Lessons Learned

Our west coast road trip pretty much marked the end of my domestic travels for the year. By my count, in 2008 I’ve been through 25 states (and a Canadian province) with about 42 days on the road. Something like 6,000 road miles covered. A few basic take-aways stand out from all those miles through America.

Scale: Given that my perspective is often focused on international travel, all this wandering serves most of all to remind me of how much more there is to see of the US (to say nothing of Canada). The more I see, the more the list of what else I want to see keeps growing.

Diversity: The views from hotel windows in Lander, Wyoming and Providence, Rhode Island had about as little in common as the political views at the coffee counters in Portland, Maine and Aberdeen, South Dakota. And for all the in-your-face majesty of a Humboldt County redwood looming over you or the promising view of the Teatons in the windshield, the flat endless fields of Iowa streaking past have their own distinct appeal. Difference is certainly the central commonality from coast to coast. It can make it hard to catch your breath when the colleted images of a thousand miles play back through your mind’s eye.

Food revolution: There’s great stuff happening out there in America. From the orchards of the Fruit Loop around Hood River, Oregon, to the seafood beds off Cape Elizabeth, Maine - there’s wonderful product being pulled from the earth and sea. What’s being done with this bounty in kitchens across the country is exciting - and delicious as can be. I still can’t believe the pizza with local chanterelles in the sleepy town of Arcata, California (or how good it was as leftovers the next day for lunch in a park in Crescent City). And nothing tops the fresh cheese curds CA and I bought from the small fromagerie on the road between Quebec City & Montreal. Pleen and I are still in shock that a joint in southeast Portland, Oregon is serving up no-kidding Thai street food. There’s a pride of workmanship that’s evident in the good food being done outside the traditional bastions of high end cuisine. There’s a particular message that outstanding eats shouldn’t be confined to the Five Boroughs or available only to those at the $100+ per-plate end of the spectrum. And this message, I swear, comes through at the table. You taste it and you feel it. It feels as if we’ve rediscovered something.

Contradictions: Pleen always says that it’s the contradictions in people that really attract her. I feel the same way about places. The land of Olive Garden is the land of the Corn Exchange. The 200 mile run of the California coast devoid of any chain lodgings or restaurants starting in Gualala, ends in a neon-coated wash of Holiday Inns and McDonald’s at Fort Bragg. Cutting edge wind turbines are erected and managed by high plains good ol boys. Contradictions are like spice, they serve to highlight interesting flavors.

Favorites: There’s too much great stuff out there to pick useful favorites from such a wide set of experiences. Some things that pop to the top of my memories, however, are the following.

• City: Quebec City (because it was so unexpected. CA and I felt we were making a discovery around every corner)
• Meal: Apizza Scholls in Portland, OR (Dream pizza with my dream girl. Perfect.)
• View: From the Citadel in Quebec City (Flawlessly beautiful and a military history geek’s dream for guys like CA and me.)
• Event: The hike that JB took me on in the Teatons (Because it was humbling and exhilarating at the same time)
• Route: The haunted forest that Pleen and I drove through to pass from to the California coast (Because it seemed like a mystical little portal that wisked us from one reality to another. The contrasts were stark and immediate and the route itself was otherworldly).
• Attraction: The lunch time glass blowing seminars/workshop at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA (Because it was a chance for normal people to see hard corps artisans at work right in front of them)

Company: In the end, nothing is as essential as great company. In fact, these road trips have been as much an excuse to hang out with my favorite people as anything else. My key lesson learned here is that I am incredibly fortunate to have such people in my life. Good company makes any experience better - and the bad ones livable.

West Coast Road Trip Part 1: San Francisco highlights

In four days on the ground in the San Francisco area, we barely scratched the surface. Through Pleasanton and Livermore, Berkley and Oakland, from Embarcadero to the Tenderloin, we did some silly things, saw some dear friends, and ate some good stuff. All the while being blown away by the beauty and diversity of the Bay area.

