Unpleasant, unhelpful, downright cranky, and they pushed too hard to sell us stuff. To be fair, the entertainment on this ship was great. You can't screw up Alaska, which was spectacular, but overall the ship experience was bad. To top it off, Kathleen caught the Norwalk virus and was violently sick the last two days of the cruise. (Note to Princess CEO: This is your cue that I can be bought off.) Overall score D+.

I reckon we'll return to cruising at some point, but our next winter break will likely include a lot car and grandbaby time with some stays at beach motels. See you on the road.

Mazatlan mayhem: We shouldn't be alive

2011-02-19T20:49:00.002-07:00

MAZATLAN -- It all started so innocently.

OK, fine, we were in Mazatlan in early 2011 at the height of the Mexican drug wars, so we should have sensed the danger. Still, we’re not sellers nor buyers nor manufacturers, so we should be fine. Yes?

Sure, Disney had recently decided to take Mazatlan off its ports-of-call itinerary. Phhht. Disney. No sense of humor, no sense of adventure.

Not only do we blithely take the big ship into the Mazatlan harbor, but we confidently leave the boat and hop a van toward a big excursion to see the local mangroves (these are plants that grow in brackish estuary waters) and bird life. No, really.

The bird-watching goes smoothly enough -- lots of birds, lot of mangroves, beautiful weather, a charming guide (though, admittedly, the garbage washed up on much of the shoreline is distracting). We see a tuna catch coming right off the boat (you don’t suppose they do that just for the tourists, do you?). So far, the day is similar to a day we spent floating the Tortuguero Canals in Costa Rica (minus, of course, the sloths, monkeys, Jesus Christ lizards, crocodiles, and iguanas, and plus the garbage).

So, we board a trailer with enough bench seats for all 44 of us, hooked to a tractor, and begin a slow and beguiling journey across the delightful Stone Island to the Pacific side. It’s sort of like a Mexican hayride. We take a right turn back toward Mazatlan. Cue the scary music.

The breeze is gentle, the temperatures warm, the sky blue, the ocean spectacularly beautiful. We are chatting up the elderly folks who have joined us on the trailer (they’re all elderly but us). There is a sound. An ominous sound. A rhythmic, death-rattle of a sound. And then, it becomes all too clear.

A tire on our trailer-with-benches has gone flat. Uh oh.

We nervously glance behind us. Miles of white-sand beach. We look to our right. Coconut groves. Ahead -- more miles of white-sand beach. It’s quiet. Too quiet.

At any moment, the crossfire between rival gangs will catch us, we innocent Americans, and we will be headlines for sure.

Or worse, what if this is all a setup, right? A deal has been made among conniving bad people and we’re to be robbed or kidnapped, held for ransom and such. It’s only a matter of time. We spot Polo (as he keeps insisting, it’s one “l”, not two), our tour leader, talking on a cell phone. Right, sure; a cell phone on an isolated beach in Mexico? Ha! So, it’s to be option No. 2 -- a coordinated kidnapping.

We are ordered to get off the trailer, one at a time. We are denied in our attempts to walk nonchalantly down the beach toward the alleged restaurant that was to be our destination. We look around at our fellow travelers, looking for the weakest to use as shields against the hail of gunfire. Having set our sights on an elderly couple who rely heavily on, respectively, a cane and a walker, we are confident that we’ll at least survive the initial attack. And then, the inevitable.

Racing up the beach comes a squadron of tiny Dodge pickups fitted with benches and covers. We are dead meat. We are herded, one small group at a time, into these death wagons. I mouth to Kathleen, “I love you.” She rolls her eyes back at me. So innocent, so naïve, she hasn’t a clue what is about to happen.

We are taken on a bone-jarring ride down the beach and our captors, um, drivers, pull behind a series of buildings. Here it comes. We are ordered out of the trucks, through a stone patio and under a roof of coconut fronds. Oh, they were diabolical, these bad men. The place looked exactly like a restaurant we had visited only three years before, in happier times. In fact, it looked a little TOO much like that familiar beach taco joint, the Molo-Kay (nope, not making that up). We remembered now, entering this seemingly familiar place, that our tour guide for that earlier visit (she continues to insist her name is Alma -- isn’t that out of the Book of Mormon?) had “coincidentally” bumped into us at the cruise terminal that morning. Oh, these people were good.

What irony, this fate, this ultimate demise. We’d been warned, hadn’t we? “Don’t go to Mexico,” our friends said. “Go to Miami, where you can be killed by Americans. Haven’t you heard, they’re beheading people in Acapulco?”

And then, it got weirder still. Fresh coconut shrimp. Beer in little, tiny bottles. A walk, seemingly without our guards, down the beach and back. Then, another tractor-trailer ride (oh, sure, you fixed the flat already?) to the little boat, then to a bus, then to our big boat.

Before we knew what hit us, we were on our way to Puerto Vallarta. These guys were just that good.

Hoosier fusion

2011-02-10T22:54:00.004-07:00

Grew up in Indiana, I did, and there are, frankly, precious few things I miss from that portion of my life.

Frigid winters and hot, humid summers? Nope -- frigid winters and mild, dry summers in Idaho are a modest improvement. On the other hand, breaded pork tenderloin sandwiches are hard to come by outside the Midwest, and this is unfortunate.

So, what to do? Go to Vegas, of course. There, the well-informed will find Hash House A Go Go (two locations, plus one in San Diego), where Indiana-inspired breakfast is the specialty. Tip: One order for two people is more than adequate.

Let us be clear -- Hash House is not Cracker Barrel re-heated. My breakfast was a hand-pounded breaded pork tenderloin the size of a catcher's mitt smothered in a tomato-cream sauce with a maple-syrup reduction that looks like it might have been made of Velveeta. It does not, however, taste like it. The flavors are sophisticated and complex, particularly for a breakfast that might total 3,500 calories. Buried beneath the catcher's mitt are griddled mashed potatoes, a full homemade biscuit, fresh spinach and heaven knows what else. The scrambled eggs on top seem like an afterthought.

Not insignificantly, there's also a sprig of rosemary the size of a sapling sticking out of the meat. We saved it to replant in our back yard. Kathleen ordered the corned beef hash, which does not come out of a can. It's fresh corned beef with cheese and fried potatoes, a biscuit and eggs, plus, of course, a small tree.

In two days, we went from the sublime (a tasty-but-sparse dinner of tapas that left us hungry and cost about 75 bucks) to the ridiculous (a delightful performance by a trio of Australians pretending to be the Bee Gees) and back to a little of each -- Hash House A Go Go's delicious breakfast that could have fed several African villages for days. I haven't any words to describe the mariachi band at a Mexican restaurant in the Mandalay Bay that played the pina colada song. For the money, Hash House was the top of the ticket.

Charleston: Beautiful, friendly people and gum on a pole

2011-01-30T10:38:00.006-07:00

Any town that has a power pole perpetually covered with chewed gum and people who have been voted the country's friendliest and among its most beautiful must be seen, as often as possible.

It's home to many of our country's oldest buildings and is, of course, rife with history. But being old doesn't necessarily make something worth visiting. It's also beautiful -- old oaks complete with hanging moss, water, streets of brick, gardens, exquisite homes and buildings. If you enjoy eating ocean-going creatures -- particularly those that come with shells attached -- this is your kind of place. Shopping? Spend a day at the outdoor Old City Market, with a break for the raw bar at A. W. Shucks.

It's got an aquarium that features local flora and fauna that opens onto the bay.

Kathleen and I did the touristy thing and took a carriage ride through the historic district. Our driver obliged by being both informative and a tad eccentric, showing off his pet chicken when the tour was done.

Being cruise junkies, we also appreciated that a handful of cruises to the Bahamas will go out of Charleston -- we took an old but charming cruise ship, trudging across a gravel parking lot to get to the terminal. That's something you won't find in Miami or San Diego. It all added to the charm.

Is Charleston the Savannah of South Carolina or is Savannah the Charleston of Georgia? Any answer would be sacrilege to the residents of either place, but you get the idea.

About the gum pole -- at the edge of the Old City Market, Kathleen spotted a power pole that looked like it had been a target for the local paintball crowd. No, it's chewed gum covering the pole to about seven feet. Local authorities have tried to outlaw the practice. Fortunately, they have failed so far.

The smile

2010-12-11T22:17:00.004-07:00

I possess exactly no photographic evidence that Kathleen and I attended the 2004 Ryder Cup in suburban Detroit. I do have a sweater from the tournament, but that could just as easily have been purchased online. Cameras and cell phones weren't allowed on the course for rather obvious reasons, and we were all patted down thoroughly. I selected a delightful local woman to search my person, then returned to the back of the line for another go.

I do, however, have an amusing anecdote. The Americans, of course, were destroyed by the Europeans, and by early Sunday (the day for which we had drawn tickets), the outcome was no longer in doubt. We watched Phil Mickelson spray shots all over the golf course and pretended to accept in good grace the drinking of the Irish and Brits around the clubhouse.

At some point, hoping to salvage something out of the day, we decided to follow Tiger Woods -- this was before he had tarnished himself with outlandish public and private behavior. We set up somewhere on a back-nine fairway and waited for the conquering hero to approach. Kathleen, it must be said, had noted earlier in the day, that Michael Jordan was walking the course with Tiger, well inside the ropes that kept the peasants at bay. While I was there to marvel at Tiger's shot-making, Kathleen became a tad obsessed with Jordan, and not in a good way.

As it happened, the man who had broken every Utahn's heart in 1998 and 1999 by nearly single-handedly defeating our Jazz in what will undoubtedly be the only chance the out-spent Jazz will ever have to win the NBA championship, came wandering up the fairway not 15 feet from us at one point. All alone, not a soul with a hundred feet. Despite my pleas to Kathleen to pretend not to even notice the 6-6 strikingly handsome black man walking all alone up the fairway in the middle the world's most famous international golf competition, she couldn't help herself.

"Hey, Michael," she said seductively. "How about a smile?" Oh, boy.

Well, Michael of the famous underwear commercials and notable athletic prowess turned without slowing his smooth stride and flashed what can only be described as a smile of dazzling brilliance, charm and, yes, beauty. He kept his focus on Kathleen for what seemed like 30 seconds, though it was probably only five. Even the smitten love of my life couldn't bear any more, and sort of muttered, "thank you!" Having nearly caused my dearly beloved to swoon, Jordan turned and continued down the fairway. Ask Kathleen what happened the rest of the day and she'll have no answer for you.

We dubbed this trip our "Heritage Tour," because we spent most of our time in Michigan and Indiana, where Kathleen and I (respectively) were born. We spent a deeply romantic few days in a bed and breakfast on the shores of Lake Michigan, toured the Gerald Ford Library in Kathleen's hometown of Grand Rapids, and wound up in Chicago.

In the Windy City we watched a taping of an Oprah show and went to a Melissa Etheridge concert at the United Center -- in both cases I had the great pleasure of having the men's rooms nearly to myself. We had surprisingly good sushi at a sidewalk restaurant downtown and gobbled up the architecture and galleries. Dinner at the Navy Pier, shopping at Filene's Basement (just shoot me now), deep dish pizza. We needn't have bothered -- we could have gone home after day two and the Jordan smile.

Grizwoldian Idaho

2010-12-09T08:57:00.007-07:00

Bethany: Is your house on fire, Clark?
Clark: No, Aunt Bethany, those are the Christmas lights.
From the movie, “Christmas Vacation”

Few can ever achieve Griswoldian status in the world of Christmas lighting, but Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold from the 1989 movie “Christmas Vacation” likely would never have thought to time his lights to music being broadcast on FM radio.

Yet, that’s what two homeowners in Iona and one in Idaho Falls have been doing for years now, setting a standard hard to match. They are two of the 10 stops we recommend on a tour of eastern Idaho Christmas lights for 2010.

The nice lady behind one o the Iona exhibits says they use 130,000 lights and 4½ miles of extension cords. Holy cow.

Darah Street, west side I.F.

Iona 2.

Hartert and Holmes.

Lowell Drive, west side.

Shutter left open by accident.

Rigby.

Hartert and Sunnyside.

Basalt.

Iona 1.

Boulevard and 21st.

Five best things: Sunset pictures

2010-11-26T11:21:00.002-07:00

The less said the better:
From our back yard.

Bandon, Oregon.

Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Schwabacher Landing, Jackson Hole, Wyoming (the night I asked Kathleen to marry me).

Also from our back yard.

Central California coast: Once will not be enough

2010-11-26T10:52:00.002-07:00

Monterey Bay.

California’s central coast may be, mile for mile, the most scenic place accessible by car in North America.

Golfers worship at the altar of Pebble Beach, considered one of the top five golf courses in the world. But you don’t have to know a two iron from a pitching wedge to appreciate the spectacular region from Monterey to Santa Barbara, a stretch of coastline that includes Big Sur and a cliff-hugging section of the Pacific Coast Highway.

As a bonus, the region just north and east of Monterey is some of the most fertile in the country, home to strawberry and artichoke fields stretching for miles, while wineries dot other areas just inland from the Pacific.

The former fishing village of Monterey (setting for John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row) anchors the northern neck of the Monterey Peninsula. Just up the road is the charming and more than a little snooty Carmel. In between the two on the Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula is 17-mile drive, which winds through multi-million-dollar mansions, world class golf courses and picture-postcard views of the Pacific.

Big Sur begins just south of Carmel on the Pacific Coast Highway, where the ocean meets thousand-foot cliffs. The road eventually flattens south of Big Sur near the village of Cambria and its most famous landmark, Hearst Castle. Morro Bay is next, followed by the college town of San Luis Obispo. The southern section of the central coast boasts some of California’s finest beaches.

A visit to this stretch of the California coast is fine anytime, but consider an off-season trip in early or late winter, when the crowds and room prices are down. The weather can be iffy, but a little rain and fog just add a little mystical ambience to the scenery.

The list of things to see and do on the central coast is, pardon the cliché, nearly endless. Here are a few: hiking, whale watching, wine tasting, dining, picture taking, shopping, fishing, golfing, gallery hopping, camping, or anything you can do outside. The weather is mild year-round, but can be cool and foggy in the winter and occasionally very warm just a few miles inland in the summer.

Big Sur.

Navigating around the central coast can be a little tricky. Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway, or PCH) hugs the coastline most of the way but is not built for speed. U.S. 101 parallels the coast inland but misses most of the scenery. Connections between the two are few and far between, particularly north of San Luis Obispo.

Some highlights of the central coast:

Monterey: Home to a world-class saltwater aquarium in the middle of Cannery Row, Monterey also has many fine restaurants, shops and inns as well as a small fisherman’s wharf and marina with the customary tourist traps and clam chowder restaurants. Lodging and dining range from pedestrian to spectacular, with prices to match.

Pebble Beach.
17-Mile Drive: A private road for which a fee is charged to visitors, this drive winds along the peninsula’s Pacific Coast and through several of the area’s world famous golf courses, including Pebble Beach. A drive along this road at sunset is unforgettable. Speaking of Pebble Beach, the links are almost certainly the world’s most spectacular public golf course, but you’ll pay a little more than for 18 holes at Pinecrest – rates are now $350 per round if you’re staying in lodging on site, or $375 if you’re not. If you’re looking for a bargain, Spyglass Hill down the road runs $250 and up, while the nearby Links at Spanish Bay are a mere $210 and up. Want to stay at the world famous Lodge at Pebble Beach? Rooms start at $475 (if you don’t want an ocean view) and go for as much as $2,300 for a suite. That’s per night, not for a week. Despite the prices, the lodging and golf courses are typically fully booked, requiring reservations as much as a year in advance.

