Antimony Mercantile: Antimony

Despite the fact that the calendar has just flipped over to September, it is, as Adam says, still very much Summer. We are in the desert. It is Labor day weekend. It’s evening, around 5:30 or so, and it’s still at least 80 degrees. We have just dropped off the east side of Highway 12’s hogback; a narrow, windy, slip of road riding the steep-sided ridge between Calf Creek to the west and Boulder Creek to the east. Although I have traveled this stretch of road literally a hundred times, driving this tiny wedge suspended between dramatic drop-offs still leaves my adrenals stressed and my palms sweaty.

We are tromping across sandy hills covered still, thankfully, joyfully in Sand Verbena (a good name, we think, for a dog), Spiderwort (a flower, not some sort of horrible growth), filmy white patches of Primrose, and Sunflowers. Soon, the sand spreads out across slick rock washes, stone looking as though the water that formed it were still running in rivulets across its surface. The ground is nearly white, occasionally stained gold, rust, or rose. The wash we are following heads down and down, connects with another wash, runs off to the side a little, meanders and then drops off into Boulder Creek.

We move slowly. I am still getting over a three week respiratory infection that had me in bed and then in bed and then in bed a little more. I haven’t carried a pack in a while and I feel laborious and clumsy. Adam skims on ahead of me, sauntering down the slick rock, his walking stick clicking occasionally against juniper roots and sandstone. Adam moves easily, he fairly glides down the steep descent we make to the creek. I have to walk looking at my feet so as not to tumble down the wash. I stop occasionally so that I can look around and remember where I am. I will never move as gracefully through the desert as Adam.

The country around us rises in domes, mesas and turrets, castle battlements made of whitish-gold sandstone. Thirty minutes later we get to the creek bottom, hot, a little irritable and happy for shady Cottonwood trees. This section of Boulder Creek is still relatively close to town—more so than our usual adventure destinations—as evidenced by down-canyon-debris. We pass a big old oil drum, some graffiti etched into the sandstone declaring that “Emily is the Shit,” and a scrunched up green metal gate washed down by a flash flood. It’s obvious that a flash flood of some magnitude tore through here pretty recently. All of the ground cover, water loving willows and tamarisk lay flat, pointing haggardly down stream. It makes walking down canyon alternately a total pain-in-the-ass-thrash and an easy stroll since you can actually see where you are going rather than having to battle through thickets of willows, looking for a trail. Flood debris—bunches of leaves and dirt and bird feathers—rides high in the tops of any tamarisk still standing. A waterline, like a grimy bathtub ring runs close to the canyon walls over even the highest banks. Finding high ground in this flood would have been nearly impossible.

Even as we thrash, Adam and I look at each other every few minutes with wide grins. It’s a thrash and a pain but we are in the desert! It’s been nearly two months since our last trip and the last few weeks have seen us stopping every so often to stare out the window and sigh, longing vocally for a wet canyon and some Cottonwood trees. And here we finally are. As I thrash and trip and stroll, I bring the world down to sounds and smell.
There is very little sound. The pitch of the water riffling down creek shifts slightly depending on whether it’s passing over pebbles, sand, slime, or smooth rock. I can’t hear any birds. I don’t even hear bugs. The air smells awesome. Clean and green and a little mulchy from the flood dregs and that smell particular to rock eroding away under the force of water whether rain or sprinklers or river.

Because we are still relatively high in elevation, we pass the occasional towering Ponderosa; some, burnt out carcasses, lightning struck. Signs of people become more faint. We hike nearly three miles and even though we are headed further down stream tomorrow, decide to camp at what is an exit trail, forming a loop hike that could take you back to the trail head, up on the hogback of Highway 12. This trail too, follows a wash. We scamper up a short wall to a little ridge overlooking the smooth sandy wash bottom. The sand is spotless, not even a bird track. The sky is clear with no forecasted rain. We plop our stuff down right in the middle of the sand and lie out. Our packs are ridiculously heavy for a three—not even full—day trip. This is largely due to the mass quantity of food we brought with us. We are not scrimpers when it comes to food, Adam and I. Adam is a beanpole and we both have blood sugar issues so we need an almost constant stream of calories when hiking. Nuts and other usual backpacking fare won’t cut it however so our food bags are filled with turkey, hard boiled eggs, fresh cucumber from the farmers market, bell pepper...tonight we hover over our cook pot chopping cilantro and green onion to throw into the Pad Thai we are making. A few years ago after I took my whole (almost) family backpacking for the first time, my dad asked my 13 and 15 year old brothers what they had liked best about the trip. They uniformly agreed that the food, not the soaring red walls of Coyote Gulch, not the impressively sized Steven’s Arch, not the pictographs and Anasazi ruins, had made their trip. Nope, it was the miso-ginger-chicken soup I had made the first night out. I guess I’m flattered, but almost anything tastes good when you’re backpacking.

When we lie down to sleep, the crickets are really getting going, pulsing rhythmically into the night. Just above our heads are a series of potholes with slightly stagnant murk crusting over the top. After a few games of Mille Bourne, we turn our headlamps off to flee the gnats and mosquitoes. A few minutes later, without the mesmeric drawing power of the light, the bugs recede and we settle in to a peacefully star-lit night.

The next day we proceed down canyon, stopping at the first real show of entrenched narrows for second breakfast. The canyon is filled with willows and rose bushes that tear at our legs and drive us to criss-cross the stream again and again looking for a clear path. Then, hurray! a smooth rocky sidewalk rises up out of the creek for a stretch, making for delightfully cruisey walking. Just around the corner from where Deer Creek intersects Boulder, we find our exit point and settle in for a lazy and utterly quiet afternoon.

