Unusual Location -- Surprisingly Awesome Food

[SJUfeller]

After posting in a different thread, I thought this might be an interesting topic.

Some of my best travel memories come from having a great meal at an unexpected location. I posted in the other thread about finding an unbelievable BBQ spot in Seward, Alaska.

My best food/travel memory though is from the Wind River Range, outside of Dubois, Wyoming. Our father/son group had taken 7 or 8 backpacking trips there over the years. Always a great time, but after 4 or 5 days of eating mainly just trout and freeze dried food, we were always ready to get back to town for a "real" meal at the Ramshorn Inn. Other than catching fish, the only food we had on the trip was what we could fit in our backpacks . . . which we had to keep as light as possible.

In our last trip there -- on our last night -- we oddly saw this lone cowboy riding a horse, with a packhorse following behind. We had no idea what the guy was doing up there . . .

Turned out that one of the dad's secretly planned a surprise: He hired an out-fitter to pack in two awesome meals -- one for the last night and one for the morning of the long hike out. Never before had we so enjoyed ribeyes, fried potatoes, and beer for dinner, and fried eggs, bacon and real coffee for breakfast. The dad won a lifetime best-dad achievement award, and the story gets retold whenever the group sees each other now. The dad's can't hike like that any more, but they can still tell the story well enough that our mouths water thinking of those meals!

Anyone else have a surprisingly great meal when it was totally unexpected?

[ofelles]

Great story and wonderful memory.

[Donw]

Great story. Ours is we were in rural Western North Carolina and we asked around for a good place to eat. Everyone we asked said at the gas station. So we passed the pumps outside and discovered a little diner attached to the side. Apparently after Katrina a chef from New Orleans had had enough and moved to the mountains and opened this diner. I do not think we could have had a better New Orleans style dinner had we been eating at any of the famous restaurants in NO.

[CaptainMike]

Yes, and a very similar story!

I was backpacking in the High Sierra back country many years ago and made camp at a place called Hamilton Lakes. Our family history says that one of my dad's great uncles packed in and stocked the 2 Hamilton lakes with trout and thus had the lakes named for him. I thought, and rightly so, that it would be pretty cool to hike in and catch some of the descendants of the those fish.

While there, I came across the National Park trail crew who had set their base camp up at the H-lakes. They would spend 3 months at a time out in boonies building and maintaining trails. Once they heard my last name, our family history of the lakes, and that I was a fireman I was welcomed into their camp as a brother. They had fresh food (including whatever adult libations they ordered) delivered weekly either by helicopter or pack train and they insisted I join them for their evening cocktail hour and supper. They grilled steaks, made casseroles, had fresh vegetables and salads, Dutch oven deserts, and plenty of booze, wine and beer. My freeze dried food went untouched for 4 days!

Perhaps the coolest part of the story was that they were at the end of their season that week and were breaking down camp and heading back to civilization. They were all talking about meeting for pizza the day they left, and I said pizza sounded really good after 15 days in field (recent meals notwithstanding). The foreman invited me to join them, but I said I doubt I could make the 16 mile hike out with a full backpack. He says what if we fly your pack out and then you can make the hike. I was in some of the best shape of my life then and agreed. Early the next morning I make up a small day pack and set out at a 3 - 4 mph pace, I was even jogging through the flat parts of the trail. I watched as the copter was going back and forth with slingloads of gear and knew that in one of those loads was my 40lb pack! I made it back to Grant Grove in about 5 hours and then met the trail crew for pizza that evening.

Although this is one of my fondest memories, I haven't thought about for some time. Thanks for posting this thread and asking that question!

[HawkerXP]

My son was in the Boy Scouts. I was an assistant "adult" leader. We were a very active troop. Camping at least once a month all year long. One spring break a group of older boys and four adults went to the BSA high adventure camp in the Florida Keys. The boys wanted to do the Keys Adventure program which included a little bit of everything they offered. A day sailing, A day snorkeling, a day deep sea fishing a day in Key West. The one I remember and enjoyed the most was the day of deep sea fishing which ended up with us being dropped off on a deserted island for the next 24 hours. The boat dropped us off on a floating dock about 50 yards from shore. The other adult and I hauled our equipment to shore while the boys cleaned the fish we caught on the dock. As you can imagine this happen pretty frequently and as they cleaned the fish a group of sharks showed up to eat the scraps. We thought they were going to spend the next 24 hours on that dock. So, on to the meal. We ate the fish we caught only a couple of hours before with nothing more than a little seasoning on the fish, wrapped in foil cooked on a open fire. Best meal ever! We slept in two-man tents, I had to get up to relieve myself during the night. Saw the largest moon I've ever seen rise up out of the ocean. Woke up the next morning to the sounds of Key Deer licking the dew off our tents. Best time ever!

I'm so glad I joined my son in Scouting. I went from having just one child to having 50. I'm proud to have helped more than some of them along the path to adulthood. I had to cut my scouting experience short as I was involved in just too many activities growing up.