One way to enjoy the golf courses without playing them and get in a little people watching at the same time is to attend the annual AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro Am in late January or early February. Played on all three courses, the tournament teams pros with amateurs, including the likes of Kevin Costner, Bill Murray and former Carmel Mayor Clint Eastwood. During practice rounds early in the week spectators are allowed to take cameras onto the course.

Carmel: There are no bargains in Carmel, either – you’ll pay handsomely for rooms and food, and anything else for that matter. Its downtown has a nice selection of trendy shops and trendier restaurants, interspersed with motels and bed and breakfast inns. During the AT&T it’s not unusual to dine next to Andy Garcia or Joe Pesci. It’s cheaper to stay in Monterey and pay Carmel a daytime visit, but a couple of nights in Carmel are a nice treat if you can afford it.

Big Sur: Beginning just south of Carmel, this stretch of the PCH is impossible to adequately describe. There are a number of state parks and beaches along the way, the most prominent of which is Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, with camping and lodging.

San Simeon, Hearst Castle and Cambria: Coming out of the Big Sur highlands, PCH runs through the village of San Simeon. Perched on a bluff east of town is the former home of William Randolph Hearst, now owned by the state. Tours go through the various buildings, gardens and fountains enjoyed by Hearst’s wealthy friends in the late forties. If you want to go, make reservations beforehand (1-800-444-4445 or www.hearstcastle.org) as the tours are often sold out. There are four tours to choose from or a special evening tour.

In praise of fry sauce

2010-11-26T10:42:00.003-07:00

Spicy fry sauce and conch fritters in the Bahamas.

Fry sauce.

Perhaps no two other words than these stir more epicurean passion in the region we lovingly refer to as the Intermountain West.

There were 2002 Olympics pins featuring fry sauce, for heaven’s sake.

There is much controversy and legend surrounding the invention and evolution of fry sauce, that ubiquitous pink dipping condiment found at many fast-food restaurants in Utah, Idaho and Nevada.

This article not only will not resolve this controversy, but it will further complicate it.

Arctic Circle, the restaurant chain, claims to have invented fry sauce “more than 50 years ago” (you can look it up on the company’s web site) and perfected it since. It sells the stuff by the bottle, as do some other entrepreneurs, like the makers of Some Dude’s Fry Sauce, which has about $1 million in annual sales.

Idaho, says Some Dude’s President Michael Thompson, is the company’s No. 1 market out of the 12 states where the fry sauce is sold.

Many people assume that fry sauce is simply a combination of ketchup (one part) and mayonnaise (two parts). Connoisseurs know this is not true. Good fry sauce needs to have a certain zing that comes from something in neither ketchup nor mayonnaise. (Send your favorite fry sauce recipes to me at rplothow@postregister.com or Roger Plothow, Post Register, 333 Northgate Mile, Idaho Falls, ID 83401.)

But here’s the rub: “Fry sauce” is hardly unique to our little corner of the world.

For example, the conch fritter, the blue-collar finger food of south Florida and the Bahamas, comes with a version of fry sauce that includes Tabasco and black pepper for a great, spicy zip. Some Dude’s makes a jalapeno flavor, but the Tabasco gives a vinegary kick particularly appropriate for seafood.

In Thailand you can get pink dipping sauce for fried pickles. The Japanese make a pink shrimp sauce. There’s a pink peppercorn dipping sauce for artichokes and the Chinese have a pink sauce for fried shrimp. Some recipe web sites have a whole section devoted to pink sauce.

“My relatives who were loggers in the north woods of Wisconsin were mixing mayo and ketchup and putting it on fried diced potatoes and onions around the turn of the century,” says Some Dude’s Thompson. “Mayo and mustard, mayo and ketchup, mayo and pickle relish were used as condiments in France during the second World War, according to my dad, who spent three years as a photojournalist the Army.”

All of this might have local fry sauce aficionados fighting mad, but consider it a good thing. Nearly all culinary habits have their genesis elsewhere, fry sauce being no exception.

Whether the origins of fry sauce come from Asia, the Caribbean or Provo, we can be proud that we share a tradition of plunking fried finger foods into a pink sauce and calling it local cuisine.

What a lovely connection to the rest of the finger-food, pink-sauce-dipping world.

John Fogerty never saw this Lodi

2010-11-26T10:17:00.005-07:00

LODI, California – If John Fogerty gave Lodi an inferiority complex, the town got over it a long time ago.

Yes, Fogerty’s Credence Clearwater Revival made Lodi infamous nearly four decades ago with the line, “stuck in Lodi, again.” Nowadays, getting stuck in Lodi wouldn’t be such a bad thing, particularly for the wine connoisseur.

What? Lodi would hardly strike anyone as the center of the wine universe. Sitting 50 feet above sea level between San Francisco and the Sierra Nevada mountains in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Lodi is about the size of Idaho Falls and Ammon combined.

Surrounding Lodi, acre after acre of wine grapes grow in the region’s hot summer sun. Unlike more famous wine regions like Napa and Sonoma, Lodi’s wineries actually seem to appreciate having visitor and don’t charge an arm and a leg for either a tasting or the wine itself. Just as important, lodging is comparatively inexpensive and Lodi is two hours from San Francisco in one direction and a little more than that in the other direction to Yosemite National Park.

This is convenient, since the Lodi region produces more wine grapes than Sonoma and Napa counties combined at more than 600,000 tons a year – that’s 20 percent of California’s total wine grape yield. The main difference between Lodi and its more famous wine producing cousins is that a lot of the grapes are purchased by wineries outside the area.

That is changing, however. There is a handful of major wineries in the Lodi area and 60 or so boutique wineries, most of which have a tasting room. Or, stop in at the Lodi Wine & Visitor Center, which is adjacent to the best place to stay in town, the Wine and Roses bed and breakfast. If wine isn’t your thing but your “stuck in Lodi” anyway, there’s no cause to fret. Try any or all of these local activities:

1. Visit the Isenberg Crane Reserve. Each fall, thousands of sandhill cranes make Lodi a stop on the Pacific Flyway, and the town throws a festival in early November to celebrate their return. For nature lovers, there’s also the Consumnes River Preserve with abundant flora and fauna or a float trip on the Mokelumne River.

2. Go to the Micke Grove Zoo or, for a real creep-out, visit the Great Valley Serpentarium (featuring more than 50 breeds of snakes, lizards and other icky reptiles).

3. Visit a museum. The Hill House Museum is a restored Victorian mansion with turn-of-the-century artifacts, while the San Joaquin County Historical Museum is a great indoor/outdoor experience for kids and adults.

4. Tour an olive oil pressing operation at Cecchetti Olive Oil Co.

5. Look at the wall murals in downtown Lodi. For its 100^th birthday, the city commissioned nine outdoor murals showing scenes from the town’s history.

If you are into wine, however, that makes Lodi a destination instead of just a place in which to get stuck. You can tour the huge Woodbridge winery (formerly part of the Mondavi empire) or take a full-day wine tour that includes lunch and lots of slurping.

Birding at Mud Lake

2010-11-26T09:14:00.004-07:00

HAMER – Try this experiment – when you first arrive at either Camas National Wildlife Refuge or the Mud Lake Wildlife Management area nearby, find a safe place to park and cut your engine.

Step outside, close your eyes and just listen. You are surrounded by a richness of wildlife that creates a surround-sound experience you’ll never find in a home theater. Cranes, ducks, geese, hawks, teals, grebes, herons, and literally hundreds of other species populate the wetlands and create a beautiful noise.

Spring is the time to go while the migratory birds use the area as a rest stop on the way elsewhere. You’ll routinely see ducks, geese, cranes and smaller shore birds, but on a good day you might spot a loon, egret or heron.

Over two Saturdays we visited the Mud Lake Wildlife Management Area and the Camas National Wildlife Refuge, tucked in the high desert between Hamer and Mud Lake. In a single ambitious day trip you can visit one refuge in the morning and the other in the evening with a break for lunch in Mud Lake or Terreton.

While Kathleen drove the pickup we both scanned the sky and the ground, camera set at a very high shutter speed. Over there is a harrier hawk with a mouse in its grasp, on its way to feed the kids somewhere in the willows. Up above, a huge flock of trumpeter swans circles the water. Suddenly, two dozen Canadian geese lift off from a smaller lake.

Then, while I’m standing outside the truck, two sandhill cranes come right at us, then veer north. Four clicks with a long lens from close range – two turn out to be keepers.

Mornings and evenings are the best times for wildlife viewing, when the birds and other wildlife are more active and the sun is at a lower angle making for better photography. Both sites include permanent wetlands and dry lakes, but watch carefully for sandhill cranes and other large birds feeding in nearby fields.

The wildlife viewing trail at Camas is perfectly appropriate for any passenger car, but some of the dirt roads around Mud Lake get a little rough and you might want to consider either sticking to the easily accessible viewing area or taking a high-clearance vehicle.

On the web

Memories in a machine

2010-11-14T16:48:00.008-07:00

Published in the Post Register, November, 2010.

It’s not exactly built for drift busting, but Bryant Belnap’s vintage snow machine is a thing of beauty all the same.

Part of the Belnap family for 45 years, the 1965 Arctic Cat 450 was No. 16 of 63 units of that model to come off the Arctic Cat assembly line back in 1965 (confirmed by the Antique Snowmobile Association).

Belnap’s rear-engine snowmobile has a top speed of 15 mph, give or take a mile an hour or two. Steering is done with an old-fashioned steering wheel linked by a chain to the wide skis up front, exemplifying the machine’s most obvious characteristic -- simplicity. It has one gear for forward and one for reverse and is powered by a new 10 horsepower engine.

In other words, it bears scant resemblance to the modern snowmobile. But how many of the 2011 models will be operating in 2055?

Belnap’s 83-year-old father, Grant, bought it from a local man in 1965 as a way to get from the highway to his summer trailer in Island Park.

“The (original owner) bought it and his wife said, ‘You can keep the snow machine or you can keep me’,” Bryant says. “My father bought it (from him) for $300 -- it had never been used.”

For five years or so the machine became the center of the Belnaps’ winter family outings. Last licensed in 1970, it got intermittent use for awhile after that, then it sat unused in Grant Belnap’s barn until August of this year. That was when Bryant hauled it to his home in Ammon and began restoring it, a process that took an astonishingly short four months.

“Every available night, he worked on it,” Bryant’s wife, Glenda, says. Bryant and Glenda Belnap own and operate Idaho Falls Physical Therapy.

Bryant, with help from some friends and a number of local fabricating and repair businesses, took the machine apart and painstakingly restored them, piece by piece. By early November it was ready for unveiling. He recently took the machine to his parents’ small farm near Roberts to show them the finished product.

“You could see them -- through the snow machine they began to relive all those wonderful family memories,” he says.

Snowmobiling has changed a lot in the intervening 45 years, obviously: “It’s a testosterone sport now,” says Glenda. “It was more of a family activity (back then),” adds Bryant. “They could talk to each other as it was happening.”

What the old 450 lacks in speed and sleekness it makes up for in durability. Now outfitted with a new 10 horsepower motor, it was originally equipped a similar 10-horsepower Kohler motor that probably could have been restored as well, had Belnap chosen to take the time and expense.

“The old four-cycle motors just ran and ran and ran and ran,” he says.

Other than the motor and the upholstery, the machine is essentially original, including the fiberglass hood and window glass.

To the Belnaps, the snow machine is far more than a simple mode of transportation -- it’s a symbol of good times from an era now nearly a half-century past. At the time, it was an oddity.

“I don’t think we saw another snow machine that whole winter,” Bryant Belnap says of that first winter with the 450.

“That’s the most expensive sled I’ve ever owned,” he says.

This winter, and presumably for winters to come, it’ll continue to haul Belnaps around in the snow at a speed that won’t give many thrills but a lot of memories.

A model community

2010-11-04T16:48:00.006-06:00

Published in the Post Register,November, 2010

AMMON – Imagine yourself strolling down a downtown street, a neon café sign blinking down the block, a train whistle echoing off the buildings.

Two streets over, children play among reeds and cattails. Outside of town, a coal mine and ski hill co-exist, each operating at full capacity.

It’s not a Frank Capra movie set. It lives in miniature inside an otherwise unremarkable building on the Fogarty Ranch, reached down a long, tree-lined country lane. The only tipoff for what’s inside is a working train signal standing just outside the door.

Inside the building of less than a thousand square feet, however, are model O-scale train tracks winding a total of a quarter-mile or so, home to more than a dozen locomotives and a hundred cars. But there is more – much, much more.

Here, on retired submariner Frank Fogarty’s land, Fogarty and collaborator Kerry Weber have created an entire series of scenes, from neighborhoods to quaint downtowns to fishing holes. Look closely at the scenes and you’ll begin noticing the attention to detail – copper drain pipes, working street lights, flashing neon. For winter Weber will add “snow,” which has been prepared beforehand.

“It’s my life’s work, pretty much,” says Weber. He’s spent the equivalent of three years of full-time work – 6,000 hours – building the sets, laying the tracks, creating the landscapes and, with Fogarty’s help, figuring out the electronics, all on a 48=1 scale. Weber and Fogarty have taken exceeding care to make the whole thing as realistic as possible.

Weber has been making things with his hands for years, from birdhouses to furniture. As Fogarty increased his model train collection, a thought occurred to Weber.

“He said well, ‘we need some scenery in there’,” Fogarty says. “I said, ‘Well, can you do it?’”

“The rest,” Weber says, “is history.”

“He’s the artist, the one that built all the scenery,” says Fogarty.

Fogarty, now 86, has had a lifelong fascination with trains (he also once captained world’s first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, and later worked at the Idaho National Laboratory). He began collecting model trains and running them on tracks back in the early 1990s. A family friend, Kerry Weber, now 40, starting building things for the sets in the mid-1990s and in 1999 took on the project of converting an entire building into a model train fantasy set.

Indeed, watching the passing scenes via a video camera mounted on one of the trains, the views are hard to distinguish from what you might see outside your Amtrak car, only prettier.

The two men haven’t been content to just put some tracks up and run trains around them. There are computer-aided sounds, flashing signal lights and neon signs, scenes complete with cattails and flower gardens, a “working” sawmill with running water, and a dozen visual vignettes that require hours to fully take in.

During the holidays, Frank and his wife, Dorothy, often joined by Weber, will host local church and school groups. For those visits, they will rig the locomotives to actually belch smoke. The building can accommodate no more than 15 or so people at a time, so visits are by appointment only.

On the walls around the models are photos showing the process of making the scenes, which requires painting the small human figures, making hills starting with foam rubber, and even using plaster to makes rocks and gravel. Look around and you see model power lines, rust on the rooftops, even a Good Humor man.

They’re not done – other projects are in the works, including putting the finishing touches on a ski resort that is taking shape, which will include, yes, an operational ski lift.

If you go: An appointment is required to visit the Fogarty Ranch trains. To request an appointment, send an e-mail to Frank Fogarty at ahbrch@onewest.net.

Gekkeikan

2010-09-28T10:52:00.004-06:00

FOLSOM, Calif. -- Premium sake is meant to be drunk cold.

Folsom isn't just a place for a Johnny Cash tune.

It's good to learn. Particularly when it involves an adult beverage.

We stopped by the Gekkeikan sake brewery in Folsom (which seems like a lovely foothill town despite Johnny Cash's unfortunate experience there) for a tour and a sample. Sake is an acquired taste, but we are committed to putting in the effort necessary. Despite what is often served in American sushi restaurants, sake is a simple, unflavored drink -- rice, water and yeast. If you are drinking something that tastes like plums or other fruit, it's either sake that's been adulterated with a syrupy flavoring or it's a fruit-flavored white wine.