I read. Adam naps and takes short walks up and down the creek, closely examining a patch of thick green moss, some bug larvae, fish hiding beneath the stream banks. I find a deep enough section of creek just below our hangout to take a dip. I watch for birds and look around at the gold walls. I eat a little and wander around barefoot. Adam eats a little and sleeps some more. The afternoon passes. We don’t see another person all day. Just before sundown we hike out, back up onto the golden-white citadels and boulder-strewn mesas above. At the base of the steep pass we need to mount the next day we make camp and look out at the view. Across the creek stretches a slick rock play ground called the Brigham Tea Bench. Between the domes and scalloped tops of the bench lay little green valleys filled with gold flowers and pinion pine. We sit, lean back on our packs and watch the day slowly disappear.

The next morning we are hiking by 6, trying to beat the heat of the sun and get back to the truck by 10. The walk is a constant delight as this is country I have never seen except from the distance of the road and the isolation of my car. Flowers decorate our path, surprising us at every turn. Once back at the truck, we decide to make our way home as slowly as possible, relishing our vacation to the last minute and take the long way to our next destination: The Antimony Mercantile. Stopping briefly at the visitor’s center in Escalante—which is strangely deserted of tourists on what should otherwise be a rowdy weekend—we take off up Main Canyon and over Boulder Mountain. We drive slowly, smelling the Ponderosa scented air and looking at the remains of past forest fires, musing about our time working on the mountain for the Forest Service. As we climb, we pass the corner in the road where I cut through my first really huge tree with an ax. We pass several trail heads we both meant to explore during our seasons on the trail crew. We slow down at Adam’s favorite look-out spot and take in the view: the Straight Cliffs from head to the toe, the entire Circle Cliffs uplift, the Henries, and Mancos Mesa all the way over by Lake Powell.

The Dixie Forest, of which Boulder Mountain is part, is not a grand or dramatic range. But it is gently lovely, littered with any number of meadows—filled now with flowers—and hundreds of little lakes and ponds. Sweet relief when the desert proves too steamy. Coming up over the crest, we run into a cavalcade of ATVs, headed off on a hunting trip. The more volcanic parts of the mountain blend on this side with dramatically red outcroppings that reach full expression further south in Bryce Canyon. Every time we stop to look at a good crumbly hoodoo, peeking up from an otherwise green hillside, a truck full of hunters stops to look, hoping we’ve spotted a buck.

The Main Canyon road we are taking is also sometimes called the Widtsoe road, even though Widtsoe is barely a destination. With 1,100 residents in the late 20’s, the town was once considered as a location for the county seat. Mostly a ghost town now, the township hosts a few mobile homes and one original log cabin. The last time I visited Antimony Merc (17 miles north), there was a man at the bar who told me the classic pioneer tale of growing up in that cabin with his 13 brothers and sisters. He had to be at least 90. We pass Widtsoe as we leave the mountains, entering John’s Valley. Both the names “John” and “Widtsoe” come from John Widtsoe, the president of the University of Utah in 1917, whose expertise in dry farming helped farmers in the area eek out an existence for nearly two decades before finally moving south to the San Juan.

Intersecting Highway 22, we head north and soon drop into Black Canyon, an intimate little gorge with a marshy creek running along the bottom. At times the walls of the canyon loom up grey and bold right next to your car, then spread out eroding into steep rubbely hills cresting hundreds of feet above. The land above is flat as flat. The canyon bottom feels like a hidden world.

In Black Canyon, 12 miles north of Widstoe is another ghost town; Osiris. Well, not really a ghost town as there was only ever one house there—still there and hidden up in the trees—and the remains of an old creamery, perched on the edge of the creek. Every time I pass the creamery, I badly want to explore it. The creamery was built in the twenties, turned into a granary, and abandoned in the 30’s due to drought. The main building is tall and narrow and not at all forbidding considering its isolated location and age. The windows are open and free from glass, making it all the more tempting to crawl right over the sorry-little-fence surrounding the premises, mount the rickety stairs, taking them right to the top.

By the time we reach Antimony we are starving. Antimony is a sort of story book town. The main street is tree lined, enormous old cottonwoods and poplars. Alfalfa fields roll off the road and down into a valley cut through by a number of creeks. Clearly happy cows loll and laze. The few—nearly all historic—houses in town are set back from the road, surrounded by more trees. There is, unfortunately, an abomination of a dude ranch with a huge, plastic, rearing white stallion on the roof of the guest house. And then there is the Antimony Mercantile.

The Antimony Mercantile is a combination grocery store, bait &tackle shop, diner, gas station (with old fashioned pumps), R.V. park and one of my favorite places on earth. It’s not enough that they make their own pie, fresh every day and that their burgers are the definition of slutty goodness, it is the whole package that I love. Inside, the ceiling is low and the shop is jam packed full of stuff. All kinds of stuff. The grill has a bar running long side it and around the corner is the little indoor eating area. The walls surrounding the tables are full, I mean every inch full of pictures of locals with their freshly caught fish, freshly shot elk, slung over the back of their ATVs. There are a few little cubby shelves stuffed with cheap, used paperbacks that you can take, if you leave one in return. There are a few chotchkys, mostly fishing related. Then there is the porch, the best place to sit.