A blow-by-blow would prove less than interesting, but some highlights (“a few of our favorite things”) include:

BART:
For all its limitations, it’s fast, cheap, and easy. From the time we got off the plane at SFO, we were at our buddy’s office in the financial district in under an hour - for less than $6 a head. Try THAT from Washington Dulles! Staying with him out in the ‘burbs, BART got us where we needed to go easily and cheaply.

This just serves to remind me, there are two types of major cities in the world: those where you can ride a train from the airport to the city center, and those where you can’t. It’s hard to make the list of great travel destinations if you’re not among the former. Anybody who’s reveled in moving from O’Hare to the Magnificent Mile, Heathrow to Piccadilly, or Changi to Orchard Road without suffering a bus interchange or traffic jam knows what I’m talking about. Conversely, anybody who’s sat unmoving sucking exhaust fumes while their Baht or Dollars or Yen roll away on a taxi meter understands.

Ferry Building:
Contrived? Yes. But the Ferry terminal building serves to capture much of the essence of San Francisco in a fine foods sense. Pleen took to referring to is as “my favorite building”

Our lunch on the day we arrived at Mistral is a case in point. This is, by any reasonable measure, fast food. It just doesn’t suck.

The lamb stew was rich with cumin, cinnamon, ginger, coriander, .green anise and cheyenne pepper ladled over couscous. The white beans Provencale & roasted butternut squash made for a beautiful plate of comfort food. Rounded out with an Anchor Steam for ~ $10, this is my idea of a value meal!

Walking around after that first lunch we reveled in the accessibility of lots of the bay area’s best eats: from Peet’s Coffee to the wonderful gingerbread cupcakes from Miette

When we returned the next day to pick up a few extra cupcakes for our kind hosts, we couldn’t pass up a sourdough cheese wheel from Acme Bakery before we headed out. Acme without having to head all the way to Berkley?!? A treat!!

Ferry Building merchant list & map: www.ferrybuildingmarketplace.com/merchant_map.php

Mistral Rotisserie Provencale
1 Ferry Bldg
San Francisco, CA 94102
415-399-9751
www.mistralrotisserie.com/

Miette Patisserie
Ferry Building Marketplace, Shop 10
San Francisco, CA 94111
415-837-0300
www.miettecakes.com/

Acme Bread Company
Ferry Building Marketplace, Shop #15
San Francisco, CA
415-288-2978


Tours:

Pleen and I aren’t really fans of organized tours. OK, let’s be honest. Pleen and I are the kind of people who make fun of organized tours and the people who take them. It’s not fair or logical, but there it is.

Well, perhaps we’re opening our perspectives in our old age, because we did two tours and loved them both. One was a Segway tour of San Francisco that was an utter blast and yielded the most goober-ish shot of the entire trip

The other was a Scharffen Berger factory tour (for Pleen, “pilgrimage” is a more accurate descriptor) that was fascinating and inspiring . . . and generated a close second.

Electric Tour Company

757 Beach Street

San Francisco, CA 94109-1218

415-474-3130
www.sfelectrictour.com/index.html

Scharffen Berger
914 Heinz Avenue,
Berkeley, CA 94710
510-981-4066
tours@scharffenberger.com
www.scharffenberger.com/factory.asp

Great Stuff and a Great Mix:
Everywhere you turn in the bay area great ingredients abound. The earth and the sea give up more great edible stuff than you can imagine. From this surfeit, cooks and confectioners of all backgrounds go to town and create wonderful food.

There's so much that’s good that the old ghetto-ization of food has broken down. It’s not about a geography of Chinatowns or Italian neighborhoods. Nor do the cuisine classifications of Continental or pan-Asian apply. The old borders just can’t contain all that’s happening.

Malaysian nibbles prepared by a white guy in a hip urban neighborhood? Check. Beef tri-tip dressed in cilantro sauce from a Brazilian guy in a parking lot shack? Yup. Cantonese family cuisine from a suburban mall abutting vineyards? Of course. Whether you want a $5 sandwich, a $10 plate of noodles, a $28 fillet of swordfish, or a $50 whole snapper, it applies across price points. It all makes sense. It’s all great. None of it is out of place because the strictures of place seem infinitely expanded.