And -- this, it seems, is really important -- if your sake is served warm or hot, it's either because the restaurant is serving the cheap stuff or it's fallen for an American affectation. The nice lady at Gekkeikan told us that the better the sake, the colder it should be served. She should know, right?

Sake seems a little like vodka -- the better the sake, the smoother and cleaner the taste. Sake runs closer to wine in alcohol content, about 15-20 percent (some less). Anyway, we toured the facility (nothing much was happening on this particular day), tasted six sakes and bought some of the good stuff, along with some cute sake glasses (no, you don't have to drink sake from porcelain). We asked a lot of questions and came away enlightened.

Unlikely refuge

2010-09-26T19:55:00.006-06:00

Published in the Post Register, November, 2010

DAVIS, Calif. -- A place within easy view of the Sacramento skyline to the east and earshot of nearby Interstate 80 is an unlikely habitat for wildlife -- migratory and shore birds, mostly -- that probably shouldn’t exist.

By Idaho standards the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area is small -- 16,000 acres tucked between urban centers, highways and rice farms -- but has an astonishing number and diversity of nesting and migratory birds. The star of the show is the great white egret, though in a single morning it’s not uncommon to see many types of herons, egrets, ducks, geese, sandpipers and raptors, plus many smaller birds.

The area is known as the Yolo Bypass whose primary purpose is flood protection in this lowland just north of the California Delta and an hour northeast of San Francisco. Though largely originally funded by federal and state money, restoring the wetlands took the cooperation of local farmers, biologists, engineers, and scientists. Some water still flows through the wetlands and to nearby farms, which helps provide income to manage the wildlife area.

As late as the 19^th century this area of California, which drains much of central California’s river systems, was dominated by marshes and swamps. Within 100 years, most of it had been drained or corralled by a levy system to control flooding and open farmland. The Fazio signaled a reversal of that trend.

“For 100 years (the Army Corps of Engineers has) drained swamp in the country,” said Bruce Babbitt, Interior Secretary in 1997 when the project was launched. “Now we are asking them to put it back together.”

Now managed by the California Department of Fish and Game whose mandate includes mosquito abatement to protect the suburban areas nearby, the project clearly has succeeded in opening another home for wild fowl.

On a casual walk-ride through the area a visitor will see dozens of the area’s unofficial mascot, the great white egret. In addition to those beautiful large bird visitors are likely to see the occasional great blue heron or snowy egret, plus hundreds of smaller shore birds. Ducks Unlimited has been the major private partner in the project, with funding help from a number of businesses and other non-profit organizations. The non-profit Yolo Basin Foundation manages educational programs and tours.

Ferndale, California

2010-09-24T23:07:00.006-06:00

FERNDALE, Calif. -- And here I thought it was just a cute town, full of beautifully restored Victorian homes and buildings. Then I met Denny Crane.

Not that one. This Denny Crane doesn’t look an iota like William Shatner, doesn’t practice law, and certainly doesn’t live in Boston. (For pop culture neophytes, Denny Crane was one of the main characters in the TV series Boston Legal, played brilliantly by William Shatner.)

This one runs a boutique in one of Ferndale’s more exuberant Victorian buildings on Main Street and clearly is one of the more colorful residents. Minutes after meeting, he’s telling me some of the town’s history, before it “started going down the toilet.”

Well. For a toilet, it’s downright purdy, if you ask me. Denny, of course, did not.

Back in the Sixties, Crane’s story goes, the town was hit by a double whammy. First, the nearby Eel River flooded the town and made a mess. Then, in 1964, the earthquake that devastated Anchorage, Alaska, and sent a tsunami that killed 12 people in Crescent City, California, also ravaged Ferndale, knocking many buildings off their foundation. It was a pivotal time.

“At that point, a lot people in town said to just level all of these old Victorian buildings, places that are hard to maintain with the gingerbread structure,” Crane says.

Enter Viola McBride, a local woman who Crane describes as a “kind of a cross between Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane.” Crane credits her with leading a local renaissance, including convincing Sherwin Williams to donate enough paint to cover the town “from stem to stern.”

Ferndale became an artist colony, he says.

“That was the most vibrant time in this town. A lot of hippies, a lot of dope smoking, drugs, it was that period of time.”

It lasted for a couple of decades, Crane says. Then it began to change.

“People came up from out of the area, bought these buildings only for reselling them for profit, and the town started going down the toilet.”

The town was founded in the 1850s by settlers who hacked their way through dense ferns and groves of trees (Crane says the nearby hills were once nearly denuded by loggers). It became a prosperous dairy community and in large homes popped up all over town, known as “Butterfat Palaces.” It would be wrong to proceed any farther without noting that Victorian Era may have provided some nice architecture but was a tad stultifying, particularly if you were a woman. That said, one of my favorite signs in town was one that commemorated what was once the “westernmost bar” in the U.S.

Much of the downtown is owned by absentee landlords. One of the nicest restored buildings in town -- the Gingerbread Mansion -- is in foreclosure and is vacant. Still, the casual visitor would not know of the seething caldron of economic and political intrigue and comparisons to bathroom fixtures. For the record, I have not checked out Denny Crane's story, mostly because I fear that it might not be entirely true and I prefer stories with a lot of warts. Ferndale certainly appears more like a delightfully wart-less small town that has been lovingly restored. It also is the place where Kathleen and I celebrated our 10^th anniversary, so my perspective is undeniably skewed.

For more photos, go to my photo blog. Go to the town's web site for the romanticized version of Ferndale's history.

Blue light and the Dead Guy

2010-09-21T10:15:00.012-06:00

A version of this story was published in the Post Register, November, 2010

DEPOE BAY, Ore. -- In the mornings, we awaken to the calls of shorebirds and the constant crashing of the waves on the rocks below as a blue light seeps through the fog. A single bell from a buoy at the entrance of the bay rings intermittently with the wind.

It’s two days from the autumnal equinox, so every day dawn comes later and the sun sets earlier. Tonight, perhaps it’ll be razor clams for dinner.

Our latest long-awaited visit to the Oregon coast had not started so idyllically. In a driving rain, we had driven into Depoe Bay and found the small city park where the annual salmon bake was under way in decidedly less-than-ideal conditions.

“It’s not worth $17 for the taste, but the ambience is great!” Kathleen eventually concludes as she sits under a large tent eating alder-wood-baked wild salmon, water dripping down her face. The fish is, well, it’s overcooked and cold. The slaw is fine, but the bread is cold and stale. As for the ambience -- it’s cold enough that our breath makes steam, water has seeped through our rain jackets and it’s so damp that my hair has gone frizzy and Kathleen’s has gone flat. As usual, she’s being a really, really good sport.

None of this should reflect poorly on Depoe Bay, of course. In late September it’s not uncommon for the coast to be wet and windy, though late autumn has its share of sunny days. We have a room at Arch Rock Inn (where we are greeted in our room by a small bottle of cream sherry -- that's a good start) with a view south across the small bay down the coast and of the tiny town. I do mean tiny -- we searched briefly for some coffee creamer and found one store that had only creamer that was past its buy date and another that was closed at 5 p.m. on Saturday.

On second thought, however, the organizers do deserve a little of the blame. The web site indicated the salmon bake would go from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. We got there a little before 4 p.m. but the baking had stopped, probably because the rain hurt the turnout and they had more fish than they needed. Anyway, it’s a nice tradition and no doubt delightful when the weather is better.

Except for that small hiccup, Depoe Bay and the central Oregon coast don’t disappoint. On the first night, wind, rain and waves dominate the soundscape and lull us into a great sleep. It’s still overcast by morning but the rain has stopped. About a half-mile from our room, we park overlooking the bay and spend 45 minutes watching whales spout and surface. Frequent visitors to the coast, we make other favorite stops on south -- Yaquina lighthouse, Heceta Head, Sea Lion Caves, the Devil’s Punchbowl. We watch an enormous sea lion colony for awhile, but it’s raining hard at low tide so we skip our plans to check out some tide pools.

The highlight of the day, however, comes when we run across the Bay Haven Inn (it’s a bar) on the historic harbor front in Newport. It’s Sunday afternoon and there’s jam session going on in the century-old bar, led by Jim “Swede” Sweden. It’s definitely an old-timer’s band; missing teeth, gray hair and all. But the music -- mostly covers of Tom Petty and Bob Seger and the sort -- is good and loud and we stay for 90 minutes before dinner of fish and chips and pan-fried oysters. That is a good day.

Other days, there is much drinking of Dead Guy (the hoppy ale by local brewer Rogue), eating of fresh Yaquina Bay oysters, and watching of waves and whales. Somehow, visiting the tacky gift stores and sitting outside on benches breathing in the ocean air is relaxing for no obvious reason. I break my camera then fix it, because Kathleen convinces me that I can. I sit for an hour waiting for the waves to mimic a Yellowstone geyser at Depoe Bay’s spouting horn. It’s no Old Faithful, but I snap out several dozen images just the same.

There are more stops at lighthouses (Heceta is mostly obscured by fog) and breakfasts of bagels with local smoked salmon and cream cheese. And there are nights falling asleep with the window cracked just enough to hear the waves crashing and, sometimes, the rain falling. On a whim, I buy some local plum wine, which tastes like prune juice laced with ethanol.

The weather turns warmer and sunny, so it’s time to leave, down to Bandon and California beyond. The Dead Guy and blue light will be there when we return.

Five best things: Iconic photos

2010-08-29T18:17:00.006-06:00

There are probably several dozen sites in the U.S. that all landscape photographers eventually want to shoot. Maroon Bells in the Colorado Rockies is one (I've not done that one). The famous cypress tree at Pebble Beach is another (I have many images of that one). Here are five of my favorites:

5. The view of Cannon Beach, Oregon, from Ecola State Park is a long-time favorite among landscape photographers. I have dozens of images from there.

4. Victorian Row, San Francisco. It's actually not much to look at with the naked eye, but shot with a zoom lens that compresses the distance between the Victorian houses and downtown it makes for a dramatic shot.

3. This is a difficult shot at sunset, since the valley and waterfalls are in shadow. Some dodging and burning with PhotoShop helps.

2. Antelope Canyon, Arizona. I shot this one with Velvia 40 iso slide film in the 1999, so I couldn't look at a digital monitor to make sure I had it right. Instead, I shot a dozen different exposures during the 30 minutes or so that the lighting was just right.

1. This is the Tetons from Schwabacher Landing on the Snake River, taken at peak color in the early morning.

Bonus shot: Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Reservation just south of the Grand Canyon. This image cannot be replicated -- a flash flood forever changed the look of the falls a few years ago.

Tranquility Base: Challis Hot Springs

2010-08-20T08:34:00.013-06:00

Part of the Post Register's weekly series, "Uniquely Eastern Idaho."

CHALLIS -- It’s seven o’clock in the morning and a quarter-mile up the dead-end road from the Challis Hot Springs two does are nibbling on the grass and eyeing a photographer to make sure he doesn’t get too close.

This is the very picture of tranquility.

“I used to call my sister while she was fighting the traffic on I-5 (in Seattle) and I was watching the ducks and herons,” says Gretchen Amar, manager of the bed and breakfast and the campground at the springs. “She made a lot more money than I did, but I was happier.”

Indeed, if you can’t find some peace and quiet here, you can’t find it anywhere.

Hidden between the Salmon River a quarter-mile to the west and foothills to the immediate east, Challis Hot Springs was developed in the late 1800s and is still owned by descendants of its founder. There are two large pools for soaking -- a cooler one outside and a hotter one inside -- and the grounds are made for sauntering.

Robert Currie Beardsley homesteaded the place beginning in 1880 and eventually found a bride named Eleanor when he went to New Orleans for the World Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in 1884. Yes, she came back with him to Challis and stuck around even after Beardsley drowned in 1888. The development of the hot springs as a destination eventually took decades.

The hot springs went through a number of owners over the years but have been back in family hands since Bob and Lorna Hammond bought it in 1951. They still live on the property but it’s owned today by the Hammonds’ daughters, Mary Conner and Kate Taylor. It’s usually Amar who greets guests, cooks breakfast and oversees the 11 employees.

In the spring, Marine recruiters from all over the Northwest come to the hot springs for a retreat, and Amar has developed a soft spot for them.

“It was such a shock to realize they were my sons’ age,” she says. So, she cooks breakfast for all 200 (some stay in the B&B, but most camp). The B&B has eight rooms and there are 26 RV sites with hook-ups and another 10 tent sites, all down by the river a short walk from the guesthouse.

Summer is the busy season at Challis Hot Springs, but it’s open year-round. Challis doesn’t get a lot of snow in a typical winter, and there’s less at the springs since the ground is warmed by the geothermal activity just below the surface. Amar says a lot of spring visitors seem to come from Teton Valley, where the winters can start looking a bit stark by March.

There’s an octagon-shaped building near the guesthouse where breakfast is served, and it also happens to be idea for gatherings of up to 35 or so. In the summer, a brook quite literally gurgles just off the octagon’s patio and wildflowers bloom against the hillside. Tranquil. There’s little doubt that Robert Currie Beardsley would approve.

Special thanks to Brantley LaComb, whose historical outline of Challis Hot Springs was invaluable.

Hanging tuff in Menan

2010-07-18T08:21:00.004-06:00

Published in the Post Register, July, 2010

MENAN -- Watson’s Bar sits modestly in a former bank building on a corner of this village at the foot of two of the world’s largest tuff cones.

The tuff cones are, of course, the Menan Buttes -- a pair of volcanoes that erupted under the Snake River 10,000 years ago and essentially turned to glass. It might be considered only slightly less startling that a bar has survived for 75 years in the first town settled by Mormons in the Snake River Valley.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints still predominate in rural Jefferson County, but they seem to have developed a certain sanguine acceptance of Watson’s, now owned by someone other than a member of the Watson family for the first time in three generations.

“Thayne Watson and this place were both on their last breath,” says Jim Voyles, the bar’s new owner. Voyles bought the bar in December of 2007, only a couple of weeks before the elderly Watson died.

Voyles, who makes his living running a business that installs cabinets and countertops in non-residential buildings likes schools and hospitals, has been busy since his purchase. He’s re-done the inside of the bar -- while retaining the building’s historical feel -- and cleared out the adjoining space that had once housed various generations of Watsons and opened a restaurant.

He brought in itinerant cook, wine steward and waiter Cody Robins, to do the cooking and menu creation. Robins, a St. Anthony native, who says he’s wandered from “New Mexico to Maine” over the past few years. He brings an eclectic approach to Watson’s, like using fresh herbs and vegetables grown in the area and to grinding his own elk meat and beef. He even bakes his own breads, which he says are “diabetic friendly” because he uses no milk, eggs or sugars.

The menu focuses on sandwiches: “Our version of the best sandwiches we’ve had over the years,” Robins says. In the winter, he plans to offer full meals that folks can either eat at the restaurant or take home and heat up.

The bar is a beer-only joint -- liquor licenses can be expensive and hard to come by in Idaho -- and that’s not enough to keep the doors open. So, in June, Voyles and Robins opened the restaurant, with a grand opening over the Fourth of July weekend. Robins estimates he needs to sell about 200 meals a day to really make a go of it.

Outside the restaurant are a new painted landscape mural done by Idaho Falls artist John Martin a handful of tables, tomato plants and a grill where Robins was smoking salmon on a recent afternoon. It’s all part of Voyles’ plan to make Watson’s a destination eatery for people from around the region.