The back porch is littered with picnic tables and metal tables surrounded by mismatched chairs. The roof is made from rough hewn logs and decked with ceiling fans, indoor faux-wood ceiling fans, looking like they’ve been taken from some old dear’s bedroom. There are a few plastic cacti hanging on the wooden back wall of the porch and two outdoor restrooms with “Doe” and “Buck” written on the doors. Next to the porch is a little horse shoe lot, where two guys are playing horse shoes. There is a Jeep parked dangerously close to the end of the lot and each time the men turn to throw that direction, I cringe in disastrous anticipation. The whole back R.V lot is surrounded by tall cottonwoods so that the porch is always shady and cool, even when it’s broiling out.

All summer old folks set up their RV’s, go fishin’ all morning, then spend the afternoon chatting on the porch, drinking coffee and coke from the bottle, and smoking cigarettes. These people now live in Florida but come back here to be with their grandkids and ride ATVs around the mountain. They all know each other. Have for decades. We sit at an old picnic table. Next to us are two couples in their seventies. The men wear impossibly baggy Lee jeans held up by rainbow striped suspenders. The women have on layers of fusia lipstick and hairsprayed hair. One has a little nondescript white dog on her lap which she talks to in baby talk, calling it “baby” and referring to her self as “momma” as she feeds it little bits of burger. The other woman moans pornographically over her burger, exclaiming “oh my!” and “this is soooo good!” through mouthfuls of food. The family to the other side, the one playing hose shoes, jokes and laughs and compares the effectiveness of ATVs as hunting vehicles, “The problem with the new Polaris is that it doesn’t have any room! You can put an extra gas can on the back, but where you supposed to put your deer once you kill it?!” None of these people are in a hurry. The wind rustles the trees every once in a while. The whole scene is slow and soothing.

When our quick moving, fast talking, locals chatting, cowboyboot wearing waitress brings our food, Adam and I don’t even talk to each other as we eat, we’re so hungry. I of course, order the Antimony Burger. I always order the Antimony Burger but have not, until today, ever been able to finish it. It is a ½ a pound of meat, gooood tasty meat not that soy bean crap, topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, melted cheddar cheese, mushrooms (from the can, but who cares) sautéed with more onions and bacon. Thick, peppery wonderful bacon. I don’t know what they do, I think I can taste garlic salt, but this burger is amazing. I can’t stop smiling as I eat. I am sold. They, as far as burgers go, win.
We move on to cherry pie with ice cream and homemade cinnamon rolls, drizzled with frosting. We smelled them when we first came in, an hour ago now, and get the last one. The pie crust is home made, flaky and thin. The cherries are from a can. It’s still good. When we are finished eating, we linger, stuffed and happy. The breeze moves around us. We look around and listen. We grin at each other.

A little bit of useful info…

Region: South Central, Utah

Contact Info:
(435) 624-3253 70 N Highway 22, Antimony, UT 84712

Rating (out of 5) ☼☼☼☼☼:

Burger ☼☼☼☼☼ Fries ☼☼ Shake N/A

You may want to visit the Antimony Mercantile if you are…

* Fishing at Otter Creek and/or Otter Creek Reservoir
* Camping up Antimony Creek
* Riding ATVs around on Boulder Mountain or up Antimony Creek
* Fishing or hunting on Boulder Mountain
* Driving an RV around the South West
* Driving an RV around to all the National Parks
* Climbing at “the Jungle” on the Aquarius Plateau (Boulder Mountain)
* Driving home from Escalante and environs
* Visiting Bryce Canyon National Park
* Touring Utah’s ghost towns—see: The Historical Guide to Utah Ghost Towns by Stephen Carr. * You can find this at Sam Wellers and Ken Sanders in SLC
* Hiking or horse back riding the Great Western Trail
* Eating your way home from somewhere great!

Maria's Grill: Loa

In my search for Trifecta, I feel it is my obligation to be thorough. So, if I find a burger place in some small town that ends up completely sucking, I feel it is my responsibility to add this too, to my tally. Without it, I would feel incomplete. A niggling sense of work not done, a dusty corner left unclean, knowing you hadn’t moved the bed to sweep under it even when you cleaned the rest of the room. I also feel that by cataloging the many local burger spots Utah has to its credit, I am offering a sort of service to fellow travelers. So it only makes sense that in order to provide my reader with really quality dining advice, I warn them off places that might leave them at the least disappointed and at the most (depending on just how badly you needed that burger and ice cream), suffering disaster. I do not however, even in my desire to be comprehensive, want to dwell on the negative. This will be brief. Here it is, my first real warning:

Last summer, on the way to Calf Creek via a lovely wet walk through Sulphur Creek in Capital Reef, I stopped for the second time at Maria’s Grill in Loa, Utah. Last time, it had been several years, I had a perfectly adequate experience scarfing burgers and ice cream on my way home from camping off the Notom Road. I think, now that I am trying to remember the details, that the café might actually have been called something else back then. That this spot might be one of those failed restaurant vortexes where one after the other, businesses move in, set up shop, fail miserably, only to be replaced by another similar business who undergoes the same fate. Usually, this is strictly a big city phenomenon; a Mexican restaurant in some strip mall or on the corner in front of the grocery store, is replaced by another, which is then replaced by a Chinese food buffet, all passing without the neighborhood noticing much since nobody eats there anyway. It doesn’t always mean these places are bad, not at all, that’s part of the mystery. It’s just the vibe of the place. In this case however, whatever the name of the place was before, the new one is Maria’s and, well, its terrible.