Betelnut
2030 Union St
San Francisco, CA 94123
415-929-885
www.betelnutrestaurant.com

Brazil Cafe
1983 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94704
510-845-1056

Koi Garden
4288 Dublin Blvd
Dublin, CA 94568
925-833-9090

One night in Portland is all it took

We have several posts dealing with our west coast trip in various stages of edit, but sometimes subjects arise that justify jumping the queue. Sometimes a revelation appears fully formed without the necessity for cogitation. Sometimes . . . sometimes you drive into Portland, Oregon and – on your first night in town - find yourself sitting at the bar at Apizza Scholls. And thus sometimes, you come face to face with what perfect looks like.

Bottom line up front:

This is one of the best two pizzas Pleen & I have ever had (the other being the totally different pie from Trattoria Dell’arte in New York). This is worth a plane flight to Portland . . . from Guam! We’re thinking about buying a condo on the corner of their block.

Details:

We heard about this joint in planning our trip to Portland, but, to be honest, they made the list for dinner tonight because of their proximity to the hotel and their lack of a dress code. After 900-some miles, we just wanted a bite and a good night’s sleep. We were in for significantly more than that.

What we got was the product of Brain Spangler’s maniacal dedication to the pizzaiolo’s craft: his hand-mixed and slow-fermented dough; his ingredients; his personal shaping and baking of each pie that leaves the kitchen. The results of all of this labor and attention was a fabulous classic Neapolitan pie. FAB-U-LOUS.

Now let’s not be coy. As good as the tangy tomato sauce, house made sausage, and Mama Lil’s goathorn peppers all are, this pizza is about the crust. You could serve that crust to me plain with a bottle of olive oil and I’d eat two. Spectacularly simple, anyone who’s searched for a great thin crust pizza (or tried to make their own!), knows how difficult it is to obtain that thin-but-robust, snappy-but-chewy, charred-but-sweet base layer.

The quite good wine list, great beer list, lovely salads, and OUTSTANDING service are almost not worth mentioning. You’re not going to really care. You’re going to focus on that snap of the first bite. That flood of flavors. That swimming of the senses as your taste buds try to come to grips with what they’re experiencing.

And then it’ll be all about when you can get back. Spangler puts his vacation plans on the restaurant’s website since no pizzas come out when he’s not around to cook them. Plan your visit carefully

Enough’s enough. There’s one more piece sitting on the counter across from my laptop. Gotta run.


Apizza Scholls
4741 SE Hawthorne Blvd.
Portland, OR 97215
503-233-1286
www.apizzascholls.com/

Trattoria Dell’arte
900 7th Ave.
New York, NY 10106
212-245-9800
www.trattoriadellarte.com/

Question: How are you packing?

I’ve been experimenting a bit with packing methods as an element of streamlining my travel without looking (in my buddy CA’s immortal phrase) “like a bag of donuts” when I arrive at my destination.

Bundle packing

Many experienced travelers have become fans of “bundle packing”. It offers the twin benefits of avoiding wrinkles while reducing luggage volume. Two useful explanations of bundle packing:

• Doug Dyment has a good overview at “One Bag” (www.onebag.com/pack.html) and a particularly useful diagram/instruction sheet (www.onebag.com/popups/bundle.html)


• Kevin Connolly’s “Practical Hacks” has a great write up with lots of images (www.practicalhacks.com/2008/04/05/a-minimalist-approach-to-packing-for-a-short-business-trip/)
  

Basically, you wrap all your clothing around a single central core item and place the resulting bundle in your bag. Without folds, the clothing stays unwrinkled. The bundle is also compact and malleable so it reduces the size of your bag.

Bottom line up front:
Bundle packing works great when you are traveling to a single destination or staying for lengthy periods at each of multiple destinations. If you are changing location each day, however, bundling is less than useful.