Voyles wants to keep the restaurant and bar completely separate, even though they share a wall, so families and non-drinkers can enjoy the restaurant.

. A native of northern California, Voyles’ family roots are in eastern Idaho and his wife, Janice, is from Victor. He settled in the area 20 years ago and decided to buy Watson’s when he saw it for sale nearly three years ago.

“I don’t know what was going to happen to this place,” he says, “but it wasn’t going to be Watson’s.”

Ghost signs and what they say about us

2010-06-29T08:38:00.010-06:00

I have built a whole blog around photos of "ghost signs," yet another sign (no pun intended) that I obsess over the oddest things. In truth, collecting photos of ghost signs may be one of the saner things I do, considering that the shots are easy to get and generally tell their own story.

In a New York Times article on ghost signs, Kathleen Hulser of the New York Historical Society, said, "[The signs] evoke the exuberant period of American capitalism. Consumer cultures were really getting going and there weren't many rules yet, no landmarks preservation commission or organized community saying: 'Isn't this awful? There's a picture of a man chewing tobacco on the corner of my street.'"

So, once again we see how things once seen as crass or tacky become warm, nostalgic reminders of a past that may not have ever existed, at least as we remember it. I'm reminded of this every time I read the history of an old inn that claims to have once hosted a brothel or speakeasy -- with the passage of time even these illicit activities become charming reminders of a bygone era.

The late 1800s through the mid-20th century was the boom time for ghost signs. Nowadays sign ordinances and a new ethic in public salesmanship have pretty much eliminated advertising on the side of brick walls. This is probably for the best, at least partially because it leaves ghost signs as a tribute to a period of time, now gone forever.

Coca Cola and cigarettes (sometimes offering free baseball cards) were the big users of brick advertising in the day, just as Coke nowadays will pay for your business or high school sign in exchange for some dominant space on the same billboard. In some particularly advanced segments of our civilization, communities keep these fading signs repainted, which keeps them fresh but somehow takes some of the magic from the experience. A certain amount of fading is required to create the "ghost" part of the sign.

I've been collecting ghost signs now for a couple of years, and here are my five favorites so far:

5. Shoshone Ice Caves, Shoshone, Idaho. This gorgeous ghost sign is everything a ghost sign should be: Historical, faded, creative, and of obvious practical value. I just hope that no do-gooders in Shoshone feel compelled to update this spectacular sign.

4. Right in Idaho Falls, one of major landmarks is the former Hotel Rogers, complete with its own beautiful ghost sign, visible above a small pocket park in mid-downtown. Aesthetically pleasing, showing its age but still easily readable, this is another perfect example of a great ghost sign.

3. More valuable for its glimpse into history than its art value, this Obak sign in Portland, Oregon comes from a time in the early 20th century when Obak cigarettes packaged its product with baseball cards. Now, who do you reckon Obak was targeting, and how do you think that would go over today?

2. Still easily visible on the side of an old potato warehouse that may soon be razed, this Idaho Falls landmark has become such a part of the local scenery that few people even notice it any more.

1. My favorite is this billboard for suspenders on the side of a defunct cleaners in Mackay, Idaho. Not only does it advertise a long-lost product with a great name (Spring-O-All suspenders) but it mentions a now-defunct department store, the Mormon-owned ZCMI (Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution). Plus, it contains great artwork and is remarkably preserved.

Day on the Delta

2010-06-21T19:04:00.011-06:00

Ten minutes from the modest skyline of Sacramento, the San Joaquin Delta's labyrinthian sloughs and levees could just as easily be hundreds of miles from anything remotely urban.

Between slow-moving canals and wide channels grows every imaginable crop, from stone fruits to wine grapes, from enormous truck farms to barley and alfalfa. Levee roads connect tiny towns, some nearly extinct, others quaint and thriving, all a seeming short stroll away from the looming Mt. Diablo. As the delta widens before joining the San Francisco Bay there lies the odd town of Pittsburg, where I was to catch a boat for a picture-taking float.

On arrival, I should have suspected that my scheduled wildlife cruise on the delta would not come off as planned. I had come early, wanting to explore other parts of the delta I hadn't seen before. I made an early-morning stop in Rio Vista, with its great drawbridge and tiny downtown. My plan was to find a coffee shop in Pittsburg for a mid-morning breakfast before taking the noon cruise.

The section of Pittsburg between California Highway 4 and the marina felt like a movie set. Full of new and unfinished buildings of the same architectural style -- roughly that of Main Street in Disneyland -- it felt like an outlet mall on a much larger scale, only bereft of real people. There were no coffee shops or anything else that seemed to have organic origins in capitalism. A sign describing the area as a redevelopment district provided all the explanation necessary -- that this was a quasi-government project that undoubtedly had begun before the recession killed most business investment not subsidized by taxpayers.

The marina was beautiful, including another large unfinished commercial condominium, and many of the slips contained fancy boats. Alas, there was no place to eat breakfast and there were nearly no humans. Still two hours early, I headed back into the older, inland part of town and found a perfectly acceptable restaurant and had a veggie omelet.

Back at the marina, still an hour before the cruise, it remained ominously quiet. There were two construction workers at the unfinished building and nearly no traffic. I spotted the gangway for Delta Discovery Cruises, but I spied no people. Thirty minutes before cruise, and it was pretty clear that I would not be boarding any boats. I called Delta Discovery Cruises -- the line was busy. Tried again 10 minutes later. Busy. Still no people.

At noon, someone finally answered. No, the confused young woman on the other end of the line said, there was no cruise today. "I'm so sorry," she said after further inquiry, "I'm in training and I was supposed to call you. We'll give you a discount if you want to come on another one."

Well, I'm from Idaho, I explained. In fairness, they had told me when I called to reserve the cruise that they needed 20 to make it work. They also said they'd call me if it had to be canceled, and I gave them my cell number. They didn't mention that they were training a new person to handle the all-important cancellation call.

In truth, I was fairly unperturbed. I reprogrammed my GPS unit for a couple of stops elsewhere in the delta and went back to wandering -- the funky burg of Isleton, the charming village of Walnut Grove, the shady town of Clarksburg, the Chinese settlement of Locke (go here for an earlier post on some of those places). I stumbled across the Bogle winery, known for its inexpensive wines that are a favorite of restaurants far and wide, and otherwise had a great time. Bogle, for what it's worth, is situated amid sloughs and canals probably a few feet below sea level and couldn't be lovelier.

Life in the delta is clearly slower than it is mere miles away in the Bay Area or the urban centers of the San Joaquin Valley, sort of a Mississippi with live oaks instead of magnolias (and probably inferior barbecue, though central California tri-tip is pretty tasty). The levee roads are rough and narrow and there are no shortcuts. All the better.

Did I mention the name of the company that didn't take me cruising on the delta? That would be Delta Discovery Cruises.

Yellowstone

2010-05-23T10:13:00.010-06:00

Went to Yellowstone yesterday. Been there, what, 50 times? Maybe 75? Would gladly have gone back today, raw weather, sore car-butt and all. Maybe next weekend. Anyone who says, "Been there, done that," about Yellowstone gets it, at best, half right.

It's the world's first national park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Big deal. WORLD'S FIRST NATIONAL PARK! Americans actually invented the concept (unlike democracy, capitalism, political corruption or Italian food).

We saw the usual -- geysers, mudpots, waterfalls and canyons, elk, bison, elk, cranes, a loon. Nope, no bears. It rained, sleeted, hailed, snowed and then the sun shone. Wind blew. Food at the Canyon Village diner was average. Trinkets still at pre-season prices. Met nice folks from Santa Barbara in the lobby of the Old Faithful Inn. Huckleberry ice cream was good.

Two-thirds of all the geysers on Planet Earth are in Yellowstone, many along a 15-mile strip of the Firehole River between Old Faithful in the Upper Geyser Basin and Fountain Paint Pot in the Lower Gesyer Basin. They spew hot water, some in predictable intervals. Big deal. THEY SPEW HOT WATER!

Yellowstone is a super-volcano measuring 3,400 square miles, bigger than some northeastern states. If it blows, we're in big, big trouble. Once, I scrambled up a hillside about a dozen years after the Big Fire of 1988 had left it barren and scorched. Not only were the trees and undergrowth coming back, but the view below of Grand Prismatic Spring cannot be adequately captured words or a camera.

There are places so remote in "The Park" that only thousands, maybe even hundreds, of people have ever laid eyes on them. There's a 102-year-old inn made entirely of logs. The lobby is eight-stories tall and smells of a century of wood fires in the giant hearth. There's a 308-foot waterfall that scours a canyon of golden rock, and a river called Firehole. There are places that gurgle and blurp so loudly that they can heard a quarter-mile or more away.

Consider some of the place names in The Park: Mud Volcano, Dragon's Mouth, Black Dragon's Cauldron, Fairy Falls, Fountain Paint Pots, Celestine Spring, Grand Prismatic Spring, Porcelain Basin, Biscuit Basin, Minerva Terraces, Tower Fall, Chromatic Spring, Punch Bowl Spring, Comet Geyser, Mustard Spring, Emerald Pool, Mystic Falls, Orange Spring Mound, Pork Chop Geyser, Witches Cauldron, Sheepeater Canyon,Osprey Falls, Whirligig Geyser, Electric Peak, Liberty Cap, Opal Terrace, White Elephant Back Terrace. Seen 'em all -- words don't do them justice.

I could go on.

My dad said Old Faithful was "wimpy" this time -- went off on schedule but it was a short eruption. (Insert sex joke here.)

That's my report. As we used to say in the news biz: More TK.

Big birds, small lake

2010-05-16T21:16:00.012-06:00

Published in the Post Register, April, 2010

GRAYS LAKE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE -- Sandhill cranes stand about four feet tall and have a wingspan of up to six feet. That is one big bird.

As lakes go, on the other hand, Grays is nothing to write home about. Maybe a dozen feet deep at its most lake-like, it’s really more a marsh, full of hardstem bulrushes and cattails, with plenty of sage around the edges. Look more closely, particularly in late spring, and you’ll find dozens, maybe hundreds of sandhill cranes.

That’s not all. On a recent visit we spotted a couple of bald eagles and other birds of prey, some trumpeter swans, numerous shorebirds and nearly no human beings. At nearly 6,400 feet, Grays Lake (there is no apostrophe) gets about 10 feet of snow a year and has a short season suitable for viewing.

There are more convenient places to watch waterfowl. Mud Lake is a quick freeway trip north of Idaho Falls, for example, while getting to Grays Lake requires a meandering route of mostly dirt and gravel roads and is a round trip of 100 miles if your starting point is Sunnyside Road east of Idaho Falls and you drive the entire loop around the lake.

Passenger cars can easily handle the road, so long as it's not rained recently and you don’t mind a little teeth-chattering washboard and plumes of dust. All of this is the bad news.

The good news is that the drive winds through pretty high desert with Caribou Mountain looming to the east. Once at the lake a stop pretty much anywhere along the way, from the marshy north to the watery south, will yield views of beautiful landscapes and bountiful wildlife.

The best time to visit Grays Lake is now -- between mid-May and the end of October. The main reason to go is that Grays is home to the world’s largest nesting population of greater sandhill cranes, which are fascinating to watch on the ground and a spectacular sight when they take flight. In early fall there are as many as 3,000 cranes in the refuge.

If you have the whole day, expand your loop. Take Sunnyside to Bone Road, connect to Long Valley Road and follow it to Grays Lake Road on the lake’s east side, continuing all the way to Idaho Highway 34. Once back on the pavement, take 34 to Soda Springs for dinner, then make your way home via U.S. 30 and Interstate 15. Alternatively, turn left (east) on Highway 34 and head to Freedom, Wyoming and return home via Palisades Reservoir and Swan Valley. Either choice will add about 100 miles to the return trip, but it might save you a few fillings.

Sun Valley: Living in the past

2010-05-12T22:07:00.015-06:00

On Roger's Quaint-o-meter (patent pending), zero being Baghdad after a car bombing and 10 being Disneyland five minutes before opening, Sun Valley, Idaho is an 11.

Developed beginning in the middle of the Great Depression by Union Pacific Railroad as a destination ski resort, Sun Valley is now an incorporated town near Ketchum, Idaho with about 1,500 residents, and it's just cute as can be -- a little alpine paradise tucked into a corner of central Idaho's Wood River Valley. To be honest, I just love the place and visit as often as I can.

Unfortunately, Sun Valley has a problem. It nearly literally wreaks of ... old. Wherever you look, it feels old. The black and white photos all over the place in the famous (and impossibly quaint) Sun Valley Lodge come from the Forties and Fifties. The bell tower over the Opera House plays really old tunes. The live music played in the Duchin Lounge (which I also dearly love) is usually some sort of jazz from at least half-century ago.

So, young trust funders and other youthful sorts with expendable cash are more likely to head to Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Aspen, Colorado; Lake Tahoe, Nevada-California or elsewhere. It's really too bad, because Sun Valley really is a lovely place. On the other hand, Sun Valley's loss is my gain -- shoulder season lodging rates have become downright cheap (still three figures, but just).

The recent addition of the Sun Valley Pavilion, an indoor-outdoor music venue, could help in the summertime. The 2010 kick-off concert is the way-cool Colbie Callait, but the season also includes, ahem, the latest version of the decidedly uncool Glenn Miller Orchestra. Also on the schedule is the John Denver Band. John Denver, alas, died in 1997.

I'm not a skier, but by all accounts the skiing experience on the famous runs around Sun Valley has never been better, and both Ketchum and Sun Valley continue to have great restaurants and an intriguing nightlife for very small towns. These are not the issues. If you ask me (and you didn't), the issue is that Sun Valley is clinging to a past that was lovely but is, well, history. So, may I propose an idea or two?

1. Get rid of the old pictures, except, perhaps, for those in a restricted area celebrating the resort's illustrious history. The Wood River Valley is crawling with starving artists and photographers -- put them to work.

2. Bring in some entertainment recognizable to people born in the fourth quarter of the 20th Century.

3. Kill the icky recorded bell tones that ring around the shopping area and find some new stuff. And maybe bring in some new and different shops as well.

4. Take some risks. A hookah bar? Sushi? A skateboarding park? Allowing non-wooden rackets on the tennis courts? (That last one is a joke.)

From an outsider's perspective, it appears that Sun Valley faces a classic conundrum -- its marketers don't want to offend their longtime base, and that caution is costing them a whole generation of both skiers and summer visitors. Both the resort and its setting are beautiful and more people need to enjoy it. Meanwhile, Kathleen and I will enjoy the high prices and solitude of the Duchin Lounge all by ourselves.

Moochie's

2010-05-01T18:08:00.007-06:00

SALT LAKE CITY -- Moochie's is a dump, in all the ways that term can be endearing, comforting and a signal for authentic. It's clean, mind you, but, well, it used to be a pottery place.

Made semi-famous by Guy Fieri's Food Network show, "Diners, Dives and Drive-ins", Moochie's is becoming something of a Salt Lake landmark by selling Philly food -- cheese steak and meatball sandwiches, in particular.

Let us be clear -- despite several visits to Philadelphia, I have never had a cheese steak sandwich there. My experience with cheese steak goes back to 1973 when I met and fell in love with the Italian Place in Provo (a strong drive from Philly), which serves its version of the cheese steak, which is to say it's nothing like what sticklers for Philly authenticity would recognize, or so I'm told. Among the differences is that a real Philly has runny orange American cheese, while my familiar Italian Place steak and everything has provolone.

So, when Kathleen suggested a stop at Moochie's on our last visit to Utah, I was all in. For those who know Salt Lake at all, the place is easy to find. It's one block north and one block east of Randy's Records. If you don't know Randy's Records, then read no farther and Google Randy's for a complete history of music on vinyl in Utah.