Rachel and I pulled up. It was hot. We had been driving all morning. We were on our way to hike ten miles. We wanted ice cream. I, remembering that my last visit had been perfectly pleasant, was excited at the prospect of our stop and praised the café to Rachel. I ordered a burger. And, as Maria’s Grill promises authentic Mexican cuisine (in Loa? I should have known…), Rachel ordered cheese enchiladas. How can you go wrong when the primary ingredient of the dish is cheese? We also ordered a fresh peach (yum, right? Right??) shake to share. A large.

Rachel and I are nothing if not champion eaters. Although our friendship is by no means reducible to a shared passion for eating, I have to say that a good amount of the bonding we have done has been over pints of ice cream, bowls of soup, whole lasagnas, and pizza (not necessarily all at once, but that is a possibility). Ice cream in particular is our epicureal conquest of choice. Last winter (I hate winter), I was largely nursed through the dark frigid season of death by Rachel’s company and bowls (and bowls and bowls) of ice cream. The Ben and Jerry’s buffet night, I think amply exemplifies the extent of our zeal. Picture us, propped up on Rachel’s boat sized couch with pillows sufficient for a harem and before us, the spread. We had just discovered that the Dan’s on Foothill has far superior ice cream selection to the Smith’s by our house and we were celebrating: Cake Batter, Chunky Monkey, Chubby Hubby, Brownie Batter, and something with chocolate and cheesecake. We ate…well…most of it that night.

So you can imagine just how bad this fresh peach shake must have been to have been left, neglected, melting away in the center console of my Subaru an hour after our stop. It was mostly milk and made from a thin sort of corn syrupy tasting soft serve. The peach was not anything close to fresh and was largely absent. The burger—dry, squashed bun, no lettuce or tomatoes or onion—was choked down because I have blood sugar problems and have to eat protein every two hours. The enchiladas were…well, the corn tortillas were half cooked on one side and over cooked on the other, the sauce was from a can, the entire thing tasted of gas station microwave cuisine. And the cheese! How can you ruin cheese? Cheese is a miracle ingredient! And has the power to save even the most lack luster dish! Not this time…

And so I share this warning: when you get to Loa on your way to Fish Lake National forest to go boating, or Boulder Mountain to hunt elk, or Capitol Reef, give Maria’s a pass.

I don't want to end on a downer...

Sulphur Creek was a wonderful surprise. I thought I had hiked literally all over Capital Reef, and yet here was this unexplored corner containing all my favorite things: slick rock slides leading to plunge pools and waterfalls to scramble around; tall red walls and very few people. And although all of this is in a national park, usually over run and feeling more like a circus than a piece of the natural world, the hike wandered deep into windy narrow canyons, shutting out sound, and leaving you feeling miles away from visitor’s centers and RV cavalcades. The canyon is so remote feeling in fact, that it is not uncommon to round a Cottonwood decorated bend and come upon a tall German, walking along with out a care in the world, naked as the day he was born. And as far as I am concerned, that is the best sort of recommendation.

A little bit of useful info…

Region: South Central, Utah

Contact info:

193 E 200 S Loa, UT 84747

(435) 836-2760

Rating (out of 5):

Burger 0 Fries Pass Shakes 0

You may want to give Maria’s a pass if you are:

* Boating on one of the many lakes in Fish Lake National Forest

* Working for one of the many Rec Therapy organizations in the area

* Hunting or riding ATVs on Boulder Mountain

* Hiking the Great Western Trail

* On your way to the Torrey Music Festival!

* Visiting Capital Reef

Stan's Burger Shak: Hanksville

Everyone of the 60 plus people surrounding me is either headed to or coming from Lake Powell; you can tell which by the shade of their sun burn. You can also tell that I am the odd one out by simply looking at the parking lot: a heat haze of large to superhuge trucks pulling trailers loaded with large to superhuge boats, practically incandescent they are so new and clean. Then there is “Snorry,” a little starting-to-rust-truck so red with dust you can barely tell that if we were ever to wash her (we won’t), she would be white. I describe this little beast with a certain amount of pride and ill-disguised snobbery. This truck has been down so many gnarly, sandy, rutted, pitted, boulder-strewn roads you can read her adventures like brail across her body (where has your truck been, huh? huh?). This also means you can read adventure in the stacks of receipts from various autobody shops that Adam keeps in a shoebox in the back seat. He curses “Snorry” monthly but I, free from the hassle of actually having to pay for her up-keep, unabashedly love her.
Just this morning, her four-wheel-drive superpowers, facilitated by her short wheelbase allowed me to wake up in a mostly-used-by-cows meadow, perched high on Boulder Mountain and miles from any town or campground. Laying in her bed in my sleeping bag, mosquito netting over my head, watching the light come on slowly across the white bark of the aspen next to me, I felt grateful that I did not have to sleep on the ground with all those cow flops.

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We are in Hanksville. And as Adam put it when we were driving into town, Hanksville is just a collision of heat, and dry and wind. This condition, as far as I can tell, is only going to get worse. Back in 2006, the entire region suffered 100 year floods. I say “suffered”, but I think they were awesome. Slot canyons with barely enough water in them to constitute calling it “moisture,” saw water levels rise to some 20, and in some cases 60, feet. Hiking down Coyote Gulch, you can still see flood debris in the tops of mature cottonwoods. A whole section a Hole-In-the-Rock road was washed away across the pinon/juniper plains at the foot of the Straight Cliffs, carrying with it a 100 year old line shack and Hanksville was flooded beyond recognition by the rising flume of the Fremont/Dirty Devil River.

