Road Food

© Ken Bingenheimer / RumBum.com

Nothing's better than a great local cone on the road.

Because, on a motorcycle, the journey is the destination, it's common practice to look for whatever excuse you can find to ride. Happily, food can be that excuse. There aren't many things better than an eatery with terrific food that also happens to entail a terrific ride getting to it. For many bikers, eating fast food on the bike is a blasphemy; excellent food is as important an element of the ride as the bike.

Admittedly, the OFMC is not hard core on this the way a lot of riders are. When we're out on our summer trips we can generally expect to eat at McDonald's at least once, despite the protests of a minority. On the other hand, we've had some extraordinary meals as well.

In the early days of the OFMC we rolled into Laughlin, NV, for a two-day stay. Not wishing to pay the price for the casino hotels, we crossed the river to the Arizona side and found an inexpensive motel. But of course the action was on the Nevada side, so we rode back and forth on the river taxis that shuttle people up and down the shoreline and across the Colorado River.

Come time for dinner that first night and we hit the restaurant in whatever casino we were in, and being a casino, the prices were outrageously cheap. We ordered the $3 prime rib and were absolutely blown away by the best prime rib any of us has ever eaten. That was such a high point it has officially become an OFMC legend.

The Local Specialty

On another trip we were in Utah cruising up past Bear Lake, which straddles the border between Utah and Idaho. The primary town in the area is Garden City, where a couple highways come together. It turns out that this place is renowned for its blackberry milkshakes. When in Rome . . .

It seemed pretty low-key that first time, no huge crowds or anything, but we've been back several times, with this past summer being the latest. What a change. Garden City was packed with tourists of all kinds but especially the two-wheeled variety. Whole groups of bikers had run up from Salt Lake City or Logan or Ogden, with the objective being to have a great ride with a special treat at the end. Standing in line at one of the numerous spots selling the shakes we watched a constant parade of motorcycles rumbling up and down the strip, like a mini-Daytona.

Then there's Jerome, AZ, which we discovered on one trip and came back to for a visit years later. This old mining town, built perilously clinging to the steep side of a mountain, was practically a ghost town when we first passed through but has since become an artist's colony and gone very upscale. And it was here that we found a stunningly good French restaurant.

We had broken into groups to find dinner, but found there wasn't much open, so we all ended up in the one place that was. I can't remember details but I do recall raviolis with cheese sauces, pizzas like you've never seen before, and all of it out of this world. Some of the guys swore they had never had a better meal in their lives. A couple of the guys have since taken their wives back there; it was that good.

Sometimes it's the Setting

Fancy food aside, under the right conditions, and prepared in the right way, even the most mundane meal can be a stand-out. This was the case one year at Lake Powell.

We had headed out of Blanding, UT, for the south shore of the lake, where we would take the ferry over to Bullfrog. The plan was to camp for the night and cross in the morning so we wisely decided to buy food in Blanding. Nothing special, just hot dogs and buns and maybe a can of beans.

What we hadn't counted on was the total lack of fuel for a fire. This is desert country and it's not like you can gather fallen limbs to burn. And we don't exactly carry Coleman stoves on the bikes. We could eat the beans cold but we really wanted to cook the dogs. Scrounging around, we gathered some dried grasses and bits of sagebrush and managed to build the world's smallest campfire. One by one, holding the hotdogs in our fingers and passing them patiently back and forth across the tiny flame we did cook them.

Now, any food tastes better when you're hungry, but I'm guessing that in this case the bits of sage we burned played a role, too. One way or another, they were without question the best-tasting hot dogs we had ever eaten. And another OFMC legend was born.

"It's all about the stories" is a common phrase among motorcyclists. Sometimes the stories are about the food, not the bikes.