Blog #6

Recently I experienced an eating event.  This past week I was traveling around Arizona and Utah; so I got to experience quite a bit of different food and enjoy different scenery and company at the same time.  My favorite experience occurred about 4 hours into a drive after a stop at the grand canyon, we had been driving a few hours in the dark.  The darkness around the desert is very creepy, it is much like the north woods without trees.  We had been driving and we cannot tell what is on either side of the road and it was a strange feeling because right before it got dark we had been on roads with very large cliffs and drops on either side of the road (we also had zero cell reception at time).  We would come to 'towns' on our Garmin GPS only to find there really was not a town, just run down houses in the distance away from the road.  This happened multiple times and we were very hungry.  We saw on the GPS that there was another mysterious town ahead (we did not have high hopes).  At this point we were pretty sure all the towns around were ghost towns and did not have a place to eat.  We got a little closer to the next to town and by god we saw some lights!  We finally got into the town and they had food.  There were three options for us, Wendy's, Subway, and some restaurant that had some music playing and some outdoor seating and it was PACKED. 
The friends I was with wanted to grab Subway and keep going to our hotel, still another 2.5 hours away.  We stopped, but I convinced them to the other place, which turned out to be a BBQ place.  There was probably over 100 people at this little joint when we sat down.  My friends didn't really seem that comfortable being there and thought everyone was looking at us weird or some other weird thing.  I was loving it, I love trying different food and different places to eat, particularly mom and pop type places.  We ordered, and while we waited we got to talking with some locals and they were all friendly and excited to see us traveling around visiting the National Parks.  Our food came and it smelled and looked amazing.  The cornbread we had was the food highlight of the trip and the best cornbread I had ever eaten.  We were all glad we had eaten there. 
I am always confused by people that travel and are not willing or wanting to try the local foods.  Why the hell would I travel to Arizona and Utah just to eat something I could eat anywhere else in the world.  The chain places never have the same wholesome atmosphere as the mom and pop shops.  If I am going to be some projection of what I eat, I'd rather be that cornbread than subway.  It really grinds my gears that people are like that.  The food is part of the experience and should be a valued one. 
The local places are supported locally and probably do just fine, but when people roll through and stop to eat, that extra income probably helps more than we know.  We have to do better at supporting local food places and not falling back to eat at McDonald's or Subway.