Flooding, as far as I can see, could only have improved this sorry little town. Since then, the city has set out to squelch any possible threat from that nasty nasty river and, with what I can only call Rooseveltian enthusiasm for using our natural resources by lassoing them and pining them to the ground, has decided to drive the devil underground. Now, what little green relief the eye could have found in this otherwise greyish-brown and brownish-grey blight is slowly dying off. The river bed has a few scattered pools, stagnant and mucky. So much for shade.

And today, we could have used shade. Outside, it is 110 degrees so we are seeking relief in ice cream. Stan’s Burger Shak was first opened by Stan Alvey in 1985 and is now run by his kids. The Alveys have been living in this area since its foundation, there is a prominent wash named after them just over the mountain in Escalante. I have been to Stan’s some 5 or 6 times, but never during the height of summer. Usually an explosion of customers resulting in a line out the door and a room full of screaming kids does not improve the quality of food and service at a restaurant, but Stan’s seems to be thriving on it. I comment on the crowdedness of the room to the cashier and she just smiles and says, “Yah, its fun.” For a minute I’m incredulous, but then again, I’ve seen this town during the rest of the year and I don’t imagine she has much to do when all these people aren’t here demanding huge shakes and burgers.

I’m usually here in October or March, the two months when I can pull my dad away from the endless hordes of patients who believe that he is the only doctor who can save their lives (maybe he is). A few years ago, after trying to plan a succession of backpacking trips with friends, all of which failed due to my friends’—you know who you are, I love you all—general flakiness, I decided to turn to a partner I could rely on. A partner who, when I mentioned I was planning a backpacking trip into Dark Canyon, could barely disguise the wolfish gleam in his eye and who immediately went out and spent four hundred dollars on camp stoves, pocket knives, sleeping bags, heavy duty plastic eating utensils with a fork at one end and a spoon at the other, hiking boots, a tiny flash light, and a tiny water pump that worked perfectly for the first day of our trip. My dad. My dad, who filled my head as a kid with stories of mountains and horses and back country canoe trips. Who, all growing up read Louis L’amore novels, who lovingly (and mistakenly) took my Seattle bred mom to a cabin in the woods (with the promise that he would take her to Europe within the first few years of their marriage) for their honeymoon, who used to hike up the back of Timp just to study, and who, miraculously, had never been backpacking until three years ago when I took him. (I took my sister, her husband, my mom and my brothers too…all nubies. Man, I love you all and man, am I never doing that again).


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For the last two Spring Breaks (March) my dad and I have descended the 1,600 foot— elevation lost in 1 mile—rockslide known alternately as “The Sundance Trail” and “The Devil’s Staircase” to collapse happily stream side in the rarely visited (there’s a reason for the colorful epithet) deeps of Dark Canyon. I’m not sure how much to give away here. On one hand: Holy Shit! On the other hand, I don’t really want you all to be there the next time I go. However…

Dark Canyon begins up by the Bear’s Ears in the Manti-La Sal National Forest. The canyon is a wilderness area within the jurisdiction of both the National Forest (top) and the BLM (bottom), having received its wilderness designation as a result of the Wilderness Act of 1984 thanks to well know nature lover, your best tree-huggin’ friend and mine, Ronald Reagan. The canyon runs 30 miles, falling 5,000 feet in elevation from pinion and juniper plateaus, to lush riparian oases and finally to the Colorado River (or at least, the backwash that is now Lake Powell). The miles of descent are broken by a series of waterfalls (sometimes hard to navigate), plunging you deeper and deeper into the many layered bottoms.

The Sundance Trail drops you about ten miles from where Dark Canyon intersects Cataract Canyon. The trailhead is ridiculously hard to find, but only because all of the helpful guidebook directions to the trailhead (Allen, Kelsey, etc) are wrong. Luckily, the Utah Road & Recreation Atlas is surprisingly easy to follow, has the correct numbers for all the little dirt roads leading to the trailhead, and positions the trailhead in the correct location on the map. Glen Canyon Rec has recently relocated the trailhead and it’s easy to see why. The trail used to begin by a muddy, shitty, mire, aka a cow trough. And now begins on a smooth slickrock shelf from which you can look down and down and down into Dark Canyon.

We first went in to Dark with Adam in March of ’09. We began our hike early. Descent of the rockslide puts you in full sun with no shade and no water so we ran like hell to get down to the stream before noon. The rockslide, however does not lend itself to anything like running. I think I may have laughed, sort of deliriously, when I fist caught sight of the slide from across canyon. From a distance, it doesn’t look at all traversable. It looks like a huge, precarious mess and you can’t help but wonder if the weathered impulse that initiated this slide however many years ago, might just decide to finish the job and drop the rest of the wall on you as you descend. Why shouldn’t it? We, however, made it alive, and I have to confess to loving this rockslide. It makes entry into the canyon a sort of test of will, an ordeal in the medieval sense, an adventure.

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At first arrival, I have to admit to being disappointed. I had been used to pack trips in the intimate country of the Escalante, sweeping walls thrumming in the heat, writhing movement in the rock stilled and still obvious in patterns of cross-bedding. This canyon, on the other hand was wide. Steve Allen’s route description and various travel blogs I’d read had promised pools and falls and this was just rocky and rather brown. Dark Canyon has been called the “Little Grand canyon.” Yes, it was a very deep canyon, but otherwise I was unimpressed.