Details:
The strengths of bundle packing (avoiding wrinkles and reducing total volume) rely on having all your clothing in a single mass. If you are living out of your bag, however, that single mass of clothing quickly becomes cumbersome. You are left with two poor choices for actually using your clothing over multiple stops.

1. You can extract the entire bundle from your bag each day, unwrap it, take out the clothing you need, and repack the bundle. Repeatedly unpacking and repacking the entire bundle just to extract a single day’s clothing is a pain in the butt.
   
2. You can slip the individual clothing items out of the larger bundle as needed each day. Pulling individual items out of the larger bundle without unpacking it ensures upsetting the integrity that is the key to wrinkle avoidance. By day two of a trip you’re going to have a mass of jumbled clothes.

Neither one of these approaches works in practice. The bundle is a tool for moving a mass of clothing from one point to another efficiently. It’s poorly suited to organizing, extracting, and reinserting subsets of the mass.

Enter the Cubes
I’ve been doing a lot of trips recently that involve living out of a bag while making multiple short stops. For these trips, I’ve found Eagle Creek’s packing cubes (www.eaglecreek.com/accessories/packing_cubes/) to be a real help. They allow me to compress my stuff and maintain organization, all while keeping wrinkles at bay.

As an example, here’s the clothing I took on our recent 3 week west coast road trip,

along with what I wore on the flight.

I wanted to fit the clothing in my Outdoor Products’ Essential Carry-on along with some gear (camera, maps, GPS, etc.). Since we’d be moving around a lot in a car, I wanted to avoid the weight of a wheeled bag.

Tops and bottoms each went in their respective packing cubes. Two smaller cubes held socks/underwear and odds&ends.

Everything fit in the Essential Carry-on with room to spare
Clothing plus the gear brought the bag to 22 pounds according to my nifty new luggage scale (thanks GL!!). Add to this main bag a 12 pound daypack with laptop, liquids, and some personal items and I was carry-on friendly for the flights out to California.

While Pleen and I were on the road, we stayed in two houses and ten hotels. I found that it was always easy to extract one piece of clothing from the bag without unpacking everything. Clothes stayed wrinkle-free and organized throughout the trip.

Paying for Burgers

The Cost

It turns out that JB neglected to mention two things about today’s hike until we were well into it.

1. Apparently it’s common practice to add a mile to the distance estimate of a hike for each 1000 feet of elevation change. So when he said, “It’s 9.6 miles round trip. Is that cool with you?” what he meant to say was, “It’s 9.6 miles round trip, but there’s 3000 feet of elevation change on each leg. So that’s the equivalent of walking 15.6 miles. Is that cool with you?”


2. When he’s training for a race (like now) this is a path that he RUNS on light days away from the weights and bike.

I believe that both not-so-accidental oversights were attempts to avoid intimidating my flabby citified self. I don’t think he needed to bother. By mile 3, my mind was much too focused on respiration to bother with intimidation.
Maxed out heart rate and all, the trip was more than worth it.

The Reward

In need of serious refueling and hydration, we made a beeline for a joint on JB’s must-visit list: Billy’s Giant Hamburgers.

Now I can’t say for sure what impact the afternoon’s exertions had on my opinion, but Billy’s might just be serving a perfect burger.

This admittedly isn’t rocket science, but it’s remarkably hard to find a place getting it right. Billy’s is one of those places. Their half-pound chuck patty is gently formed and tastes like grilled beef – not liquid smoke, not some “secret blend” of spices, but simply good quality well prepared BEEF. The cheese actually adds flavor instead of just fat. Nice fresh tomatoes and iceberg lettuce provide texture contrast. Just a shmear of mayo helps hold things together with a hint of richness. And finally, a bun robust enough to avoid falling apart without getting in the way. This is a truly great hamburger.

Note: The beer also apparently contains an analgesic called CH3CH2OH that works remarkably well on large muscle groups inflamed by high altitude exertions.

