Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Eating Out

Soon after I land in a new city and check into my hotel, motel, or tent. I feel the grumble of my stomach. Dehydrated after the plane flight and ravenous for more than just the tiny pack of pretzels or peanuts provided by the flight attendants: I’m ready to eat. Usually I head out to find someone in the know. I’ll ask hotel staff or friendly passersby: “So where do the locals eat?”

I’ve eaten some wonderful local food this way and I’ve reveled in how adventurous I feel with each new bite of the unfamiliar. I’m not unique in my zest for a taste of the area’s traditions. Guide books look down their noses at chain restaurants that unnervingly look alike, smell alike and taste alike. Most of the travelers I meet want meals on the road to be representative of their setting. Many claim they’re immune to the pull of the chain restaurant or familiar menu item.

But, I'd bet big money that they are lying.
Sometimes, a few days into my travels, I feel almost desperate for the comfort of a familiar chain. Don't you?

Admit it- you’ve caught yourself looking longingly at the Olive Garden, Baja Fresh, or Denny’s after you’ve been away from home for awhile.

Chains are comforting. Think about it, after a few nights on the road the glitzy restaurants and rich new foods take their toll on your stomach. You’ve slept in a strange bed, exhausted yourself with exciting activities and you’re looking at another night of unfamiliar dinner. That’s when I start dreaming of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

On those nights, chains start looking good and I’ll blissfully search out a place that looks like, smells like, and tastes just like home.

Chain restaurants plan whole marketing campaigns around consistency- their menus are identical state to state, sometimes even country to country and comercials even advertise identical prices and service.

Sometimes its not even the environment I crave- it is the comfort food. You know, on those days when I'm hungry for home, nothing but good 'ole peanut butter and jelly can satisfy.

This isn't just an isolated occurrence. Turns out I've had this irrational desire for food from home on all kinds of trips and I've always been able to find a recognizable meal. In Germany I craved Fruit Loops for breakfast. In Scotland I found Mexican food. In Spain we ate frozen pizza that tasted like cardboard and in Peru I settled for a Philly cheese steak made by an Irish ex-pat.

I think, it is the taste of the familiar that often makes me realize just how special all that local food is. I can appreciate my culinary adventures more because i can compare fabulous local food to my old standards.

So, go out and eat- enjoy the local restaurants filled with personality and try not to feel too guilty about that mid-trip day when you choose Dairy Queen's cone over Italian gelato.

Wildflowers, Watermelon Snow and Volcanologists

I stepped out of our rental car into the fresh air of Mount Rainier National Park and my first thought was: “This smells like the scent the air-freshener makers are trying for with those paper pine tree car air-fresheners!” The smell was so strong that memories of white Christmases and hot apple cider flashed through my mind. We hiked mountain trails above the tree-line and saw the magnificent views of Mount Rainier, the surrounding mountains and the river-lined valleys. Along the way we tramped over melting snow and through nearby fields of tiny wildflowers that were beginning to emerge in natural bouquets of purple, yellow, and magenta. We saw weathered tree branches and marveled at the fragile flowers thriving on the mountainsides.

As I was walking through the amazing landscape I noticed that much of the remaining snow on the mountains and on the trail looked as if it had been spray painted red. As I looked closer it seemed like this red graffiti was everywhere. It couldn’t have been done by rogue teens because the red streaks were huge and continued even to the completely snow capped peaks. My colleague and I had many theories about what caused the mountain tags. Could it be mineral deposits? A UFO? A team of really rebellious mountain climbers?

I went home with questions about the pinkish red snow rattling around in my brain. Later internet research uncovered that this red snow is actually alive! The red color is often described as Watermelon Snow because of its pink color and when you step on it, it smells a bit like a fresh summer watermelon. The reddish pink color is actually a dense colony of red algae called Chlamydomonas nivalis. This snow algae exists at high altitudes where snow lasts through the summer. The Algae grows in the snow and thrives on excessive light in summer snowfields. Mount Rainier in the Cascade mountain range is known to be home to these summer algae colonies. Learn more about the snow’s natural graffiti with a scientific article and see a few pictures of another person’s experience with watermelon snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

Another fun fact about Mount Rainier is that Mt Rainier is an active volcano. It’s last major eruption is thought to be more than 2000 years ago and it’s most recent minor eruption was in the 1840’s. In Earth science time- that means that it could be due for another eruption any day now (really any day in the next few hundred years). There are scientists that monitor the activity level of the active volcanoes in the Cascades (Mount St. Helens also shares the range!) You can check out an up to date status check from the areas volcanologists and seismologists. Also, read more about volcanic activity in the Cascade Range.

Although I was only able to spend a few hours in Mount Rainier National Park it is a place that will stay with me. This extreme and beautiful place held so many examples of the Amazing capacity of life to adapt and thrive in the harshest of landscapes. It is a place that reminds each of us how small we are and how great our combined impact can be. The microscopic red algae would be invisible alone but by building a colony together the plant creates stunning abstract art on the world’s most isolated edges.