Luckily the canyon redeemed itself next day. After a short meander down stream, the brushy and cobble filled creek smoothed out over a brown bottom. Brown then gave away to grey as the watercourse narrowed and widened into teardrop shaped pools, deep enough for the first plunge of the year. In observation of my dad’s comfort level, I swam at first in my clothes but swimming in pool after pool after deep sinewy pool I couldn’t take it any more and he and Adam hightailed it down canyon to find a “boys hole.”

The canyon bottom progressed steadily downward, dropping dramatically 100 feet into a slick, gray narrow. As we traversed around the fall, peering down into the dark, we could not see the bottom. From our ledge, Adam trundled large rocks into the stream. They fell a long way and made a satisfying splash. This water was deep.

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Next day, we wandered up stream, discovering a veritable waterpark of slicks, slides, pools and falls created by my new favorite rock layer, the Hermosa Formation. The Hermosa is made of creamy purple limestone, forming smooth sidewalks at the base of an otherwise orange and blocky sandstone canyon. These sidewalks are scattered here and there with flood debris, but are otherwise clear, rippling slightly and dropping delightfully and allofthesudden into narrow little watercourses. The first time we observed this phenomena, I literally jumped for joy and ran for the first deep pool. The second day followed this pattern: walk a bit, squeal, plunge, walk a bit more, squeal, plunge. We didn’t get very far.

In March the canyon is just starting to come alive. When we first arrived, the Cottonwood trees lining parts of the creek had tightly curled leaf balls on the end of each slender branch. By the third day, the leaves uncurled and you could see the occasional Aster poking out of clefts in the rock. On our first visit in ‘09, we wandered hot in the sun (hot to us, it was probably no more that 70). In March of 2010, we decided to return and explore further up canyon. Our October pack trip had been spent in the dry dry dry outposts of Grand Gulch where we had searched anxiously for water and were saved by a very green and notatall fresh pothole. My Camelback water bladder has never fully recovered. In the spring, we were eager to return to a canyon with the promise of soaks and swims and no stress over drinking water. On our second visit to Dark, clouds kept interrupting our progress and day time temperatures warmed to no more than 60. We swam anyway.

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On our way home from each of these trips; Dark Canyon I, Grand Gulch, and Dark Canyon II, my dad and I stopped at Stan’s. Charmingly, my dad blends the name of the town and the restaurant in his memory, so Stan’s to him (and therefore to me) is always, “Hank’s.” There is no amount of food that we could have eaten while backpacking that could possibly have given us the calories needed to hike up that rockslide, so we arrived starving. This can only have helped the food because, In October and March, Stan’s is dead. The only exceptions are a couple of dirty boys with rafts strapped to their car and the cashier’s friend, clearly a local, who stands chatting with her for the entirety of our visit. My dad and I play Mille Bornes while we wait for our food, watching the counter hungrily for any sign of a fry.

In October and March, the cook stands listlessly staring out windows, compulsively checking his cell phone for texts and the shakemaker (proper title for one who makes shakes?) puts hardly any thin, stringy pineapple into my roughly blended shake. They are out of tomatoes. The buns are stale. There simply is no juice to life, and certainly none in the food. The cook must be so morose over this lackluster season, that he can’t be bothered to watch my burger as it cooks because it is unforgivable dry. We eat everything and leave no crumbs.

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Sitting here in July, I forgive Stan’s it’s off-season mediocrity. Adam and I have been swimming in Capital Reef all afternoon—the waterfall off Highway 24—and water always makes me hungry. At Stan’s, everyone is spoiled by being served dessert first—easier and quicker to make. In front of me is the most enormous shake I have ever had and it is chalk full of blackberries, cheesecake and bits of graham cracker crust. Adam orders an Oreo shake, but keeps sneaking his spoon into mine. I have tried mango shakes, raspberry-banana, caramel and pineapple here at Stan’s and this one is the clear winner (make note: when you come, you must order the BLACKBERRY CHEESECAKE SHAKE). When we have waited for the sun-burnt hordes to be served, our order is finally ready. The bun is glistening with brushed-on oil, it is plump and buttery. The patty is thick and juicy, the tomato is there! and the fries are crispy! The “on-season” is clearly in full swing. After all that ice cream, I’m not even sure I can eat this, but hell, I’ll give it a shot.

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I want to dedicate this post specificaly to my dad in hopes that we will go on many more adventures together!

A little bit of useful info...

Region: South Eastern Utah

Contact Info:

160 S Highway 95, Hanksville, UT 84734

(435) 542-3330

Rating (out of 5):

On-season:

Burger ☼☼1/2 Fries ☼☼ Shake (get the Blackberry Cheesecake) ☼☼☼☼

Off-season:

Burger ☼ 1/2 Fries ☼☼ Shake ☼ ☼☼ (depending on flavor)

You may want to visit Stan's if you are:

* Playing in Capital Reef

*Riding ATV's around the sand hills of Hanksville and Caineville

* Visiting Factory Butte

* Running Cataract Canyon (or if your lucky, the Dirty Devil River)

* Backpacking in the Maze district of Canyonlands

* Swimming, boating, water-skiing, jet-skiing, drinkin' beer, etc on a house boat in Lake Powell (or "REservoir Fowell...)

* Climbing in the Swell or the Henry Mountains

* Visiting Goblin Valley

* Canyoneering around the Moroni Slopes or North Wash

* Hunting bison in the Henry Mountains

* On your way home from Dark Canyon!