Billy’s Giant Hamburgers
55 N Cache St
Jackson, WY 83001
307-733-3279

www.cadillac-grille.com/Billys.html

Good Fuel

Something that I’m learning - climbers and bikers and others who willfully engage in sweat-producing activities? They need food. They like food. They like good food. Since there are so many of them out here, that means there’s LOTS of good food.

Our arrival at the trip's notional final destination drove this home as JB struggled to sort through which must-try eating options we'd be able to fit into our limited time here.

On our first night here, we drove over the pass from Victor, ID into Jackson, WY to grab a meal at Rendezvous Bistro. Sitting at the bar, we had full access to the impressive dinner menu.

Starters were:

• Coriander encrusted ahi tuna with jicama & napa cabbage slaw, and jalapeno mignonette



• Grilled spicy octopus on a salad of arugula, fennel, olives, and piquillo peppers
  

Mains followed:

• Venison medallions in a chimichurri with haricot vert and a sweet potato-chorizo hash



• Grilled chili rubbed pork chop with chipotle cream corn topped with a mango-cabbage slaw (we were fighting over this )

All of this was well executed and full flavored. The stand-outs were probably the octopus salad and the pork chop. In both cases, the kitchen was not afraid to use assertive spice to complement (NOT overwhelm) the main component. The amount of high end tourist dollars flowing into the Jackson area clearly allows for the import of quality ingredients (not a lot of local octopus I’m thinking) and the skills to use them. Excellent, excellent food.

Rendezvous Bistro
380 S Broadway
Jackson, WY 83001
(307) 739-1100

www.rendezvousbistro.net

Everybody Knows Dick

Arriving into Victor, ID we park the faithful 13 year old Toyota 4Runner that has carried us the 2100 miles from Chicago (with the check engine light on for the last 500 or so). It lacks the umph required over the coming days to carry us repeatedly back and forth over Teton Pass.

In its place, we mount the 1999 Suburban that JB keeps here. Gray, hulking, and unsubtle, it is universally known to denizens of the area as “Dick". Given the Vice President’s nearby home, the Cheney-suggestive double entendre is part of the vehicle’s charm to all.

Sure enough. No sooner have we ridden Dick over the pass than ML, a local guide and friend of JB’s, swerves around us at high speed tooting her horn and waving “Diccccckkk!!!” Within minutes more Dick sightings have prompted calls to JB’s cell phone. “We saw Dick go by! Are you in town? Want to go climbing?”

Amazing. Everyone really does know Dick.

Crossing the Divide

The terrain out here seems bigger and bigger with every passing mile, but the world of human relationships shrinks in parallel. Example? Well . . . crossing the Continental Divide this morning, we stopped to take a photo.

Of course the other car pulled over at this random spot in a steep mountain pass just happened to be filled with two of JB’s old friends and their children. More greetings and hugs and excited questions about when he was coming to stay with them, when they were all going climbing, etc.

It’s a small big world out here. And it seems uniformly peopled by individuals bent on responsibly enjoying all that the environment has to offer. To them, “RunBikePaddleClimb” is the common one word response to “what are you going to be doing?” They revel in every bit of it.

Wyoming at Last

Heading west out of Rapid City, the Black Hills served notice that we were leaving the high plains behind. The Rockies called six hours ahead.

To open the theme of radical elevation increases, we stopped in to see Devils Tower National Monument. I could feel JB jonesing to join the climbers working up the 1300 foot face.

From Devils Tower we headed across Wyoming hoping to make Lander. JB lived & worked there for a while and still has a number of good friends in the area. The etiquette of the region being what it is, this meant that we had to sneak into town to avoid being avalanched with invitations to crash for the night in guestrooms or on spare couches all over town.

By sunset, we were installed on the deck of JB’s friend D while he “mowed the lawn,” which is Lander-speak for drinking cheap beer while the horses graze the grass. We enjoyed a lovely sundowner with views of the Wind River range. D’s girlfriend had just returned from a long work trip, but insisted that we join them for what looked to be a beautiful dinner (organic greens, buffalo ribeyes, great company). Wyoming hospitality being what it is, it took significant work to extract ourselves and avoid ruining their romantic reunion dinner.

