Howdy Partners!
Gourmet Girl Denise here.
Today as we are blessed with amazing blue skies and warm weather here in Santa Barbara, I am reminded of my childhood in Wyoming, where the skies go on forever and the clouds roll overhead in a way unlike anywhere else I have ever lived. I used to lay on my back in the tall grass with my best friend Mary and search the clouds for dragons, faces and pretty much whatever our young minds could imagine.
The winters were brutal, with wind and snow drifting over the top of our house burying our front door, but the good part was school would be cancelled for the day. And when the temperature rose to slightly above minus 10 degrees, I would open the back door and begin tunneling through the snow, and when I found the perfect spot somewhere in the back yard I would dig our a small round room, then connect it to another tunnel until I had a virtual city under the snow. Over night the snow tunnels would freeze and the next morning when I pulled on my cold weather clothing, which made me look like a tiny Michelin Man, I would crawl through my under-snow network and inspect my handiwork. The sun would shine through the tunnels from above and light them up with a blue glow. It was beautiful!
Two years ago, Gourmet Girl Gail and I went on a road trip to Wyoming. It was the first time I had been back since I was nine years old. It was fall, and the clouds rolled in the same way I remembered them, low with flat bottoms, across the vast plains. We stayed in two adorable log cabins on a friends property in Big Piney, south of Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons. We set up our cook station outside our first night under a canvas EZ up between our two cabins, and as a light rain began to fall prepared our marinated Cornish game hens (recipe in our book ‘The Gourmet Girls Go Camping Cookbook’) for dinner.
Later that week we traveled up to Jackson Hole and Wilson, Wyoming, and ventured out into Grand Teton National Park. The setting was surreal; jagged mountains skirted with gold and green meadows, babbling brooks with beavers busily building their dams, trumpeting male elk herding their harems, golden aspen trees and oh so much more.
I will never forget this trip or my return to childhood, with all of the sights, sounds and smells that have remained in my memory for so long.
Keep traveling and experiencing new lands and new foods my friends!
Cheers!
Denise, Gail and Lindsey
The Gourmet Girls on Fire www.gourmetgirlsonfire.com
photos by Denise Woolery