Peach City: Brigham City

Driving towards the Spiral Jetty is movement into more and more nothing. First, the busyness of the interstate drops away as you head west and with it, the building wave of developments, strip malls, churches, and gas stations. Then, the farms with their horse paddocks and garages for boats and tractors fade out and with them the pavement. The last outpost you leave behind is the Golden Spike Historic Site. Erected in 1957, the site commemorates the 1869 joining of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. A celebration of potential motion on a grand scale in the middle of a vast desert plain where hardly anything moves. And even though the site now receives upwards of 50, 000 visitors a year, my own progress still feels conspicuous.

I stopped at the Historic Site’s visitors’ center once about twelve years ago on a long drive after a particularly vicious argument with my then boyfriend. In response to the fear brought on by our fight, I chose flight. I wanted new territory, uncrowded by people and their baggage and my baggage and by sweetheart’s baggage. Somewhere to which I had no attachments and to which there was really nothing to attach to. Perusing the book shelves at the visitor’s center, I noticed that of the nine or so volumes stocked by the Golden Spike’s Historic Site, three of them were books on railroads and ghost towns published by my boyfriend’s father.

But today, nothing so heavy drives me out to visit this relatively empty shore. Winter is just barely receding and after a season of intense hibernation, I want to fling out my arms, free-up my concave-feeling chest, and feel just how open I can be to the gentling elements. I’ve been sitting on my squashy couch, staring intently west to where the city gives way, to where the light recedes and the mountains bear themselves with simplicity, just blue grey lines from my window. Now, I want an adventure, but a certain kind of adventure. Rather than test myself against the element in order to feel alive, I need to feel brought back to life by them. Today I need beauty. Not quite ready for the clasping walls of a canyon (gas is too expensive to afford a trip south right now anyway), I look to this open plane to remind me that there is light.

The area around the north shore of the Great Salt Lake—the area where the Spiral Jetty coils out to meet the lake’s briny waters—is 95 square miles of BLM land. There are a few dispersed ranches, most of the Promontory mountains jutting into the north east arc of the lake are owned by Promontory Ranch and therefore (damn them…those are some lovely mountains with great views) inaccessible. But mostly there is the just space. The terrain here is a unique contradiction of land so flat you can lie down and feel the curve of the globe arcing against your spine and erupting rocky escarpments folded and eroded and folded again, evidencing remains. Everything here reads of prehistoric Lake Bonneville. When the lake still lapped at the flanks of these hills, each range was 8 or so miles further east than they are now. Creaking slowly apart at the seams, tectonic plates shuffling, the mountains moved.

The west and north-west deserts of Utah offer all the tantalizing appeal of the “other.” These are the empty stretches that have been written off. These are the miles of basin and range where the Mormons sent their lepers, where Dugway showered the salt flats with nuclear waste, where scientists looked to break sound. These are the stumbling miles where the Donner party first lost their way, followed bad directions, and spent seven days on the flats south and west of the Great Salt Lake—no water, dropping furniture and clothes and babies, mouths becoming black— before reaching the Pilot Range and what is now called “Donner Spring.” And on the edge of these miles, hovering between relatively green, black-boulder strewn hills, a gentle country compared to the saline flats to come, Robert Smithson constructed the Spiral Getty—by the people, for the people.

I have been a hypocrite. For two years now, I have been wrapping up my Humanities 1010 lecture on the various ways humans relate to nature with a slide show showing off the Jetty and a note of encouragement to my student to go and visit this often forgotten earth-work. “It was submerged for three decades!” I tell them, “You have a chance to see something hardly anyone has seen since it was made!” The slides are stock photos. I have, until today, never been here. Confession made.

When Smithson first flew over this spot, looking for a site to leave his giant homage to primordial ooze, the lake was red. It does that every year in autumn, the residue of a massive die-off of brine shrimp. When the art piece first emerged in 2002 from its long watery entombment, newspaper headlines ran, “Pink Water, White Salt Crystals, Black Boulders and the Return of the Spiral Jetty!” Today, the edge of the lake is several yards from the end of the Spiral and a pale shimmering blue. The lake bed surrounding the piece is white and equally shimmery so that in all this new Spring sun, the Spiral looks as though it hovers, a mirage rippling in the heat waves radiating just above the ground.

When ATV’ers and salt collectors first came upon the Donner Party’s cast-offs, they were perfectly preserved and white, crystalline shapes looking as though they were made from the salt that preserved them. Black igneous rock taken from the surrounding hills—carried back and forth over the course of six days by a bulldozer procured in Ogden and now forming the Jetty—has likewise turned white. In the expanse between the Jetty and the shore, everything that has left remains, remains. Seagulls blown against rocks or caught by some larger predator lie sprawled mid-fall. Socks and sandals left behind so that some tourist could walk barefoot out into the sludgy squishy lake, now tip stiffly upright in the sand. Ovaline trails sparkle, remains of salt pools now evaporated.

Today the tourists consist of a group of art students, dutifully walking the length of the Spiral Jetty looking contemplative and making notes in little spiral notebooks, the requisite family with screaming children and a group of people whom I am initially puzzled by. When we first arrive at the site, they are trailing massive white balloons up from the Jetty. They are a strange conglomeration of gracefully aging women wearing sleek black capris with a sateen finish and movie star sunglasses, dapper looking men in loose white linen shirts and expensive leather sandals, and a single woman wearing REI SPF pants, long sleeved shirt, and topped by a safari-style wide brimmed hat. After some time spent shamelessly staring and eavesdropping, I figure out that they are photographers. The balloons are similar to weather balloons and carry a camera up into the air above the Jetty. The woman in safari gear holds a remote control with which she controls the camera. They are waiting for the wind to die down.

