Table For Two

There was so much about our recent trip to Colorado and Utah that wasn't affected by this global pandemic we are living under. Sound strange? Or just a flat out lie? I'm honestly serious about that. Sure I've never gone absolutely everywhere (including on airplanes) on a vacation wearing face coverings, but over the last few months, going out in public with my nose and mouth covered feels sort of normal. What difference does it make if it's in northern Virginia where I live or Colorado or Utah when I'm traveling?

So sure, much of this new normalcy was helped by our choice of itinerary. We literally spent part of every single day except for the few waking hours on the day of our arrival at a National Park Service property, which meant most of our time was spent in the great outdoors in wide open spaces or in a car getting there. No need to mask up in the car and generally speaking when we were hiking or searching for wildlife or just admiring the view, there was nobody around which meant we could breathe the clean, fresh air of the American west unhindered.

But the one part of our experience that was significantly affected by the prospect of contracting a potentially deadly virus was mealtimes. And quite frankly this part of our vacation experience was significantly disrupted.

Bison, green chile and cheddar sausage from Roaming Buffalo Bar B-Que. Eaten from my lap on a street bench.

Before we traveled out west, restaurants in northern Virginia had re-opened outdoor seating areas for dine-in customers; while we were on the road, restrictions at home were further relaxed to allow indoor dining at limited capacity. When we landed in Denver and then traveled further west into Utah, we found the same or more permissive rules in place. Some places in Utah seemed to be just plain open for business as usual, albeit with some variety of "enter at your own risk" sign on the front door.

We refused to let the fact that other people were behaving like there was no risk to talking and eating in close proximity to each other and total strangers change our behavior. We did not dine in anywhere for dinner but instead ordered to go and took our meals back to the hotel. There was one restaurant in northeast Utah where we were the only people inside the entire building, including the restaurant staff and all the patrons at the bar seating, with any sort of face covering. Scary stuff. We definitely felt like outsiders in that place.

Honestly, all this sucked! I've eaten meals all over the country and the world in my hotel room before, but I've never done it as much as we did last month. Once in a while, it's OK. Every day? Not good. Not fun. We even booked a suite in our hotel in Moab where we spent half the nights on this trip so we'd have more room when we needed to eat. Didn't make any difference. Eating in a hotel room is not good.

I get so much out of exploring the local food scene on trips. I love talking with bartenders about what it's like to live wherever I happen to be. I find food recommendations from waiters anywhere from helpful to fully transforming my breakfast, lunch or dinner into something I wouldn't have found without a bit of local insight. I also find relaxing in a cool, vibrant or chill space so worthwhile after a day of hiking or sightseeing or discovering or whatever. All that got wiped out by ordering to go and eating out of styrofoam or cardboard or plastic containers with hands or packaged and sealed to-go utensils and napkins. But there's also no way we were compromising our safety so we could eat like we normally do away from home.

Admittedly, we tried to do what we could to get out of our hotel rooms at mealtimes. That meant one lunch on a bench on the sidewalk near a restaurant; an outdoor seating area for my birthday dinner at another restaurant; and a shared but completely empty outdoor balcony area at our hotel for a breakfast that we took to go. And we did actually eat one lunch inside a restaurant, but only after we were assured of at least 20 feet between us and any other patrons. But none of those meals were completely comfortable. We were either looking over our shoulders at other diners hoping they wouldn't come too close or dreading someone encroaching on our space in some other way.

Turkey. Lettuce. Mustard. Wheat bread. With nobody around. In City Park, Craig, Colorado.

The first truly comfortable meal we ate on this trip was lunch at a picnic table in the parking lot of Hovenweep National Monument in southeast Utah. Ordinarily, it would have been a location that circumstances forced me into with no other option available. This year, it was glorious. It was free, it was safe, it was relaxed (after we checked under the table for rattlesnakes), it was just the two of us eating comfortably without checking who was close to us or who was not wearing a mask or who was likely to sit near us.

And the food? Not gourmet. Not even close. In fact the plainest food we probably ate the whole week. Store-bought, mass-produced sliced wheat bread; a schmear of whole grain mustard squeezed from a squeezy bottle; a few slices of Boar's Head turkey seasoned with some salt and pepper from a to-go napkin set from a restaurant earlier in the week; and a couple of leaves of romaine lettuce.

I'm telling you, in many respects this was the best meal we ate all week. In that location, with a complete lack of stress and concern about getting infected with some deadly virus, that sandwich with the savory, perfectly seasoned turkey and the tangy mustard and that crisp, fresh lettuce was a culinary masterpiece. I know, I'm exaggerating. But I'm also not. I've never felt this way before about a packed lunch. Welcome to the new normal in 2020.

Sandwich making in Naples, Utah.