Moochie's is on the corner of 800 South and 300 East in Salt Lake in a converted house that used to be a pottery shop owned by Don MacDonald, who is married to Joanna "Moochie" Rendi. See where this is headed?

So, fast forward. Kathleen and I each ordered the 12-inch cheese steak with onions, peppers and mushrooms. The main eating area was full, so we headed to the overflow seating area, which is the house next door. (No, really.) On the way, we ran across a picnic table and settled there. Kathleen had nabbed a bottle of Moochie's jalapeno sauce, which we dribbled on our sandwiches (we each ate half, stashing a whole sandwich in our cooler for the ride home and dinner that night).

Here's the scorecard: Meat, tender and flavorful. Onions, peppers, mushrooms, perfectly cooked and delicious. Bun: Soft on the inside, chewy on the outside and very fresh. Cheese: Frankly, I really don't like American cheese, but on this sandwich it was splendid. Calories: Do not even ask. Overall: Not over-hyped -- really, really good. It doesn't envelope me with the same warm nostalgia as the Italian Place, but the food experience is great and the setting is funky.

MacDonald was in the kitchen when we visited and, upon noticing that I was taking pictures, asked what the hell I was up to. I explained that I was a professional blogger and food critic (I sometimes stretch the truth, particularly when talking to strangers I'm unlikely to meet again), so he came by later and gave us some of Moochie's homemade potato salad. This, it turned out, was as good as the sandwich, and I do consider myself a connoisseur of potato salad. It's unlike any potato salad I've ever had, with a nice kick on the finish. This, too, is highly recommended.

Don't tell Don and Moochie I called their place a dump, even in a loving way. You know how they can be in Philly.

Cheating death in Glacier

2010-04-23T09:02:00.003-06:00

Excerpted from my online book: Glaciers to red rock: U.S. 89.

I was probably a couple of miles from the trailhead (not to mention my car and the nearest human being) when it hit me – it could be days before they find my body.

I was hiking near the St. Mary River in Glacier National Park in mid-spring. Snow still covered the trail in spots and Logan Pass was still under several feet of the stuff.

This is grizzly country, and the farther I got from the trailhead the more I began imagining hearing the sounds of bear paws in the woods. I was alone, no pepper spray, not even a bell on my pack to warn the critters I was coming. I cursed my stupidity and quickened my pace, but I kept going – wet palms notwithstanding.

Light, cold rain began falling and I confronted another threat – freezing to death in one of Glacier’s common spring snowstorms despite my pack full of rain gear and the extra insulation I’d managed to pack onto my body during my own version of winter hibernation. Paranoia was getting the best of me. The rain stopped, I wiped my glasses dry and trudged on.

I finally achieved my objectives – getting pictures of St. Mary and Virginia falls – and made it safely back to my car. Hadn’t seen so much as a porcupine. “Cheated death again,” I thought out loud as I opened the back of the car and slid my pack off my shoulders. Mine was still the only car parked at the trailhead. It could, actually, have been days before I was found had I run into a grumpy grizzly, still hungry from hibernating. I vowed to never hike Glacier alone again, a vow I’ve proceeded to break several times.

Indeed, later the same day I took the quarter-mile walk to Running Eagle Falls in the Two Medicine region. Parts of the trail were snow-covered, but it was packed hard from use. Still, I was alone again. I shot four or five frames of this unusual double falls (one stream of water pours off a ledge and another tumbles through a hole in the rock, though in spring it was hard to differentiate the two torrents) and skedaddled. Cheated death again.

I hooked up with U.S. 2, which took me around the south end of the park and to the west entrance. The next day I saw bears – two black juveniles, high above Going to the Sun, apparently taking turns sliding down a snowfield. I was grateful to run across them from a distance of several thousand feet.

I’ve had that eerie feeling at Glacier both before and since – hiking alone, far from the road, wondering what might be eyeing me from inside the forest. It’s not an irrational fear. There are human encounters with bears at Glacier every year, and not all of them end happily. Hiking with a partner or group is a better idea than going solo, but sometimes there’s just no alternative.

Not all the action is on the hiking trails. My wife, Kathleen, and I once sat for an hour near Swiftcurrent Lake on one of these roads watching a young black bear nonchalantly make his way down a riverside. Moments before, we’d watched through a telephoto lens a grizzly contentedly eating berries on a mountainside above the lake. In both cases we were only steps from the road.

Still, seeing the backcountry on a hiking trail is what Glacier is all about. From hiking trails I’ve run across moose, deer and mountain goats and seen mountain landscapes, lakes and waterfalls that really defy description. Kathleen and I hiked the gently sloping trail through cedar and hemlock to Avalanche Lake on the park’s west side, where we sat in the mid-day sun watching water stream toward the lake from snowfields high above us. I’ve hiked over Logan Pass down to Hidden Lake, where the mountain goats were so numerous I lost count. There are many hikes left to take – Iceberg Lake, Highline Trail, Red Eagle Lake. I’ll never get to them all.

I’ve visited Glacier in spring, summer and fall and I like spring the best, even though the top of the pass is snowbound and impassable. In late May, water pours from snowfields and glaciers in every conceivable fashion – over cliff faces, into granite chutes, through stream and river channels and down the side of solid rock. Few people venture into the park this time of year, which suits me fine.

If you must visit in the summer, it’s still possible to avoid the crowds. Just walk a quarter mile up any trail and you’ve left all but a handful of the park’s visitors behind. Fall is fine, but there’s precious little water moving and the season’s first snowstorm is bound to pounce at any time.

There’s a spot near Lake McDonald on the west side of Going to the Sun where Avalanche Creek shoots between giant, moss-covered granite boulders. The water is blue-green and swift and time-exposure photos taken of this scene give the water a milky, incandescent appearance. I wanted such a photo for my collection.

The day after my hike along the St. Mary River, I was at the Avalanche Creek trailhead. Sure enough, the parking area was bereft of cars. Still, the lighting was good – overcast but not too dark. The lack of contrasting light would allow for a long exposure, meaning I could capture a majority of the scene without under-exposing or over-exposing parts of it. A light mist fell.

I grabbed my camera backpack, donned my raingear and slung my tripod over my shoulder. It was a short walk, perhaps 15 minutes. But I could swear I heard twigs snap in the woods.

I got to the Avalanche Creek bridge, took my readings and made a half-dozen images. Between shots I stood up straight and looked around, just to be sure. When I got back to my car, there was no one in sight.

Cheated death again.

Slot canyons

2010-04-22T08:16:00.012-06:00

Technical note: All photos on this post were taken with Velvia 50 ISO slide film, f.22, using a tripod and exposure of between 3 and 30 seconds. No filters were used.

Excerpted from my online book: Glaciers to red rock: U.S. Highway 89

It's spring, blessed spring. Besides just breathing in the warm air and rejoicing at the disappeared snow, it's the perfect time to start planning your visit to the slot canyons of southern Utah and northern Arizona.

You’ve undoubtedly seen the pictures of the slot canyons of the Colorado Plateau, especially if you’ve wandered other parts of U.S. 89. Stop at photo studios in Jackson or Salt Lake City and you’ll see them. The pictures of the magical slot canyons unique to this part of the world can be found throughout southern Utah and northern Arizona as well. Slot canyons are narrow canyons formed by wind and water through the desert sandstone that may be only two feet across at the bottom and rise on both sides a hundred or more feet. There are such canyons in the Escalante area and throughout southeastern Utah. Similar canyons can be found in Zion National Park. Along U.S. 89 there are two slot canyon areas of particular note: Buckskin Gulch west of Page in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument and the Antelope Canyons of the Navajo Nation just east of Page, Arizona.

First, a note of caution. A slot canyon can be a deathtrap in a flash flood. There are many tales of lives lost during heavy rains that can send a 40-foot wall of water rushing down a slot canyon. Before entering any slot canyon, be certain that rainstorms are not likely, either in the area directly above the canyon or in watershed areas adjacent to the canyon. It’s best to inquire locally for expert advice. August and September are the monsoon season on the Colorado Plateau when afternoon and evening thunderstorms are common. Spring rain showers are not unusual, either. June or July are the ideal months to visit the slot canyons, if you can handle the heat, or late fall is another good option.

Of the two canyons discussed here, Buckskin Gulch is the more satisfying hike, but the Antelope Canyons are the more visually spectacular (and most convenient to visit). Either will provide you with an experience you can have nowhere else.

Buckskin Gulch is the epitome of slot canyons to many desert hikers and a popular spot in late spring through mid-summer. It’s not quite as mystical in nature as the Antelope Canyons near Page, but the hike into and out of Buckskin is a world class experience nonetheless. To find the trailhead, take a dirt road less than a mile from milepost 25 on U.S. 89, about 38 miles east of Kanab (about 34 miles west of Page). The clearly marked trailhead is about eight and a half miles down the dirt road. To enter Buckskin Gulch, you must first hike through Wire Pass. The hike is fairly uneventful for the first mile or so, but then you enter the first stretch of narrows that can squeeze down to as little as two feet in width. From here, there are narrows through Wire Pass and in either direction at Buckskin Gulch, which begins where it forms a “T” with Wire Pass. You can make the hike as long or as short as you wish – just make sure you know where you’re at and how to find the exit. It’s best if you can make this hike with someone who has done it before. If that’s not possible, there are a number of excellent hiking guidebooks on the Grand Staircase region that provide helpful tips and maps.

The Antelope Canyons are an entirely different experience. To find the Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons, drive east out of Page on Arizona Highway 98 about three miles. On the right will be a sign for Antelope Canyon. This is the staging area where the Navajo charge guests to ride into Upper Antelope Canyon. The drive takes you right up to the mouth of the canyon, which is only about a football field long. But what it lacks in length it makes up for in remarkable scenery.

The best time to visit Upper Antelope Canyon is in the summer between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. During this time, shafts of light from the overhead sun will stream into the canyon at various angles and positions, creating a visual world unlike any you will have ever seen. Too many people spend an hour in the canyon and leave. If your schedule allows it, stay for at least two and up to four hours. The canyon will look vastly different as the light changes.

A number of private tour companies in Page take groups into canyon. This can be a good way to go, particularly if you want to take pictures. Tour operators can help you understand the canyon’s geology and history and provide helpful tips on the difficult photographic conditions inside the canyon. For amateur photographers, studying the conditions in the canyon beforehand is a must, and taking an experienced photo tour guide with you isn’t a bad idea, if you can afford it.

A couple of quick tips: Don’t think you can go into the canyon with any camera, use a flash, and get a decent photo. Good shots in slot canyons require long exposures using existing natural light (depending on ISO setting and lighting, exposures can be from three seconds to three minutes). For this type of photography, a good DSLR or high-quality film (if you're using an old-fashioned film camera), a tripod and some basic photographic knowledge are essential. In general, set your exposure to capture the mid-tones and allow the darker and lighter areas to under- and over-expose.

Lower Antelope Canyon is accessed from the other side Arizona 98 and also requires a fee paid to the Navajo Nation. It looks similar to the upper canyon but is much longer as it descends toward Lake Powell and is much more difficult to explore, with ropes and ladders providing access in some places. Also, this is the site of the tragic drowning of 14 amateur photographers in 1997 when a flash flood raced through the canyon. Besides creating a potential danger to hikers, flash floods also are constantly changing the canyons. Floods can raise or lower the canyon floors by more than 15 or 20 feet as they either scour the sandstone floors out or deposit new silt.

A top 10 list that I didn't create -- dangit

2010-04-14T18:45:00.009-06:00

Lists were custom-made for the Internet. The Best New Wave One Hit Wonders from Northern England. The Top Ten Treatments for Cracked Feet. My Three Favorite Land Mammals.

Here's a really good one: The Top Ten Scenic Drives in the Northern Rockies. And I didn't even write it. It has a web site and everything. To be sure, it's nothing more or less than a tourism gimmick -- creating a web site and a Top Ten list to incite the masses. It's all put together by various state tourism agencies, chambers of commerce and the like -- not, of course, that there's anything wrong with that.

One could quibble with the list, but that would be obsessive, sick and wrong. It would also be impossible, because the list darn near perfect -- no weak choices, and not lacking anything obvious. So, what I'll do instead is say this: A good share of these routes can be found on my online book, and others can be found elsewhere on this very site. Nonetheless, The Top Ten Scenic Drives in the Northern Rockies web site is a thing of beauty.

Oh, wait, there's one thing they forgot -- to rank them in some kind of subjective order. Of course not -- imagine the fight that would have caused among chambers of commerce. Soooo ... here's my order:

10. Hell's Canyon All-American Road. Well, something had to be last.

9. Hot Springs Circle Tour. Hey, it's in Canada.

8. International Selkirk Loop All-American Road. This one gets a low rating because its name makes no sense.

7. Northwest Passage Scenic Byway. Pretty, pretty, pretty, but not as other-worldly spectacular as the top six.

6. Salmon River-Sawtooth Scenic Byways. See above.

5. Circle the Continental Divide Driving Tour. It's actually kind of remarkable that this one is included, considering that there are precious few chambers of commerce to apply pressure for inclusion. Very remote, but anyone who makes this drive won't be disappointed for spending the time.

4. Montana Scenic Loop. This is another one that gets overlooked because of the higher-profile drives near it, but boy, is it purdy.

3. Beartooth All-American Road. Here's the vocabulary you need for this drive: Wow! Oh, my! Oooh!

2. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park Loop. Five words: Going-to-the-Sun-Road.

1. Yellowstone-Grand Teton Loop. Duh!

The Kneadery

2010-04-10T20:07:00.017-06:00

Four days after he was first elected governor of California in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger had breakfast at The Kneadery in Ketchum, Idaho.

I know this because he and I sat back-to-back about 18 inches apart, he with Maria Shriver and their four kids, I with Kathleen, her sister, Iris, and Iris' husband, Vernon. We overheard the entire Schwarzenegger-Shriver conversation. OK, we eavesdropped big time. (Apropos of nothing, Arnold isn't as big as he seems on TV. I'm 6-1, 230 -- after a diet -- and Arnold was at least three inches shorter than I and not shockingly muscular. Also, he drinks decaf.)

They talked about Ahnold's going to the White House (no, kids, sorry, you can't go this time), Maria's ideas on promoting tourism in California, etc., etc. When they were done, Maria and the kids left and Arnold sat alone at the table for awhile. Kathleen wanted to say something to him but I pleaded with her not to. No one said a peep to him, and eventually he left, making his way to his black Chevy Suburban. Kathleen is probably right -- he was expecting to be approached and would have readily engaged in conversation. Kathleen thought seriously about stealing his fork and selling it on e-Bay.

Frankly, Maria was kind of rude. While Kathleen was politely waiting in line to put our name on the waiting list, Maria barged past her and announced to the waitress (in her deep, kind of masculine voice), "We're here." They were seated before we were, but only by five minutes. As a sort of payback, Maria spent a solid 10 minutes during breakfast with some sort of sauce dribbling down her chin before Arnold pointed it out to her.

But this isn't about Arnold and Maria. It's about The Kneadery, A Ketchum fixture since 1975 and one of three or four of the best places in Idaho to get breakfast (Moon's in Boise and Smitty's in Idaho Falls are right up there). I've seen other celebrities at The Kneadery over the years (most memorable was Mariel Hemingway, who was impossibly tiny except for her enhanced breasts), but the reason to go to the Kneadery is the wonderfully delicious food.

