GOING WEST

We are on our way west… all the way to the westcoast! As I am writing this we have just left Utah and are on the I-80 west on our way to Reno. We're watching the sunset over the Utah mountains, Looks fabulous! The sky is changing colours rapidly, going from yellow, to red and now almost orange.

Upon leaving Salt Lake City the GPS indicated that we'd be doing well over 550 miles on the I-80 before we'd make a right turn off the Interstate at some exit near Reno.

Quite a drive alright! We left Columbia on Sunday night and made a first full-day stop in Big Springs ( Nebraska), which is completely deserted from the rest of society. As I wrote earlier the corps added about 40% to the town's population of 495 inhabitants on Monday.

From Big Springs we drove about 580 miles to Salt Lake City in the state of Utah. Many people know this city best from the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Others might know of the immense Mormon temple that is one of the city's highlights. I visited the temple grounds and will write a little about that in the next post here. You should know that religion is not really my thing,… but let's say I enjoyed the architecture a lot…

The corps rehearsed at a neat location with beautiful mountains in the background and the city on the opposite side.
We spent pretty much all day preparing brunch and dinner. Dinner was slices of ham &pineapple, mashed & scalloped potatoes, gravy, apple sauce, salad bar and the Tiramisu I prepared the other day.

It would be a short stop in Salt Lake City. We only got there shortly before 8AM and left at 6PM, right after dinner. Some day! Since we had dinner ready to go into the oven by the time brunch was over I had some time to walk around town (only three blocks from the school) in the afternoon. First stop was The Gallery, quite a large shopping plaza, with tons of interesting stuff. Ended up pretty much only buying things for my niece Ruby. Had hoped to find some nice shirts or sweats at Abercrombie & Fitch, but didn't really find anything I really liked. Oh well,.. I will be here in the States for another two weeks, so I bet there will be more shopping opportunities down the road.

Right outside Salt Lake City it becomes clear what the city got its name from. Salt as far as the eyes reach, both on the left and right if the Interstate. Amazing. Thousands of years ago this must have been lakes, or seas rather. We made a short stop at a rest area. Members were having a great time having their pictures taken with the landscape in the background, right at the beginning of sunset. The sign to watch out for snakes and scorpions didn't really seem to bother them. We should have stopped at the next rest area though, where we could have actually walked out on the salt beddings. That would have been a great experience. We saw the staff bus did make a stop there when we passed it.

We just finished making up the menus for the upcoming week and a half. Have to call in the order for the delivery of this upcoming Friday.
I will be in charge of Devils Food (the name of the food truck) on Friday, when I will be cooking a Chinese Indonesian dinner for the corps. It will be Chicken Teriyaki with bean sprouts (officially called taugé), broccoli and sliced water chestnuts. The other dish will be stir-fry sweet & sour chicken with vegetables. (I would have preferred pork, but chicken is probably a better idea for them) Should be fun fixing this dinner for about 170 servings instead of just for myself or for some visiting relatives or friends at home. Quite a challenge.

All meal plans for the next week and a half have been listed, but are always subject to change…
It's great fun working on the kitchen here! Hard work, long days, but hey,… I'm not complaining! It's another great experience. An even better tour than the ones I had with Blue Devils in 2004 and 2005!

We occasionally get some help from members' parents who come in for a day or a few days to help out, but the basic setting of the cook-team is only three people: Carol (head cook), Marianne and myself. The first two weeks I was here we also had Yvonne on board, but she had to go back to Concord to prepare for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the corps. And then there's Alden Conklin, a former mayor of the town of Gouverneur in New York State. He's the 78-year-old (!!!!) truck driver of Devils Food, and is a great cook too.

Enjoy,

HK