I just got back from a lovely trip to the Escalante. Good friend D. is moving to Texas, so we decided to take a "farewell" journey. Our original plan was to do a 3-day backpacking trip, but the weather did not cooperate. A lot of rain (and even a bit of snow!) on Thursday night/ Friday morning made the dirt road to our remote trailhead impassable. So, we opted for a shorter trail, closer to town and just off the paved Burr Trail. Despite the ease and accessibilty of the trial, we mostly had the canyon to ourselves (we passed an outgoing group of horseriders on day one and a solo hiker doing an insect study for USGS on day two). The canyon was lovely and wide (easy trekking, but great views). There were also many sidecanyons to explore. We wandered up a few--bushwhacking to a gorgeous arch and scrambling up a few narrow-ish rockfalls. Nothing too dramatic or challenging, but sometimes it's nice to take an easy route.
Oddly, one of the trip's highlights was food. Not Clif Bars and freeze-dried dinners, but a wonderful restaurant--Hell's Backbone Grill. If you ever get to Boulder (UT not CO) you must try it. Because we arrived to rain and ominous thunder/lightning Thursday night, we wimped out and stayed at a motel rather than camping. So, we had dinner at the neighboring restaurant. We liked it so much we went back for breakfast the next morning and dinner the day we got off the trail. I'm so used to eating Navajo Tacos and greasy burgers when I go to Southern Utah, I was thrilled to find this restaurant (which I'd just read a short blurb about last week in High Country News). The food is amazing--mostly organic, locally produced, delicious, and pretty (garnished with tiny edible flowers and the like). Trout encrusted with blue corn and pecans--it rivaled trout cooked straight off the hook. Grilled fennel, snap peas, baby greens. And this chocolate chile cream pot--sigh--perfect texture, just a hint of chile.
It was the perfect backpacking trip, really. Enough time on the trail to get grungy and tired, with a bit of luxury to balance things out.
4 comments:
Man I haven't been to Escalante in dog's years. I envy you and your encrusted trout dinners.
You have just blown every precept that you are unhip right out of the water.
Hee hee.
It seems you have another calling as restaurant reviewer.
Sounds like it was a lovely trip, but I have to agree with Clint: you're veering dangerously close to hipness with the encrusted trout. Now Navaho Tacos, those are assertively unhip.
I think I'm going to have to change the name of my blog so my hipness doesn't have to be perpetually evaluated. I decided the point of assertively unhip is that I don't want to worry about hip. I want to eat my encrusted trout, but I also want to eat my marshmallow peeps.
I do want to be a restaurant reviewer. That would be a good life.
I forsee nothing by constant evalution of your hipness here!
Encrusted Trout would be a great name for a blog.
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