Lovingly run by transplanted San Franciscan Michael Martin from the time he bought it six months after it opened in 1975 until his unexpected death in 2002, The Kneadery is now owned and operated by the same folks who run another Ketchum culinary landmark, the Pioneer Saloon. The Pioneer, where the prime rib and drinks come in serious quantities, is now celebrating its 60th year in business and was once a favorite of Ketchumite and occasional writer Ernest Hemingway, grandfather of the aforementioned Mariel.

During the high winter and summer seasons there's always a wait to get into The Kneadery, so the slack seasons of early spring or late autumn are more convenient. Highly recommended is the omelet created in tribute to Michael Martin -- eggs, apple-chicken sausage, spinach, mushrooms and jack cheese. The coffee is stout. If you drink this stuff black, you probably grew up on a farm somewhere.

On your way out, say "hi" to Buck, the life-size wood carving near the cash register sitting beneath a growling stuffed grizzly, and take a complimentary cookie from the plate in front of him. And if you see Ahnold, please chat him up, maybe ask for an autograph. At this point, he'd probably like that.

Five best things: Cities to visit in the U.S.

2010-04-03T01:32:00.006-06:00

5. Chicago. I grew up three hours from here and saw my first major league game at the old Comiskey Park, so there's nostalgia associated with this choice. But Chicago has great food, great museums and galleries, a remarkable aquarium, and Wrigley Field. Ride the L, have some deep-dish, check out the Near North and the Magnificent Mile, and pay attention to the architecture.

4. Kathleen and I honeymooned in Boston. What else do you need to know? It's not a town to drive in -- park the car (pahk the cahh)and walk or take a cab. But it's another city with great food and a piece of American history around every corner.

3. San Diego has perfect weather. All of the other stuff -- the zoo, the other parks, the shopping, the Gaslamp Quarter, La Jolla, Old Town, the beaches -- almost don't matter.

2. Washington D.C. is pretty much the only place in the world where you can spend a week touring some of the world's most amazing museums and public buildings and spend next to nothing doing it. There's nearly a week's worth of stuff on and surrounding the National Mall before you even get to to things like Mt. Vernon or Monticello.

1. San Francisco: The waterfront, Chinatown, the restaurants, the Golden Gate, the bay, the hills, the streetcars, the funky neighborhoods, the funky people, the restaurants, Golden Gate Park, the fog, the new ballpark, and did I mention the restaurants?

Five best things: Drives in the continental U.S.

2010-04-03T01:12:00.004-06:00

5. Coast of Maine. This is pretty tricky, because there is no highway that hugs the coast of Maine like there is for California and Oregon. There are simply too many bays and jigs and jags to make a highway work. So, the best bet is to take your time, pick three or four places to stay along the way (at least to include Camden and Bar Harbor), and linger at the places where highway and ocean meet.

4. 17-Mile Drive, Monterey Peninsula. Winding from Monterey to Carmel along the coast and through the trees, this is actually a toll road that is worth every penny. Take the full day and do it right, including a stop a the Pebble Beach golf course to watch people hit off the first tee. It'll give you perverse pleasure to see people who are spending $700 for one round of golf hack it up.

3. Going-to-the-Sun Road, Glacier National Park. One of the great drives on the planet, the views of mountains, animals, waterfalls, rivers and lakes are completely enrapturing.

2. U.S. Highway 89 from Livingston, Montana to Jackson, Wyoming. This is, of course, cheating. This stretch of highway runs through Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. For the complete travelogue, go to Chapters 3 and 4 of my online book on U.S. 89.

1. Big Sur. The Oregon coast is more fun to visit and linger, but for shear driving pleasure, California Highway One from Carmel south to Morro Bay just can't be beat. Here's a tip: If you're afraid of heights, drive this from south to north so you're not constantly on the edge of the cliff.

Five best things: Beaches

2010-04-02T08:48:00.013-06:00

I'm talking general regions here, not necessarily single beaches.

5. The Washington coast. Wild, solitary, littered with driftwood, often cold and windy, the beaches along the Washington coast are not so much for picnics and bonfires, but more for taking in the amazing things Mother Nature can throw at you.

4. Lake Michigan. Nice for a change of pace, particularly if you like perch.

3. The Bahamas. Great, great beaches everywhere, including on the tiny uninhabited islands, some of which are owned by cruise lines (Great Stirrup Cay, left, is one such island). On our last visit to the Bahamas in December, 2008, we wandered about Freeport until we came upon a resort that was completely empty of people (below). We enjoyed the lounge chairs, the pool, the beach and the solitude.

2. Pebble Beach. The Monterey Peninsula is one of the most beautiful place on earth.

1. The Oregon coast. Whether it's Cannon Beach (left) or Bandon (below), or anywhere in-between, the Oregon coast is beautiful, diverse, fun, and has miles and miles of publicly owned beaches that never get too crowded, even in the height of summer.

Five best things: Yellowstone

2010-03-29T19:56:00.005-06:00

To most people, Yellowstone is either a spot on the map, a National Geographic special, or a place they see during a two-day whirlwind tour. Too bad. We live less than two hours from the west entrance and I've been there dozens of times. Here are my five favorite things in Yellowstone.

5. It always amazes me when people are disappointed in Old Faithful after seeing it for the first time. Too many people expect the computer-driven fountains of Las Vegas. Old Faithful has been spouting on its own every 75 minutes or so since long before there was a Las Vegas. It's still worth a stop every time we go. More important, Old Faithful is part of the Upper Geyser Basin, home to dozens of geysers and thermal features. What you do is, go to the Old Faithful area, go to the visitor center or the Old Faithful Inn and look at the board that shows the predictions for when the major geysers in the area will erupt. Then spend a half-day in natural bliss. If you don't like this, then just go home and fire up the video games.

4. Grand Prismatic Spring. Kathleen took the top picture, recognizing before I did the way the steam from the hot spring created this amazing combination of color. A lot of tourists bypass Grand Prismatic on their way between the Fountain Paint Pots and Old Faithful. It's a big miss. The second picture was taken from several hundred feet above Grand Prismatic after a scramble up a mountainside that, at the time, hadn't fully recovered from the 1988 fires.

3. The rut. In autumn, the thoughts of certain large game in the park turn to romance, which means the elk bugle and the bison roll in the dirt and they both engage in silly tussling over who will get to mate with the ladies. The park is beautiful as the aspens turn golden, and the rut is sort of romantic. This shot shows two bull bison sparring near the Lower Geyser Basin during rut.

2. Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. On the eastern section of the park the Yellowstone River has carve a beautiful canyon into the yellow rock that give Yellowstone its name. The Lower Falls drop 308 feet (that's twice as high as Niagara). Again, this is a place that some one-time visitors miss and most don't spend enough time with. The Canyon area of Yellowstone is worth days and days.

1. Mammoth Hot Springs. I've not been around the world, but I've been to a lot of places, and nothing comes close to Mammoth Hot Springs. This photo is of Canary Spring, a small part of Mammoth, and by itself it's worth the trip to the far northwest corner of Yellowstone. If you go to Yellowstone and don't see Mammoth, you've wasted your trip.

Five best things: Wildlife pictures

2010-03-28T14:04:00.002-06:00

There are two secrets to wildlife photography: A long lens and patience.

5. This guy was about five feet long, preening on a rock wall above a river in Costa Rica.

4. People go all gooey over this picture, but I took it from my home office through a window and into our very own long-needle pine tree, so it feels like I was cheating.

3. Two days in Costa Rica is the equivalent of two years in most other places when it comes to spotting exotic wildlife. I haven't any idea what sort of bird this is, but to see a bird with a fish in its mouth from a distance of 30 feet was, to me, an extraordinary experience.

2. So, there's a pattern here -- birds. I have lots of shots of bears, moose, elk, deer, mountain goats, and other land mammals, plus lots of whales. Birds are so much more difficult to shoot that I'm impressed when I get one right. This great blue heron was sitting on a rock in the Salmon River and I waited for him to take off, and I got three keeper shots, including this one.

1. To a lot of people this photo will look routine, but photographers will understand why I love it. This crane was flying directly at me at high speed, so I had to "un-zoom" my 180-500 mm lens as it came toward me while tapping my shutter release to keep it in focus. I had to begin panning when it turned to my right, and that's when I got this shot. It's pretty easy to shoot a stationary animal, but a bird in flight is a whole other matter.

Five best things: Pictures

2010-03-28T09:11:00.010-06:00

I've been taking pictures in a serious way for about 20 years. Here are my favorite five images.

5. (tie) Antelope Canyon, Arizona. My first visit to Antelope Canyon in 1998 was my most photographically rewarding. It was early spring and the sun was out, with no danger of a flash flood. I spent the afternoon there, shooting Velvia slide film. This iconic shot came early in the afternoon, with a 10-second exposure at f.22. I confess: I tossed some sand in the air near the light beam to increase the contrast between the light and its surroundings.

5. (tie) This rarely seen perspective of Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park is available only by scrambling up a mountainside to a point several hundred feet above the spring. As the trees that were burned during the 1988 fires re-grow, the view from this spot becomes less open. Taken with 100 ISO Kodachrome.

4. We were in the crocodile-infested Tortuguero Canals in Costa Rica when I saw a couple of boys swimming in the water about 50 yards from our boat. I grabbed my 500mm lens and got one shot -- this one, set on automatic exposure and focus. The enigmatic gaze of the boy on the left makes it hard to take your eyes away.

3. Over the New Year's break of 2000, Jeremy, Brad and I went to the Havasupai Reservation on the edge of the Grand Canyon and I took this shot of Havasu Falls. Shot with Velvia film at f.22 for three seconds, this kind of image is no longer possible. In the summer of 2008, massive flash flooding forever changed the falls (again -- this is not an unusual happening), and it now has a single stream.

2. I find so much to like about this shot. Photographically it's well-framed and uses the natural lighting well. In one picture it says so much about the Olympic Peninsula, which is so wet and fertile that plants grow from fence posts. Taken in the fall of 2009 with my Pentax K100D, f.16 (I didn't write down the exposure time, but I was using a tripod so it was longer than 1/60th).

1. I love this picture of Kathleen (I Photoshopped it to soften it and give it the "glowy" look). Taken in the Bahamas in 2008, it catches her unaware that I was shooting, which is always the best way to photograph people -- candidly. This says so much about Kathleen. Besides showing her beauty, to me it bespeaks kindness, class, and elegance, with just a little mischief afoot. Shot with my K100D on automatic settings.

¡Vinos Mexicanos!

2010-03-12T23:01:00.012-07:00

Guadalupe Valley, Baja, Mexico – I know, I know. Wine in Mexico. It’s just wrong.

Tequila? Of course. Beer? Muy bueno. Kahlua? Yeah, baby. But wine? Who knew? But pop on down to Ensenada and take Highway One north about 20 miles or so to Valle de Guadalupe and you’ll find a collection of wineries that put out some pretty good stuff.

Upon further inspection into this phenomenon one might expect to learn that Guadalupe Valley wine region is on the same northern latitude as, say, Tuscany or some other place famous for its wine grape climate. One assuming as much would be, well, wrong. Guadalupe Valley is on the 32nd parallel, which puts it at roughly the same latitude as Saudi Arabia or a swath of the People’s Republic of China. These are not well-known wine-making regions; nor are Algeria, Morocco, or Pakistan, which also rest on the 32nd parallel. You get the point.

Our guide for a tour of this most interesting of wine regions was Melanie Champagne. I am not making that up. A French Canadian who had moved to Mexico eight years prior, she had obvious rapport with the host wineries and was clearly proud of her adopted home. We've taken a lot of cruise tours in Mexico, the Caribbean, Central Ameica and Alaska over the years and this one is in my top five. You just never know. (My other four, you ask? Tortuguero Canals in Costa Rica; Snorkeling with sting rays in Grand Cayman; Whale-watching near Juneau, Alaska; Sierra Madre Mountains near Manzanillo, Mexico.)

There is an explanation for why certain wine grapes (particularly Spanish and Italian varietals, it seems), thrive here. The area’s proximity to the Pacific Ocean and its dry climate and rolling terrain make for warm, sunny days and cool nights, with soil so loose that vineyards grow barley between the vines on hillsides to keep the dirt from slipping away. Here, Mexico’s largest winery, L.A. Cetto, makes a respectable nebbiolo, a decent cabernet-sauvignon, a tasty barbera and a pretty good blanc de blancs sparkling wine -- Champbrulé -- out of chardonnay.

It does feature something you won’t find in Napa – a bullring at the top of a hill that actually occasionally gets some use. It’s a beautiful setting that includes olive groves and an on-site bottling plant, plus some roosters and peacocks.

More intriguing, however, is the small La Casa de Dona Lupe, founded in 1968 by Dona Lupe Wilson and her late husband. Dona still welcomes visitors to the small organic winery, now run by her son, where they also grow olives, serve homemade pizza and make their own jellies and other good stuff. We snacked on cookies and pizza while trying the wines, most of which were blended with grenache in a traditional European way. We brought home some of Dona's homemade jalapeno jelly.

La Casa Dona Lupe is at the end of a dirt road at the northern edge of the valley and couldn't possibly be more charming, with a beautiful courtyard surrounded by grapevines, palm trees and a small store, kitchen and tasting room.

The University of Baja California in Ensenada is now home to a School of Oenology (the study and science of wine-making) and Gastronomy, so it's likely that the region will continue to emerge as a wine source. Among the most respected wines in Mexico is Chateau Camou, also in Guadalupe Valley. We didn't have time to stop there, which gives us a reason to go back. Honest.

Capitol of Light

2010-02-18T17:54:00.012-07:00

Published in the Post Register, February, 2010

BOISE – Its timing was certainly awkward at best – a $120 million expenditure at a time when Idaho’s economy was tanking – but there’s little argument about the result.

The “people’s house,” Idaho's Statehouse literally gleams after its two-and-a-half-year facelift that brought the 98-year-old capitol building into the 21st Century while restoring its historical elegance.

The Statehouse had become a dingy, uncomfortable, even dangerous place prior to its restoration.

Originally designed by John Tourtellotte to let the sunshine in, the Statehouse was no longer the “Capitol of Light” Tourtellotte had envisioned. Thirty months and $120 million later, the moniker fits again.

Tourtellotte saw light as metaphor: “The great white light of conscience must be allowed to shine and by its interior illumination make clear the path of duty.” It’s no coincidence, of course, that laws requiring the government to conduct its business in public are called “sunshine laws.”

Not all of the restoration work is obvious to the visitor. There are new smoke alarms, electrical work, elevators, heating and cooling infrastructure and other vital but hidden improvements. Regardless of whether you agree that the scope of the renovation was justified, there was little choice when it came to the basic upgrades.

There also really can’t be much argument about the beauty of the restored building, regardless of one’s views on the cost. The building is open to the public and on a recent day the rotunda areas were full of Idaho companies showing off their wares, and public traffic was steady all day. It’s a spectacular space.

The House and Senate chambers also gleam, and the addition of new hearing rooms has made it more possible for the public to attend debates on bills and the conduct of other government business. There are new gardens and sidewalks east and west of the building.

The undisputed star of the show is the rotunda area under the dome, extending through four floors with an opening in the middle to allow an obstructed view from each floor up to the dome, which is 200 feet above the first floor. If you’re fortunate enough to visit on a sunny day, go to the third floor and walk around the rotunda – you’ll immediately appreciate why the Statehouse deserves its nickname.

Cottage Grove

2010-02-15T18:37:00.017-07:00

COTTAGE GROVE, Ore. – I am officially, pitifully obsessed with this village on the southern edge of the Willamette Valley, where rivers and mountain ranges converge, the landscape is forever green and the townsfolk paint murals on their buildings.