Walking out onto the salt flats west of the Spiral Jetty, I feel like I could continue walking all afternoon and into the evening. There is nothing to stop me. No physical barriers. Nothing is in my way. The landscape is merely peripherally limited by a distant line of mountains to the west. The Lake Side Mountains, the Stansburys, the Pilot Range, Grouse Greek, their distance relieves the long straight shore line and does nothing to impede the sense of space. With the gleam of white from the sand and salt pools catching my eyes and nothing to get between me and the sky, I finally begin to feel the light—not just see it—in me. I bare as much skin as possible, given the babies and the families and the photographers, and feel significantly more beautiful.

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Driving back towards town the long way—always go the long way—we pass by a fence separating some grazing ground belonging to Promontory Ranch (what in the hell are these cows supposed to be eating?) and BLM land. The fence is unrecognizable behind a sea of tumble weeds. The sea stretches on for another quarter mile and pools out across the road, forcing us up out of the dirt trench we are driving in and onto the range. The predominant direction of wind is clear.

Reluctant to plunge right back into the heat and chaos of the city (even though Salt Lake is relatively mild as far as these things go) we decide to take a back road through Brigham City and check out a little place I noticed on a drive back from Crystal Hot Springs last winter. Coming into town from the north, the open rolling foothills of the Wellsville Mountains slowly transition into neighborhoods of little brick houses, stucco bungalows and tree lined avenues. The trees are tall, evenly spaced, running the length of the old part of town and reaching towards each other across Main Street. The bark is marbled white and grayish green, looking fleshy and almost toothsome.

Framed by two of these trees is Peach City, the little burger place I remember. Peach City has all the ear marks of a late 1940’s early 1950’s small town burger shop, enough to satisfy any nostalgia junky…like me…even though I’m nostalgic for a past I never remotely experienced—it’s all Norman Rockwell—and though I realize that what he painted was the height of a sort of idealism that could easily be accused of glazing over—and therefore over simplifying—what was actually a painful and complex age, I still love…I don’t know, just the way it looks. Maybe it is an entirely aesthetic fetish, maybe I long for the sort of sweet stability recalled by these places….whatever, I like it.

It has a parking lot all marked out in numbered stalls and car hops running to and fro. Inside, there are mini juke boxes on the table of every booth and a stainless steel ice-cream counter. What makes this all great is that nothing here is a reproduction, manipulating us into nostalgic longing for the past evoked so clearly by the particular lettering on the sign outside, all these tables and signs and jukeboxes were here when my dad came here as a kid, visiting his Grandparents out west.
We sit outside on a metal table in the shade of a newly leafed out tree and peruse the huge menu. I think it’s funny that the menu is so huge—in addition to burgers, burgers with cheese, burgers with bacon, etc. they have steak sandwiches and Coney Island hot dogs (with or without chili and cheese), fish and chips and patty melts— because I am positive most people only come here for the ice cream. That is the next best thing—next to the car hops and juke boxes—about Peach City. They make their own. So when you order a shake, you can get it made with home made on the premises hard pack ice cream or soft serve from the machine (who knows where they get that). This is a sign of great things. This could be a sign of impending trifecta…

Sadly, no. The burger is totally mediocre. It barely deserves a description. It isn’t out right bad—it isn’t squashed flat with a no-flavor patty and mealy bun, it isn’t over cooked and dry—it just isn’t interesting. It is fat which is good since 1) I’m really hungry and
2) Adam and I are sharing. The fries however bring a fun twist. You can get normal old fries (pass) or waffle fries. Waffle fries are oval shaped and cut like….a waffle and dusted with Cajun seasoning. Yum and yum. They taste golden and slightly spicy. The oil used to cook them was fresh and quality so you get the good fried taste that makes you keep eating even when you are full and they let them drain long enough that you aren’t wiping oil off your lips after every fry. They make their own fry sauce, which is just Thousand Island Dressing but, when it comes to fry sause, I’m easy—unless it’s baaaad.

Then for the ice cream…..its fine. Fine! Kind of disappointing. Maybe I was expecting too much what with the made on the premises and everything. I got blackberry ripple and Adam got butter brickle and they were both….fine. On one hand, the ice cream tasted like milk—always a plus—and did not taste sicky sweet with corn syrup and preservatives. On the other hand, the primary taste was simply sweet, not berryish or bricklish. Perhaps other flavors would be better? During the summer they use local fruit (like peaches) in their ice cream so perhaps if you can catch that ideal window?

All in all…if I was hungry and happened to be in the area I would stop. But not go out of my way. I do love driving by though, just to look at the sign.

A little bit of useful info...

Region: North Western Utah

Contact Info:
306 North Main StreetBrigham City, Utah 84302-1808
ph: 435.723.3923

Rating (out of 5):

Burger ☼☼1/2 Fries ☼☼☼☼ Shake ☼☼☼☼

You May Want to Visit Peach City if You Are:

* Coming back from Crystal Hot Springs

* Coming back from or going to Bear Lake

* Fishing or running the Bear River

* Visiting the Bear River Bird Refuge

* On your way to climb City of Rocks

* On your way to or coming from the Spiral Jetty

* horse back riding in the Wellsvilles

*On your way to Lava Hot Springs or Downata Hot Springs