We ended up at the Gannett Grill tucked into two enormous comforting salads and a tasty shared pizza topped with sliced grilled chicken, pesto, marinara, garlic, & sundried tomatoes.

Sitting outside in the cooling evening, this was a great end to another great day.


Devils Tower National Monument
www.nps.gov/deto/

Gannett Grill
126 Main St.
Lander, WY 82520
307.332.7009

www.landerbar.com/GrillMain.php

Boomtime in Big Sky Country

As the talking heads debate slow-down vs. recession in the media, oil and mineral demand means boom times for places like Wyoming.

Paralleling our path along I-90, we spy train after train snaking east bringing coal to hungry power plants.

Just off the freeway, massive coal mines work round the clock.

Long-abandoned small oil wells pump once again in roadside fields. Dusty towns brim with brand new trucks and signs for $15/hour fast food jobs.

Lots of reminders that the one side's energy crisis is a heck of an opportunity for some others.

Corn Exchange 2

OK, stop laughing. The hotel room was cheap and we wanted to see Mount Rushmore anyway.

We had a great day and wanted to top it off with a great meal. We called for an early reservation. When I gave the hostess my name, she said, “It’ll be good to see you guys again.”

Walking into the place, we tried not to show our disappointment that our server from the previous night was working other tables. Imagine our surprise when our server for the evening said, “I’ll just tell you guys about the stuff you didn’t eat last night.” Ah . . . sure. The servers brief each other on the guests' previous meals? Sure. Why not? They’re getting everything else right after all.

This meal included:

• Bottle of Adelsheim Elizabeth’s Reserve 2006 Willamette Valley pinot noir
  

First:

• Tiger shrimp sautéed with a leek & sundried tomato crème


• Roasted duck dumplings with dipping sauce

Second:

• Heirloom tomatoes, basil oil, & goat cheese (so good we had to order it again)


• Romaine hearts with croutons, anchovy dressing, & grated manchego
  

Main:

• Bolognaise of 777 Buffalo Ranch buffalo & dried porcini over rigatoni


• New York strip from Hogen Beef pan seared and oven-finished. Mushroom cream pan glaze. Perfect roasted potatoes & harcourt verte. (In a region full of good beef, this dish stood out. Flawless.)

Final:

• Peach tart w/vanilla ice cream


• Orange & 62% cacao Valrhona chocolate cake w/raspberry

It’s difficult to express how much this place is getting right. A direct flight into Rapid City is tempting.

The Corn Exchange
727 Main Street,
Rapid City, SD 57701
(605) 343-5070

www.cornexchange.com/

JB said, "We don't need rope."

What he meant was, "We don't have any rope".




Rushmore was beautiful, but I let myself get talked into a bit much. You'd think I'd have learned by now.


Mount Rushmore National Memorial
www.nps.gov/moru

Corn Exchange

Once we realized we’d be spending the night in scenic Rapid City, South Dakota, we enquired of a business contact, “Where do we have to eat?” Given our limited pickings so far in other parts of the Dakotas, we really wanted some input. Without hesitation, our guy replied, “The Corn Exchange”.

The Corn Exchange? Great. Fine. A good steak, nice people, cold beer. No problem.

Yea. That ignorant assumption did NOT survive first contact with reality at the understated bistro on Rapid City’s (dare I say it?) hip Main Street. The fact that the only reservation I could get was for the bar at 8pm should have been a clue.

It turns out that the Corn Exchange is run by a cool local-food crazy young chef. She's making AMAZING food in an area filled with $20 steak dinners.

Our meal included:

• Half bottle of Elk Cove Pino Noir from Willamette Valley

First:

• Local beets, Valencia orange, & sheep's cheese


• Prosciutto w/California figs, & feta (the chef brought the figs back from San Francisco the day before)

Second:

• Heirloom tomatoes, basil oil, & goat cheese (why do I have to go to South Dakota to get exquisite tomatoes? Marvelous!)