Lavender, Pines, and Pizza on the Olympic Peninsula

Following the advice of our eccentric tour guides in Freemont my husband and I set off early for the Bainbridge Island Ferry. Final destination: the Hoh rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula. We loved standing in the wind at the front of the ferry as it motored across the water. Walking around on deck we spotted a seal playing in the waves and from the back of the ferry we could see Mount Rainier hiding in hazy cloud cover behind the stark skyline of Seattle.

After we disembarked from the ferry we began our journey towards the rainforest. Hoh rainforest sits amidst the Olympic National Forest. We drove from the coast of Bainbridge Island into the dense forest. Within minutes we were completely surrounded by pine trees, my cell phone had lost it’s signal and we were alone on the road. We drove for hours through pine tree forests that had been dramatically logged and re-forested. We saw plots of trees that were only a few feet above the ground next to acres with towering trees that may have been next on the loggers list. The strange politics of home construction, Xerox machines, and stationary stores seemed to converge here in this quiet, ravaged and out of the way place.

Along the way we stopped in Sequim pronounced "S'kwim" to visit a family owned Lavender farm and Duck Pond. Throughout Sequim small farmers cultivate lavender plants and although we missed the mid-July Lavender Festival we were lucky enough to pick up a few bags of Lavendar cake mix and to see the Nelsons’ beautiful fields and gardens. It was a great break from the hypnotizing lines of pine trees and the never-ending search for a great radio station.

Finally we drove into the protected Hoh Rainforest. The forest gets between 12-14 feet of rain each year and the temperature stays mild. It is home to some of the last undisturbed Sitka spruce trees and western hemlocks in the US and the trees tower overhead some 300 feet tall and 23 feet across. The oldest trees are more than 500 years old. These moss covered, untouched trees, so large you could lay across their stumps, put the fate of the rest of our forests in sharp relief. We will never live to see other pines as large as long as our collective hunger for lumber continues. The pines of the Olympic peninsula that are unprotected are assigned to life spans that are decades long rather than centuries.

We wandered through the trails and marveled at the height of the trees and the weird beauty of the forests but reluctantly climbed back into our car for the drive back to Bainbridge Island. We struggled to stay awake on the long pine-lined road back towards the urban world. The trip ended with us eating terrible pizza on the windy ferry deck where we wiped our mouths with paper napkins and clutched our cardboard pizza box. The plight of the majestic trees wasn’t quite enough for us to ignore our growling stomachs and the forest was silenced by our end of the day hunger.

Freemont Finds: A Troll, Some Sweets, and a Fun Filled Factory

Freemont seems to embody the spirit of Seattle. It is an arty little place known for its public art, quirky shops, great food and evening fun. We loved wandering through the upscale thrift shops, rushing through record stores and perusing menus posted outside of busy eateries. No visit to Freemont would be complete without a visit to this neighborhood’s public artworks like “The Troll” (who hides under a bridge grasping a real VW Bug) and an oversized sculpture of Lenin (who awkwardly stands guard in the town center).

My favorite part of our visit to Freemont was the discovery of a fantastic all dessert cafĂ©. Simply Desserts has amazing homemade cake and strong fresh coffee. My slice of yellow cake with blueberry jam and lemon icing was almost as unforgettable as my husband’s chocolate confection and irresistible espresso. This tiny bakery shop in Freemont sells cake by the slice, muffins, brownies, cookies and cupcakes. Their patrons are often Seattle residents and the conversation on summer evenings is amiable and buzzing.

On our trip to Simply Desserts we sat next to a group of mid-life locals dressed extravagantly in vibrant feathery outfits for a birthday celebration. They struck up a conversation with us- polling us on our opinion of the cake we’d selected- and the talk developed into some fabulous recommendations for our activities for the rest of our trip.

Within walking distance from Freemont is GasWorks Park. An obsolete Gasworks factory has been converted to open public space and the old equipment has been painted so that it towers out of the surrounding fields of rolling green grass on the side of a Seattle waterway. The arty park has plenty of room for a pick up baseball game, roller blading, picnicking and snoozing in the sun. One favorite feature was a 28 foot sun-dial mosaic at the top of one of the park’s hills. When I stood in the perfect spot in the middle of the sun-dial (on two footprints lined up with the actual calendar month and day) My shadow fell on the correct time of day. I was struck by the coordination of functional art in the park. The GasWorks themselves were functional machines now standing as art just like the creative sun-dial that with a bit of interaction moved beyond a new-age mosaic to a historical lesson in the science of time.

Find time in your Seattle travels to spend an afternoon in Freemont. Enjoy the special treats at Simply Desserts, find a fabulous record in an independent shop, and take a moment to check the time in Gasworks Park!