Packing a lunch became almost a daily early morning ritual on this trip. First thing in the morning, get out the lunch meat, the mustard and the lettuce from the hotel room fridge and start making a sandwich. Napkin down as the world's worst cutting board, bread, mustard, meat, seasoning, cut in half and in the sandwich bag. Drop it in the brand new Yeti Daytrip lunch bag on top of a sealed sandwich bag full of ice. Add another sandwich made the exact same way, then a separate bag of lettuce (got to keep the lettuce separate to avoid soggy bread) and another bag of ice on top. Add an energy bar or a granola bar and we were good to go all day.

The key to a better packed lunch: keeping the lettuce separate. It's like the McDLT.

I can't adequately express the joy I felt eating a picnic lunch at a wooden table on this trip. Hovenweep National Monument. Dead Horse Point State Park. Craig City Park. Rocky Mountain National Park. The view changed and we may have swapped out the turkey for some roast beef on one day but the feeling didn't change. Relief that we were doing something at lunch that was normal like we might have done in years past. No virus. No worrying about other people. Just old normal. The good stuff. The way it used to be.

Don't get me wrong here. All things considered, I'd rather have been eating a freshly cooked burger with a cold pint of beer in a cool brewpub or something like that. But we didn't have that choice on this trip. So we managed and adapted and carved out something special that on any other trip would have been a throwaway meal to sustain ourselves from breakfast to dinner. It also seemed like we slowed down and relaxed and soaked in the views while we ate, which was very refreshing. And some of the views, even if they were in sight of our car or many other cars, were just spectacular.

Lunch view. So there are a bunch of cars (it's a parking lot) but those mountains...

This was a post I never intended to write. It happens sometimes. But the first couple of days ordering food to go on this trip were honestly a stressful experience. So much so that there was a definite sense of relief sitting down at a picnic table for the first time. That moment, and each time we sat down on a bench and unpacked our lunch after that, were special on this vacation. I thought it was worth sharing. Or at least writing down so I can remember it years from now.

From a food quality perspective, these meals were not the best we had on this trip. Not even close. There were actually many better bites of food we had, even from the place where we were the only ones wearing any sort of face covering. Heck, I could have done a lot better if I'd have splurged a bit more and spent some more time slicing fresh veggies with the plastic take-out knife I had at my disposal. But I didn't. And I'm not sure it matters to the feeling that I got out of our completely socially distanced lunches. 

I hope this is the last time I feel this way. I hope the next time I travel I can be eating and drinking next to complete strangers without a care in the world just like we used to do in years past. But I'm not counting on it. I'm fully expecting that on some future trip I take that I'll be packing some sort of lunch and eating it next to our parked car somewhere on the road. It won't be the same as it was in Utah and Colorado on this trip because it won't be the first time I've felt that way. There's nothing like the first time. One day I hope we'll be able to give up the new normal and go back to the old normal. Until then, I'll remember lunch at Hovenweep.

Chorizo breakfast burrito from the Moab Diner. The actual best meal I ate on this trip.

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How We Did It

So I'm not really going to tell you how to buy some bread and sandwich fixings at a grocery story and make a turkey on wheat lunch. There were some worthwhile to go meals that we ate on this trip that I'd suggest you seek out whether or not you eat in the restaurant or somewhere else (even your hotel room). 

Here are my top five places I ate (from) on this trip, in the order that I ate. I'd eat at any of these places again based on my first visit. Click on the name of each place to be taken to their website.

Quesadilla Mobilla, North Main Street at West 100 N, Moab, UT. Food truck located right in downtown Moab serving quesadillas (perhaps obviously). Open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily. I can highly recommend the Enchanted Chicken. Get the chipotle-lime sour cream. It's worth it. 

Milt's Stop & Eat, 356 Millcreek Drive, Moab, UT. Milt's is an old-school hamburger joint opened way back in 1954. There are a few stools inside at a counter (although off-limits when we were there) and some outside tables. Expect a greasy burger cooked on a flat-top at Milt's and be prepared to love it. I did. Their website says they are open Tuesday through Sunday. We went on a Monday and got served just fine. Their website also says they serve both beef and bison burgers. We weren't offered a choice when we visited. I'm assuming it was beef.

Moab Diner, 189 South Main Street, Moab, UT. The best meal I had on this trip was the chorizo breakfast burrito from Moab Diner. Nice heat from the chorizo and that green chile sauce smother is incredible. Set it off with some sour cream and those gorgeous hash browns. Man, I could eat another one of those things right now. 

Vernal Brewing Company, 55 South 500 East, Vernal, UT. This was the place where nobody wore masks. Not holding it against them based on the quality of their food. I'm just saying. It is rare that I am wowed by something as simple as a house salad but I have to say that dish at Vernal Brewing Company was amazing. I also grabbed a six pack of their Directional Smoked Porter which I'd drink any day.

Roaming Buffalo Bar B-Que, 2387 South Downing Street, Denver, CO. We ate at Roaming Buffalo right before we headed to the airport to fly home. This is one of those places that's open until they run out of food. Based on the crowd we saw at opening time I can imagine they don't stay open too late in the afternoon. The bison sausage for me was a winner along with the spicy barbeque sauce. I'd pass on the cilantro-lime cole slaw but there are plenty of other sides that sound good.

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