• Smithwick Garden Greens-Watercress w/a 15-year old aged sherry vinaigrette and feta

Main:

• Savory buttermilk, white corn and scallion pancake topped with house-smoked salmon, sprouts, and a cucumber-crème fraiche and horseradish compote


• Pan roasted quail in olive tapanade on bed of tomato & zucchini (we were fighting over the last bits of the veggies from this dish)
  

Final:

• Butterscotch pot du crème (Yea. Just think about that for a minute and tell me you're not jealous)


• Local miniature strawberries w/crème fresh

Add to all of this outstanding service – attentive, knowledgeable, easy-going – and I will never look at South Dakota the same way again. Mind you, this is in a place where you can eat in shorts or jeans. We might stay an extra night just to eat there again.

The Corn Exchange
727 Main Street,
Rapid City, SD 57701
(605) 343-5070

www.cornexchange.com

JB said there would be stairs

The Badlands National Park, South Dakota:

"It's a national park," he said. "There'll be stairs and stuff. We'll be back at the car in an hour."

It's important to note that my buddy JB's outdoor experience dwarfs mine. Given that my idea of "roughing it" is walking barefoot on the carpet at the Four Seasons, that may not be saying much. However, JB's experience includes instructing at the continent's only technical mountaineering school, climbing things I'd think twice about flying over, and running distances I'd hesitate to drive. He knows what he's doing.

Unfortunately, sometimes that means it's hard for him to translate from outdoor-guy-ese into the vernacular of the office-bound city-dweller. This might be an illustrative example.

Badlands National Park

www.nps.gov/badl

Charging (or rather “Chasing”) Windmills

Thin Blades

We departed Aberdeen aiming to head over the border into North Dakota. On a site about 30 miles west of Ellendale, 120 of the massive turbines we saw under construction two days ago in West Branch, IA harness the never-ending gusts of the high plains. The 180 megawatts of no-emission electrical power they produce is enough to power ~ 50,000 homes. We had a date for a tour from the site manager.

Our progress, however, was not completely smooth; as you may be able to tell from this video.


It turns out we were still on the SOUTH Dakota side of the border where there exists an unpaved state road with the exact same name as the one we were supposed to use on the NORTH side of the border. Being highly educated and experienced travelers, we eventually realized our error after the dirt road turned to a narrow track through high grass and the track petered out all together. We're quick like that.




The good news for us was that 262 foot tall turbines spinning 122 foot blades are relatively easy to see from a distance. So we followed our noses and arrived only a bit late.

Thin Crust

Suitably impressed by the site and, moreover, the crew, we made for the state capital at Pierre. Unfortunately, Pierre’s size and culinary selections are . . . modest. But we lucked out and found La Minestra slotted in among $1 draft joints and all-you-can-eat buffets.

The quiet little place was winding down from a weeknight dinning service, knocking out casual Italian. Pizzas start to order from a ball of dough, and freshly sauced pastas jump through the hot pass. The crew behind the counter was getting ready to call it a night, but turned out a couple of quite good salads and a more than serviceable pie. Most places 1000 miles closer to Brooklyn have trouble turning out a thin crust NY style this good.

La Minestra
106 E Dakota Ave
Pierre, SD 57501

605-224-8090

High Plains Risotto

We made sure to stop in at the Omaha Whole Foods Market for a healthy brunch and to stock up on reasonable road food before pushing off for a little town in northern South Dakota called Aberdeen. We had a feeling that this might be the last non-corporate food we’d see for a while.

Thus imagine our surprise when, after driving for hours through a landscape of chain-food, we found ourselves dinning well at the Ward Hotel on Aberdeen’s main drag. The Ward is a granddame in the midst of a significant renovation. We ended up at their bar working our way through some nicely done salads, a lovely rich saffron risotto with tiger prawns, and a fine flatiron steak.