I’ve been there precisely once for a couple of hours, but I’ve written an online novel set there and I have a serious hankering to go back for a longer stay. For some reason I feel compelled to refer to the residents as “townsfolk.” It’s got a restaurant called the Brothel Café – now that’s my kind of town. The climactic parade scene of the movie Animal House was filmed here – that’s my kind of town. It gets four feet of rain a year – seriously, that’s my kind of town.

Cottage Grove is not exactly booming. Home prices are low, incomes are low, many of the buildings are old. This, of course, is a good share of its charm. It’s a real town where the homes and businesses reflect a pride of ownership. It’s on the edge of the Cascade Range a twisty 70 miles from the Pacific Ocean. It’s got a paved bike trail on a former railroad bed, an impressive collection of covered bridges and a decided dearth of snootiness. It oozes quaintness and charm, though I’m sure any high school senior in town would probably tell you she’s counting the days to move on to the big city.

In this case, the big city is Eugene just 20 minutes up the freeway and probably, as they say, a world away for young people who haven’t yet learned to appreciate the virtues of their small hometown.

One of my favorite spots in town is the enormous and ugly yellow National Guard Armory, which sits a block off of Main Street like the crazy aunt who comes downstairs from time to time. I can’t say for sure, but you get the sense that the people of Cottage Grove like the armory just the way it is, scabs of missing paint and all.

This is Red State Oregon – lots of pickup trucks and flannel shirts and antlers on the walls. Downtown is not full of cutesy boutiques selling Irish lace or Indonesian teak. Nope, there are small shops that do not open on Sunday, the day of the week I happened to visit. I stopped a teenage girl on the deserted Main Street who was walking barefoot down the sidewalk in a 50-degree drizzle and asked her if there was a courthouse in town, since I wanted to get a picture of it to illustrate my book.

"Not a regular one," she said. I pretended to understand what that meant and thanked her. Turns out, I learned later on the Internet, court is held once a week in city hall. That is my kind of town. Regrettably, it wasn't until a few days after my visit that I learned, while talking to the distillers of Idaho vodka at the Idaho Statehouse, that there is a major distillery in Cottage Grove. Now that is really my kind of town.

There are precious few fast-food joints and a place called the Koffee Kup, with a sign – just like the armory – that needs a paint job and isn’t likely to get it soon.

But speaking of paint, downtown is full of spectacularly beautiful murals. They are not paint-by-number jobs – these enormous paintings are works of art. Even the old Coco Cola and Dr. Pierce’s liver pills signs have been re-done. I want to find the people responsible and give them a hug.

I have developed this fantasy of late about living in a cottage – pun clearly intended – in this nice town, puttering around for a cup of coffee and getting up on a Sunday morning for a drive to the coast, but I suspect I’d grow weary of that after awhile. It’s perhaps best left a fantasy.

Portland's Chinatown: It ain't what is used to be

2010-02-13T22:33:00.012-07:00

PORTLAND, Ore. – An afternoon in Portland’s Chinatown makes one thing painfully clear – despite obvious efforts of a remarkable group that have made a garden blossom where it shouldn’t, this place isn’t what it used to be.

On the weekend of Chinese New Year, the handful of blocks comprising Chinatown is quiet, populated by as many vagrants as tourists. At one point, a man pushing a baby stroller came alongside my son-in-law, who also was pushing a stroller with his one-year-old seated inside, and inexplicably showed him the switchblade he had stored in one of the stroller’s compartments.

“You should carry one just in case someone tries to snatch your kid,” he said, and he walked on.

We stop at the House of Louie so I can buy a couple of char siu bao, a steamed dumpling of barbecued pork in fluffy bread that I developed a taste for during two years in Hong Kong in the late 70s.They are good, but much leaner than the ones in Hong Kong. We stop and watch some Ping-Pong outside the restaurant and head into the center of Chinatown, which is, frankly, pretty grim.

In a gift shop selling Chinese trinkets, the man behind the counter hesitated when we asked whether there would be a parade or lion dancers for the New Year.

“I think maybe next week,” he said.

He was equally uncertain when we asked whether he’d recommend eating an early dinner at the House of Louie.

“Well, I haven’t been there in two years,” he said. In other words, “don’t go.”

“The best (Chinese) restaurants are over on the east side” of the Willamette River, he added.

Still, we went to the nearly empty Golden Horse restaurant and the food was plentiful and good. But San Francisco this is not.

The one oasis is the Lan Su Chinese Garden, which takes up a full city block on the edge of Chinatown, surrounded by tallish buildings. While not as spectacular or expansive as the Portland Japanese Garden west of downtown, its attention to authentic detail is remarkable. It was a chilly February day and my family waited for me outside, so my time there was too short.

Sadly, much of the rest of Chinatown is in disrepair or for sale.

So, more about the Chinese Garden. Opened in 2000 by the city of Portland (in what one might presume to be a last, desperate attempt to save this section of downtown), the garden is really more architectural than horticultural, with a traditional teahouse and other buildings made of native Chinese wood and other materials. There are rocks mined from Lake Tai near Suzhou (Portland’s Chinese sister city), live bamboo and other plants native to China. Even in the gloom of mid-February camellia trees are blooming.

About 20 percent of the 40,000-square-foot garden is water, called Lake Zither (a type of zither called a guzheng is responsible for creating much of traditional Chinese music), mimicking ancient Chinese gardens of the Suzhou area. The structures inside the garden were built by workers from Suzhou.

In short, it’s strikingly beautiful and authentic, and strangely out of place in what otherwise appears to be a dying section of Portland.

Five best things: Live music

2010-02-07T11:26:00.007-07:00

5. Any Little Feat show. These guys don’t play concerts. For one thing, they usually play small venues – clubs, bars, small auditoriums. For another, they play a completely different set list every night, even when they’re on a regular tour, choosing from hundreds of songs they know. Some jams will go on for 15 minutes or more and incorporate two or three different songs, plus a whole lot of improvisation. After seeing a Little Feat show for the first time, an acquaintance said they were “a lot like the Grateful Dead, only real musicians.” I have a signed copy of the classic Little Feat album, “Dixie Chicken,” on my wall at home, plus one of their set lists (from a gig in Jackson Hole, Wyoming). Even if you’re not a fan of jam music, if Little Feat comes to town, go see them. I personally guarantee you won’t be disappointed. Tragically, founding drummer Richie Hayward, whom I've met several times and whose inimitable style drives the band, has liver cancer (which usually does not have a good prognosis). He's only 63.

4. Sweet Georgia Brown at the now-defunct Blue Note jazz club in Las Vegas. This was such a perfect night. It was a very small venue, sort of like a jazz club from the 50s. Sweet Georgia Brown is a little-known blues singer who belts it out with the gusto of Aretha, though surely with not as much raw talent. Anyway, it was a great night made greater by the fact that Georgia invited folks up on stage to dance with her during her rendition of Proud Mary, and Kathleen kicked off her shoes and got up there and blew the place away.

3. KISS and Uriah Heep in concert, Salt Lake City, 1977. Don’t give me any crap about this. I was 18 and KISS had just released Destroyer and they were the biggest band on the planet. Plus, I actually liked Uriah Heep (and I still do). Uriah Heep opened and, honestly, they were so much better than KISS that I don’t understand why the boys in makeup and platform shoes let them on the stage. (Go find some ‘70s Heep and listen to Ken Hensley shake the world with his Hammond B3.) The music was so loud that my ears rang for days and I’ll probably have future hearing loss from that evening alone. All of the people on our row were smoking pot (and we even helped them pass the joints along), but my buddies and I were good Mormon kids and didn’t partake. Alas, we didn’t know about the effects of second-hand marijuana smoke, so we were pretty looped by the time the show was over. We went to an IHOP, where one of our group ordered strawberry waffles and a root beer float. I thought it was so funny that I tumbled onto the floor in laughter. I really don’t recall much about the drive home.

2. North Park Apostolic Pentecostal gospel choir. Kathleen dragged me to this huge church north of San Diego one Sunday. I was skeptical and more than a little intimidated. I grew up listening to Mo Tab (Mormon Tabernacle Choir) and classic rock, with a little heavy metal thrown in when I didn’t think my parents were listening. On Saturday night we had seen blues guitarist Robben Ford in a small club and I figured I had my music fix for this trip. Here’s how ignorant and biased I was (and probably still am) – since the church was in a relatively seedy area of suburban San Diego and I was driving my brand-new BMW 330xi, I feared for its life in the parking lot. I’m an idiot. Kathleen prevailed, and when we pulled in the lot held its share of modest automobiles, but more than a fair share of Mercedes, Cadillacs, Audis, Jags and, yes, BMWs. In fact, my car didn’t turn a head in that lot. But you’re here for the music. After a warm welcome by the folks at the door (and later by the preacher, who had us stand up and introduce ourselves in the 800-seat auditorium, undoubtedly never having had a nice couple from Idaho on the premises), we sat in the pews and listened to 45 minutes of the some best music I’ve ever heard. This is not because I was necessarily moved by the spirit (we eventually left when some of the nice people on the stand began speaking in tongues), but because the singers and musicians were spectacularly gifted and deeply passionate. They blew Robben Ford away (sorry, Robben).

1. The Eagles in concert. I know, I know. The Eagles. They were expensive and highly rehearsed, but that turned out to be the magic. They played for three-and-a-half hours and, near as I could tell didn’t miss a note (this was in San Jose in 2005). Precise harmonies, expert musicianship, the right amount of in-between chat with the audience and superb sound made for an unforgettable night.

Runners-up (in no particular order): Cowboy Junkies at Grand Targhee; Journey at Sun Valley; Regina Belle at Blues Alley in Georgetown, D.C.; Moody Blues with the Utah Symphony at the old Salt Palace; house band night at the House of Blues, New Orleans; Lyle Lovett and his Large Band at Grand Targhee; Santana at the Hard Rock in Las Vegas; Lynyrd Skynyrd at Indianapolis (long story, that); house blues band in a small basement club in Chicago; walking down Bourbon Street any time, any season.

Five best things: Places to visit

2010-02-06T09:37:00.007-07:00

Once again, there’s a theme here: Four of my five favorite places are on the water. This could be because, as a landlubber, I don’t really need to go to other places that are high and dry. Or maybe I view coastal places more romantically because I’m near the ocean so rarely. Or perhaps I need to move to the coast.

5. Nassau, Bahamas. Technically, the Bahamas are in the Atlantic and not the Caribbean, but the islands provide the same sort of weather and vibe, with a distinctly British flavor. A British crown colony from 1718 to 1973 and still a member of the Commonwealth, the Bahamas also hosted Blackbeard the pirate and got caught up in the American Revolutionary War. Today, Nassau is an interesting mix of British and Caribbean influences and is a great town for walking. (Last time we were there we walked from a zoo and garden outside of town back to the city, stopping along the way for conch fritters.) Nearby there are beautiful beaches and resorts, but Nassau also retains its historical charms despite being a major tourist destination.

4. Costa Rica. Having been there only once, this is based as much on a notion as actual experience. But we were completely enthralled by our visit there, by Costa Rica’s friendly and warm people and its indescribable beauty. In the space of a few dozen miles the topography rises from sea level to more than 10,000 feet, and some of the volcanic mountains are still adding on. Central America’s oldest democracy, it has no standing army and caught on to eco-tourism very early. In our short visit we saw dozens of exotic animals, including monkeys, sloths, crocodiles, iguanas, and all manner of lizards and birds.

3. Zihuatanejo, Mexico. I often fantasize about retiring to a certain place, and the two non-American places I think about most often are Costa Rica and Zihuatanejo. “Z” is a small fishing village not far north of Acapulco but, as the brochures say, a world away. It has benefited by the development of Ixtapa 10 miles north, where all the modern resorts have gone. Z, on the other hand, has retained its fishing village nature and the hotels there are all low-rise that don’t destroy the place’s natural beauty. It gets its share of cruise ship traffic, but the people don’t go crazy trying to grab your money. There’s no Hard Rock Café or other ugly tourist restaurants – just small indoor-outdoor restaurants and markets, reliably fake Cuban cigar shops and a fleet of small fishing boats.

2. Cannon Beach, Oregon. Wonderfully, classically romantic, Cannon Beach is an art town on Oregon’s northern coast surrounded by green hills and mountains to the east and the dramatic Oregon coastline and Pacific Ocean to the west. Large monolithic “haystack” rocks dot the shallows near the beach and Oregon’s laws disallowing development of the beaches has left Cannon Beach’s coastline unspoiled. The town is large enough to have some great restaurants and, as an art colony, is full of great galleries and a handful of bookstores. Of course, it has its share of tourist shops, but they don’t spoil the experience.

1. Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. I caught my first glimpse of Yellowstone and the Tetons when I was 11 and we were moving from the Indiana prairies to the Utah mountain valleys. Now I live on the edge of this region, known by the environmental types as the “Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.” My long-suffering wife knows I could visit Yellowstone or Grand Teton every weekend of the spring, summer and fall and not tire of it. I asked Kathleen to marry me on the banks of a side channel of the Snake River as the sun set behind the Tetons to the west. I have taken pictures of moose, elk, bear, antelope, coyote, bison and bald eagles here (but have yet to capture the elusive gray wolf). The area is both beautiful and intriguing, with Yellowstone’s waterfalls and thermal features, from geysers to multi-colored hot pot springs. I feel very sad for anyone who hasn’t seen all of this.

Runners-up, in no particular order: Camden, Maine; Hong Kong, China; Guangzhou, China; Charleston, S.C.; Stowe, Vermont; Stockbridge, Massachusetts; San Francisco; Costa Maya, Mexico; Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; Carmel, California; Napa Valley, California; San Antonio, Texas; Savannah, Georgia; Galena, Illinois; Chicago; Seattle; Portland; Boston; Big Sur, California; Cooperstown and the Catskills, New York; Olympic Peninsula, Washington; Banff, Alberta, Canada; Ketchikan, Alaska; anywhere in Hawaii; Columbia River Gorge, Oregon and Washington; Ponte Vedra, Florida; anywhere in the Caribbean; and the following national parks: Bryce, Zion, Grand Canyon, Mount Rainier, Great Smoky Mountain, Canyonlands, Arches, Yosemite, Sequoia/Kings Canyon, Glacier, Rocky Mountain, Crater Lake, Redwood, Olympic, Acadia, and Saguaro.

And finally, my bucket list: The Everglades, Florida Keys, Cuba, Iguazu Falls, New Zealand, Australia, U.K. and Ireland, select places in Europe, Denali, Copper Canyon, more of Costa Rica, Polynesia, and North Dakota (only state I’ve not visited).

Five best things: Food

2010-02-05T09:23:00.010-07:00

This is the first in a series, Five Best. The five best things I’ve ever tasted.

It has to be acknowledged that memories are imperfect, particularly when it comes to food. Creating a particularly memorable culinary experience often has as much to do with the circumstances surrounding it (what was happening in your life, the setting, the people with whom you shared the experience), and deciding the five best things you’ve ever tasted is tricky and imprecise business. But it’s fun!

5. Char Siu Bao (barbecue pork buns) from the bakery on Argyle Street, Kowloon, Hong Kong. I’ve eaten this Chinese dim sum specialty ever since first eating them in Hong Kong, and my first experience was out of a small bakery near the now-defunct Kai Tak airport on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. Steamed instead of baked or fried, the buns are fluffy white bread wrapped around slightly sweet and slightly spicy barbecue pork. Perfect for breakfast, lunch, dinner and an afternoon pick-me-up.

