And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. (Farewell, Utah!)

Okay, enough of contests and scrappy back yards. Back to the business at hand - riding and eating. Or is that eating and riding? All good things (well, most of them) must come to an end, and I did eventually have to leave Utah. The drive home (alas, I had to tow the moto rather than ride it - too much stuff to haul) was - take a guess - heartstoppingly beautiful. I came upon the Vermilion Cliffs/Lake Powell area at that time of day just before sunset, when the light is just, well, magical. It must be the same sort of light that inspired the great landscape painters in southern France. All the cliffs were positvely luminescent, and I found myself meditating on the salmony-corally-pinkish-reddish hues, trying to pin down just exactly WHAT those amazing colors were. (It can't be done, at least not by me.) It's an interesting exercise though, running through the palate of words in your mind and constantly coming up short. There's a certain color of grass in southern Idaho that first sparked my interest in this little game. The best I could come up with was "ever so slightly radioactive jade". Funny, I didn't stop to take pictures - not of this grass and paint by numbers green landscape in southern Idaho, nor the unbelievably saturated study on pink in southern Utah. I always regret not having the pictures, but at the time, pulling out the camera almost seems like a distraction.
After all this magical sunlight, I had to suffer through yet another extraordinary sunset. I'm going to stop saying how beautiful it all is, lest you stop believing me.

Let's talk delicious, instead. Gary, one of those wonderful people who keep the Utah Festival Opera festival running, happens to live on a small farm outside of Logan. (Where he and his wife find the time to actually run the farm, I have no idea, but it seems to be working.) Some years ago, he decided to give a party for the entire opera company. For those of you who don't know, that is a really big party. He had ribs, barbecue, deep fried turkeys, pies... you name it. But the most memorable item on the table for me were his tomatoes. Who knew the holy grail would be sitting there on a plate, with no more than salt and pepper on them, looking so innocent? I've had tomotoes like this as a child, from my grandfathers garden, but I had long ago given up finding anything like that again. Well, Gary had another party this year, and all I could think about was those tomatoes. They weren't a featured item on the table this time, but I wasn't shy, and the lady of the house handed me a stash from her kitchen counter to take away. I'm embarassed to admit that I actually sort of hid them as I left - they were that precious, and I wasn't about to give even one away. When I prepared them (yes, I did share with my roommates), I was almost nervous about eating them - would they really be as good as I remembered? They didn't disappoint. Here they are, with some basil from my front door herb garden in a pot.



Little did I know that there were more such tomatoes in my future. In Arizona no less. Stay tuned.

My transport to this party was indeed a motorcycle, but not my own. My moto-mentor (i.e. the one who got me into this motorcycle madness), on his annual (more often if possible) cross country moto-camping trip, arrived in Utah the day before on his new KTM 990 Adventure. It's the three dimensional moto! Big and comfy enough for the long haul, fast and sporty for fun, and (this is the new part for him), highly capable off-road. What's not to like? You can read about his adventures here.



And so, with the taste of tomatoes still lingering and more than a bit of sadness, I bid farewell to Utah until June 2009. But, ahhh... Arizona! I've yet to share my adventures on what may be the grand-daddy of all Glorious Motorcycle Roads - AZ 191...

A Heartfelt Thanks to All...

who joined me in the fun of my backyard contest. I'm sorry to report that I didn't win, but I must say, the overwhelming support was worth more to me than any backyard! Here are the finalists, if you're curious. All worthy indeed! (I'm guessing the link will only be active for a week or so.)
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/athome/254996

YOUR mission, should you choose to accept it...

...is to vote for me in the AZ Daily Star $30,000 back yard makeover contest! Once a day, every day through August 23rd.

Firstly, the essentials:

1). Register to vote here (the first time only):
http://azstarnet.upickem.net/engine/Registration.aspx?contestid=2112

2). Click "save vote" here (You're done! Until tomorrow when you can repeat step 2 again.):
http://azstarnet.upickem.net/engine/Details.aspx?PageType=VOTING&ContestID=2112&SubmissionID=145224&IncrementNumber=1#SubmissionDisplay

Remarkably, at the time of this writing, I have more votes than practically any of the other 962 (!!!) entries! However, there are at least two entries that are ahead of mine.
I'm not going to post a picture of my horrible back yard. But you'll see two lovely samples when you vote!

The latest harvest...

I didn't get to go riding last weekend (weather and insomnia conspired against me), but here's a bit of that Utah bounty I've been raving about. The pictures aren't great, but you'll get the point anyway.

I canned this "lug" of apricots to console myself when not being able to ride on my day off. I ended up with 11 quarts. Really, I would have had 12 quarts if I hadn't eaten so many in the process. There's that "dreary student apartment" in the background.



I picked about 10 quarts of strawberries from my colleague's garden earlier this month.



Many of those berries became preserves. Man oh man they are good!



Of course, we had to save some berries for strawberry short cake, courtesy of my roommate Nadine. That's a bit of cardamom sprinkled on the top. Nadine serves a generous portion!

In Search of the World's Best Water

Okay, I might be exaggerating, but then again, maybe not. It is true that the naturally carbonated spring water in Soda Springs, ID took first prize in the World Fair in Chicago in 1893, and again in Paris in 1905. If you go to Hooper Spring Park in Soda Springs, you can taste it yourself, for free. I did just that, and it's just as good or better than that you can buy, and infinitely more rewarding since I rode 100 miles, and hiked almost 2 miles one way to have the pleasure of dipping my cup in a happily bubbling pool of cool clear fizzy water. You can see and hear it bubble yourself below. Just screen out the chatter of the other tourists:

Here's "the world's largest captive geyser" (???) at Geyser Park in Soda Springs. I guess it's considered "captive" because it's controlled by a timer now, which is set to allow the geyser to spout once an hour on the hour. I arrived just at spouting time, and had to hastily abandon my lunch sack in the middle of the parking lot to rush over and take pictures.




I brought some water home with me. The bottle is in the fridge and when I open it, it gives a very satisfying "psssht"!

Utah: Pictures, instead of my 1000 words

Sheesh, all that talk about Utah in my last post, and so few pics. Here are some more at one reader's request.

Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake

A BMW K1200 RS (fondly known as "the Super K" - no, it's not mine) resting quietly on the strange and mysterious Bonneville Salt Flats

Sunset from the afore-mentioned "dreary student apartments." Life is rough, huh?

Flaming Gorge National Recreation area. This picture is from inside the Visitors' Center! The colors aren't what they could be, it was an overcast drizzly day.

Hogsback Ridge on Highway 12

The Fremont River from Fish Lake Road (one of the many Glorious Motorcycle Roads).


Larb Hollow Overlook from Highway 12



Lake Solitute at the end of the Cascade Canyon Trail in Grand Teton National Park. Yes, technically this is Wyoming, not Utah, but for my purposes, "Utah" constitutes the actual state plus anywhere else I go while I'm living here for the summer.


In and around Sawtooth National Recreation Area (I know, it's in Idaho, not Utah - see the above note regarding Grand Tetons)
Stanley Lake Inlet Campground, a moose noted on the way home, Sawtooth Lake




My pictures of Capitol Reef aren't great, but here I am at the "Hickman Bridge" rock formation.