Given that this town or 25,000 lives on agriculture and a couple of small colleges, you’ve got to wonder if this place is a start of something cool or a flash in the pan. Either way, it’s a treat.

Whole Foods Market Omaha
10020 Regency Cir
Omaha, NE 68114
402-393-1200
www.wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/omaha/index.html

Ward Hotel
104 S Main St
Aberdeen, SD 57401
605-725-5550

An Outstanding Night’s Sleep

Hotel note: The lower end hotel-in-a-box of the Marriot mega-chain, Fairfield Inn, has come through for me a couple times in the last few months.

We stayed at their location in Council Bluffs, Iowa (a suburb of Omaha, NE) on 18 AUG and were struck by the comfort of their pillows and mattresses. In the day and age of “pillow menus” in higher end hotels, it’s nice to know you can get similar choice and quality at the $100/night end of the scale.

Fairfield Inn Council Bluffs
520 30th Avenue
Council Bluffs, IA 51501
712-366-1330

Omaha, Oh My

After a breakfast of leftovers and some last minute packing of the vehicle, we departed Chicago and headed west out I-88.

Stopping off in West Branch, Iowa to see how they build wind turbines (these suckers are BIG!) put us within striking distance of Omaha, Nebraska.

And apparently that means beef. Specifically, big beautiful USDA Prime grade steaks hand cut from house-aged beef at Omaha Prime in the Old Market district.


In all honesty, Omaha Prime underwhelmed at first. The place may have been there forever, but it has all the ambiance of a conference room at the Holiday Inn – complete with hotel banquet room folding tables and chairs camouflaged with slip covers. Still, the service is kind and knowledgeable and the bar is speedy.

Now let’s be clear, this is not “New American” cuisine. There is no subtlety here (as you can tell from the harshly handled vegetables). This is the food that comes from a surplus of high quality ingredients that can be treated simply and shine. If you have god’s supply of beautiful beef, a grill and an oven, you don’t need a tapenade of anything. Similarly, their simplest salads - with surprisingly flavorful tomatoes – and sides – potato anything worked well – provide nice accompaniment to the steaks.

And oh what steaks.

We were already mentally preparing ourselves for a “just OK” meal due to the surroundings and such when the 14 ounce New York strips arrived. They looked competently done and we cut into them with a rather laissez-faire attitude. It took about two bites for us to realize what we were dealing with. JB glanced over at me without putting down his cutlery and mumbled softly, “This is a REALLY good steak.”

That was the last bit of conversation for a while. These steaks compelled concentration. The rate of consumption slowed. An occasional affirmative grunt received a head nod in reply. Cuts were made with care. Chewing became deliberate as each bite was savored – an exploration of texture and flavor and fat. These were REALLY good steaks.

Deserts were steakhouse portions of perfectly good sweets. Coffee and tea helped close out the night. But the steaks were still at the forefront of our minds as we happily strolled back to the car.

In a world filled with chain steakhouses on every corner, smaller finer venues from Peter Luger’s to Ray’s the Steaks, is this worth a trip to Omaha, Nebraska? I’m not sure. But if you’re anywhere nearby, Omaha Prime is a treat to remind us what all the fuss is about in the first place. Theirs is a REALLY good steak.


Omaha Prime
415 S 11th St
Omaha, NE 68102
402-341-7040

http://www.omaha-prime.com/

Road Trip

Me and my buddy JB will be taking a little journey to celebrate his new gig and see a bit of the country. We'll depart from Chicago on 18 AUG and head west towards Victor, ID. Should be about 1500 miles when we add in some stops.



Itinerary, route, stops, etc. still remain TBD. I know I'm flying back out of Jackson, WY on 28 AUG. Otherwise, it's a bit up in the air. Reports from the road will follow.

JB loves this part of the country, and I've thus been dying to see it. He promises some beautiful vistas and new experiences. Something about sleeping outdoors and perhaps building a deck onto his cabin. Whatever. As long as there's room service.