4. Pulled pork barbecue sandwich from Dick Howell’s in Florence, Alabama. I’m already sensing a trend here, and it won’t end with this entry – it seems I like barbecued pork. OK, so my culinary tastes are terribly unsophisticated. Sue me. Dick Howell’s is a dump of a restaurant – more a shack, really – in a residential area of Florence, Alabama. He smokes his meat there on the premises and makes his own vinegar-spicy cole slaw that goes on top of the meat. Heavenly.

3. Calamari strips at Fulton’s Fish House, Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Yes, this is part of the Disney World-EPCOT complex, but both the food and setting are delightful. Of particular note is the calamari, which is soaked overnight in buttermilk and are tender but firm, then perfectly seasoned. They were so delicious that we went back the next day and skipped the entrée altogether.

2. Boston cream pie at the Omni Parker House in Boston. Long famed as the inventor of this delicacy, people go to the Omni Park (also the original source of Parker House rolls) just for its Boston cream pie. Growing up, my mother would make this treat from time to time, especially on my brother’s birthday – one cake for him and one for the rest of us. For the uninitiated, Boston cream pie isn’t pie – it’s layers of yellow sponge cake and vanilla pudding (OK, Omni Parker calls it “pastry crème and makes it with rum) stacked high, then smothered in a fudge sauce.

1. Suckling pig at Datong Restaurant, Guangzhou, China. I ate here in 1979 with a small tour group and some of the food was too exotic, even for me (I’m not a big fan of steamed sparrows). The last course was a whole suckling pig, drawing a low gasp from the table when it was unveiled. The skin was glazed and fired to a snap crunch. Just past the skin, there was a layer of fat that gave way to the most tender and spectacularly flavorful pork meat I’ve ever tasted (or ever hope to). You would peel off the skin, which had been cut into small squares, and eat it with your fingers. Then, with chopsticks you dig through the fat layer to find the tender meat below. Then, your eyes roll back in your head as you have a deeply religious experience.

Runners-up, in no particular order: Kathleen's talapia-potato-onion-spinach dish baked in foil and served in our very own home, Bruno's pizza (Logansport, Indiana), B&K Mexidog (Peru, Indiana), Italian Place Steak and Everything sandwich (Utah Valley, Utah), blue crabs and beer (anywhere along the Chesapeake), Nielsen's frozen custard (Bountiful and St. George, Utah), a mysterious poblano-based vegetarian entree at the Greystone Restaurant (inside the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena, California), The Broker's filet mignon (Denver), world's freshest fish at The River's Edge (La Push, Oregon), chile verde in a now-defunct restaurant (Balboa Island, California), conch fritters and Kalik Gold beer (Nassau, Bahamas), the whole dining experience at the Marrakesh (Washington D.C. -- look around for spies), Etta's Seafood's fresh salmon (Pike Place in Seattle), the smoked-chicken-broccoli-black-bean soup at George's at the Cove (La Jolla, California), El Charro's tamales (Tucson -- the locals think it's become too touristy), the stacked enchilada at a now-defunct restaurant in Santa Barbara, the raw bar at A.W. Shucks (Charleston, S.C.).

Ghost signs

2010-02-02T08:24:00.017-07:00

Published February, 2010, in the Post Register.

On the southeast side of Mackay’s Main Street there stands an abandoned building that most folks will pass by without noticing, despite the treasures in evidence on its exterior walls.

On one side of the building is painted an enormous sign advertising Thomas Pilash, Tailor, which once was housed in the building. Below that, the sign promotes Levi Strauss. On the other side of the building is a beautiful sign advertising Mountaineer-O-All suspenders, available at ZCMI.

The building was so severely damaged in the 1983 Borah earthquake that it had been recommended for razing as a potential safety hazard. Whether it should have remained standing is open to debate, but the fact that the building and its signs are still there should be a delight to anyone remotely interested in the history of a community.

Signs such as these are called “ghost signs.” Originally created using durable (but dangerous) lead paint in the early to mid-20th century, they have faded over time and most have been destroyed or painted over. But some remain around eastern Idaho, providing a reminder of another era.

The most prominent ghost sign in Idaho Falls the beautiful Hotel Rogers sign above Park Avenue and B Street downtown, painted on the side of the hotel building built on that site in 1937. But there are less obvious ghost around the area.

For example, there’s a Kress ghost sign at 451 N. Park Avenue on the building that used to house the nationally famous five-and-dime chain.

For a special treat, wander over to Oneida Street, where a long brick building that has served as everything from a supper club to an auto shop and bar. Take some time and wander around the building – on one end it advertises Owyhee Candies and on the street side you can still make out very old signs for various automotive products dating back to the Thirties and Forties.

"There was no interstate at the time and all the traffic drove right past the shop," Jim Winborg said told the Post Register last summer. Jim’s father, Con, owned the building at one time. "In the old days, there were quite a few hotels on that street, a lot of businesses."

The next time you’re heading down 1st Street in Idaho Falls, check out the north side of the 300 block, where you’ll find a large sign advertising Harvey’s Store, which had been a beer-and-fishing supply store back in the day.

But perhaps the best ghost sign in Idaho Falls is its simplest, a few blocks away between First Street and Lomax streets. There, visible above a fence on the top part of a small and obviously old building, is this simple ghost sign: “Auto Laundry.” There’s a story behind that sign, but maybe it’s just as interesting to make one up.

Four brothers, four restaurants

2010-01-27T19:29:00.019-07:00

Published in the Post Register in January 2010.

In Mao Zedong’s China, four brothers grew up in Canton Province, learning to cook even before they started school.

Today, even as their homeland lurches toward its own version of capitalism, those four men run restaurants in eastern Idaho. Twins Oi and Jung Fong have owned and operated the Canton restaurant in Idaho Falls since 1992. One brother, See, owns the New Star restaurant in Rigby, and another brother, Kigh, runs the Hong Kong and New Hong Kong restaurants in Idaho Falls.

The paths the brothers took included many lean times and stops in Oklahoma, California and Oregon – plus Boise and Twin Falls – but they all eventually settled in eastern Idaho, adapting their cooking to American tastes along the way.

“We know what kind of Chinese food Americans like,” Oi Fong says simply. “We don’t put soy sauce in the fried rice,” he adds by way of example. “It turns the rice dark and people in Idaho don’t like that.”

The diminutive 53-year-old men say their personal taste leans more toward vegetables and rice, while Americans prefer dishes that have become common in Chinese restaurants in the States – sweet and sour pork, pork fried rice and chow mein.

Canton Province is not far from Hong Kong in eastern China, so the men come by the names for their restaurants honestly. And just because they cater to American tastes doesn’t mean the food isn’t necessarily authentic. They feature Cantonese-style pan fried noodles (“chow mein” is Chinese for fried noodles) among other dishes that wouldn’t be out of place in a restaurant in Taishan, the family’s home county. Perhaps more important, you’ll not find them taking prepared foods out of the freezer.

In the kitchen, staffed entirely by family members, shrimp is being de-veined and prepared for dipping in batter to be fried in a large wok. Fresh pork is being ground by hand, rice is fried in another giant wok and sauces are prepared by hand.

As everywhere, business is a little slower in these days of recession, but Oi and Jung Fong have done well for themselves and their families. Each has sent three children to college – Oi’s to the University of Utah and Jung’s to Boise State – while operating the Canton at the same location on 17th Street for 18 years. They remember the day when there were grain fields nearby.

The men say they don’t see any sign yet that people are starting to spend more easily, but they refuse to cut the hours of their employees and are determined to see this rough time through. After all, they have seen worse.

(Special thanks to Ivy Berry, the Post Register’s director of business administration and a native of Hong Kong, for lending her interpreting skills to the interview for this story. My own Cantonese, learned from two years in Hong Kong but rusty due to an intervening three decades, was inadequate for a newspaper interview and deemed by Oi and June to betray a Hong Kong accent. They were being very, very kind.)

Flower of Suchitlán

2010-01-25T11:56:00.030-07:00

COMALA, Mexico – Under the enigmatic gaze of twin volcanoes, one active and one dormant, the town of Comala is known for its beautiful cathedral and adjacent town square.

A circular covered bandstand anchors the square, which includes tall coconut palms and other tropical plants, water fountains, brick and stone walkways, and wrought iron benches, all of which match perfectly the colonial surroundings.

We had just finished an average lunch at the restaurant across the street and it was time to wander before heading back down the mountains to Manzanillo. The streets of Comala are tight and crooked, each door or window opening to a small home or a tiny clothing manufacturer.

On arrival to Colima, the larger adjacent town in this valley and the name used for the larger region, steam was seeping from the ominous-sounding Volcán de Fuego de Colima, one of the most active volcanoes in Mexico or North America. "Colima’s Volcano”, as it’s known colloquially – and its dormant twin, Nevado de Colima – are responsible for creating the perfect soil for a lot of tropical plants, including coffee beans.

While I’m wandering the back streets of Comala (are you staying with me?), I overhear one of our bus drivers asking if anyone’s interested in buying local coffee directly from the roaster. I follow a discrete block behind the bus driver and the three tourists who took him up on his offer as we head four or five blocks away from the main square.

He enters a small convenience store in the middle of the block and, by the time I arrive, has taken his small group behind a curtain into a courtyard, where ancient roasters are quiet but still capable of doing their work when called upon. We watch a short description of how the beans are roasted in small batches, and learn that we can choose between mild, medium and dark roast.

I’m last in line and I purchase two pounds of medium roast whole beans for $100 pesos (that’s $US4.80 per pound). The brand name is Flower of Suchitlán, named after the small town 15 miles away from which the beans come.

At home, the coffee is smooth and delicious, with an aroma that smells oddly of flowers. No, that couldn’t be. Could it?

Copala

2010-01-11T21:35:00.012-07:00

COPALA, Sinaloa, Mexico – There are places on the planet that permanently give you a small measure of comfort even though you may visit only once and you’ll never get to know them intimately.

The village of Copala in Mexico’s Sierra Madre mountains is such a place. Nearly five centuries old, it is home to 600 souls a winding 90-minute bus ride from Mazatlan. There’s an old silver mine nearby but not much else by way of obvious economic or physical infrastructure.

The streets are rocky cobblestone and the walls that keep the tidy homes from washing down the hillside during the rainy season are made of ancient rock and mortar. Here’s the most striking thing – in the big city below, trash and graffiti mar the setting of Mazatlan, home to 700,000 people. As you wind your way east up the Sierra Madre, however, the graffiti gradually disappears and the roadside trash diminishes.

By the time you’ve reached the 5,000-population town of Concordia, the people are no more affluent than those in the city, but there’s a noticeable change in how they care for their surroundings. Both Concordia and Copala are in the Sierra Madre foothills and share a history that goes back to the 1500s. Each has a landmark cathedral and central plaza surrounded by brick-and-stucco neighborhoods, where bougainvillia spills over the walls.

The region is known for its hand-made furniture, pottery and bricks, all created slowly and laboriously in small shops and sometimes right out in the open – no roof, no electricity, no modern technology whatsoever. The area also is blessed with a Garden of Eden’s equivalent of flora and fauna, from banana and mahogany trees to jaguars and white tail deer.

The ubiquitous bricks made and used in this part of Mexico are perhaps an inch-and-a-half tall, maybe five inches wide and perhaps a foot long. They are made of mud and various other ingredients, sometimes including manure, then finished in wood-fired kilns. Nearly all buildings are made of a combination of these bricks, mortar and stucco, usually without rebar.

Homeowners and shop-owners also show their pride in their front doors. Though often protected by a metal gate as a defense against petty theft, each door and its surrounding stucco is unique, making its own statement. In both Concordia and Copala, the streets are never straight or even, allowing the topography of the foothills to determine the layout of the towns.

But back to Capola, where the federal government is building a superhighway over the mountains to connect Mazatlan to the interior of central Mexico. The town boasts a small primary school and a handful of restaurants and bars. It’s home to a handful of American ex-pats, drawn by the warm weather, low cost of living and quiet lifestyle. We eat at Chapala's, which is one of several local eateries specializing in that Mexican specialty -- banana cream pie. It's good, but my mom's was better. Then we wander the winding streets, where nearly every home is clean and neat, the people friendly and polite.

Colima and Comala – two larger towns in a mountain valley east of Manzanillo that we visited two days later – suffered by comparison. They are perfectly fine communities, each with a beautiful town square and adjacent cathedral. The drive to Colima passes through mile after mile of coconut groves and citrus orchards before the road climbs through a pass and drops into the valley, which is dominated by two enormous volcanoes – the active Volcan de Fuego (13,087 feet) and the dormant Nevado de Colima (14,220 feet).

On our arrival to the valley, Volcan de Fuego is belching steam from its peak, but it settles down before we’re able to stop and take pictures. Colima is home to 180,000 people but feels like a smaller town, full of small shops on the ground floor with the owner’s apartment above. The twin volcanoes are blue silhouettes reaching more than two miles above the valley floor, visible from nearly anywhere in the city.

Six miles on, the much smaller Comala is more charming but still lacking the intimacy of Copala.

In between, we stop of the site of La Campana, a 2,000-year-old pre-Hispanic settlement rediscovered in the early 20th century. What it lacks in the magnificence of Mayan, Aztec and Incan sites elsewhere in Mexico and Central and South America it makes up for in shear age and imagination. Constructed of smooth rocks from nearby riverbeds, La Campana (The Lookout) remains an impressive feat of engineering and architecture.

On the way home, I ask the bus driver to stop so I can snap some pictures of a small agave plantation, which provides the base liquid for tequila distilled in nearby Jalisco state. The day has provided more than what we’d came for – temperatures in the low 80s (while much of the U.S. was suffering from an early-winter deep freeze) and a brief look into modern and ancient Mexican life.

But we remember Copala and wish to go back.

Collage

2009-12-23T21:40:00.010-07:00

Published January, 2010 in the Post Register.

It’s just a restaurant; do not be afraid.

As one of the handful of eastern Idaho’s truly fine dining restaurants, Collage produces some exotic dishes. Chef and co-owner Dave Shipley wants you to know, however, that he’s also capable of making dishes that everyone’s heard of.

“We need to appeal to everybody,” Shipley says. He and partner, Luciana Schmitz, are juggling the menu at Collage, looking for the right balance between gourmet and recognizable, a range that’s particularly important during tight economic times.

They’ve recently introduced an expanded pasta menu to go with signature dishes like lobster bisque and buffalo ribeye, with an accompanying lower price range.

Collage opened in a tiny space on First Street in Idaho Falls seven years ago and moved to its current location across from the Colonial Theater on A Street in 2007 after Shipley and Schmitz bought out the restaurant’s other partners.

Shipley grew up in Aspen Valley, Colorado, learning the art of cooking under the tutelage of his chef father. He worked at a number of restaurants in Salt Lake City as a sous-chef and chef before coming to Idaho Falls.

He worries now that Collage’s early success and reputation for a high-end experience is scaring some potential customers off. “Just having a special-occasion restaurant isn’t going to keep us open.”

Schmitz, a native of northern Italy, makes her own tiramisu that has developed its own following, but call ahead if that’s what you’re coming in for – it’s a special item that’s not always on the menu – “I make it every couple of months,” she says. The equally popular mocha ganache is reliably available. Even the sorbet and ice cream are homemade.

Of course, if you’re looking for an entrée that’s a little special, Shipley’s got you covered, from lobster-stuffed ravioli to his specialty, local buffalo ribeye that spends the night before it’s served marinating in wine and herbs.

Like most chefs, Shipley prefers the cooking to running a business, but understands that the two go hand in hand.

“I just want to come in and cook,” he says.