One of my favorite fast food chains is the Culver's. Predictably, Patrick was the one who introduced me to this Wisconsin-based chain. I don't remember exactly when, but ever since I've been a big fun of Culver's, especially when I'm on a road trip in areas with questionable meal choices. Granted, it's always an extra fun to accidentally find a good local restaurant when in an unfamiliar place, but it's also true that a failure could be quite miserable when you're tired of driving, hungry, grumpy with your companion, or all of the above. Then, the blue metal roof of Culver's comes in sight, and you (and your similarly hungry companion) are saved. I don't know if I would eat there more often if there were Culver's closer to home, but our trip north often involves one meal at one of their restaurants.

We (Patrick, my mom and I) ended up in one of the many Culver's after our antique hunt in Volo Antique Mall. To be precise, we didn't go there right after the Mall--we stopped at the nearby Moraine Hills State Park and took a leisurely bird walk along one of their awesome trails. The "Yellow Trail" was fantastic. The first part of the 2-mile loop meanders through a marshland, which offers plenty of wildlife sitings. Despite the fact that we were there around 2 pm (which isn't the ideal birding time), we saw close to twenty different species. About half of them we didn't recognize. Among the ones we did know, the highlight of the first few was a pair of red headed woodpeckers. Unlike other woodpeckers with a black-and-white speckled back and a poorly defined red patch on the head, red headed woodpeckers are Mondorian-like in their boldly defined color sections. Just below the dead tree where the two flew around, a smallish beaver made an awesome racket, going after his potential lunch in muddy water. Beside him was an inscrutable-looking green frog, seemingly oblivious of the commotion just three feet from him. Though the evidence of drought was visible in the marshland (dried-up canals, dead fish floating belly-up in shallow water, etc.), it still seemed to sustain an amazing number and diversity of wildlife. We even saw a school of tiny catfish--black and jelly-like, but shaped just like their grown-ups, complete with the whiskers and all!

The marshland is taken over by a forest, then runs through a large prairie. The prairie was literally run over by busy American gold finches. A few Indigo buntings perched on the top ends of bushes. The summer wildflowers were everywhere, with gorgeous butterflies sucking their nectar here and there. Butterflies were an annoyance for me (I'm terrified of them), but Patrick was visibly delighted. Then, we were in the forest again, this time infested with mosquitoes--and dozens of birds as well. A scarlet tanager boasted its beautiful scarlet, while tiny, hummingbird-sized gnatcatches jumped from one branch to the other, like busy bees. Had it not been for the mosquitoes, we could have stayed there all day long, staring at the tree tops, open-mouthed and sore-necked.

The last attraction just before the trail came to a complete loop was a common yellow throat, a kind of yellow warbler with a black bandit mask. The sinister mask seemed utterly and amusingly unfit for a tiny bird (about 5 inches at the most) with a slim, smart shape and a beautiful song. As we approached the parking lot by the McHenry Dam, an appetizing smell of riverside BBQ wafted through the pine forest, and we realized that we were starving. Our pace naturally picked up, and within a few minutes, we were back in the car and headed north to 120, where we'd seen a Culver's on the way.

From their wide selection of menu items, my mom chose an Atlantic cod dinner, Patrick got a pulled BBQ pork sandwich, and I settled on their signature Butter Burger. The BBQ pork was surprisingly good for a non-BBQ joint, and my mom's battered cod was excellent: firm and flavorful, it might be comparable to the fish and chips at (dearly missed) Marshall Field's. And just for the record, the cod dinner came with an extraordinary amount of food: two 6-7 inch-sized pieces of fried cod, a mountain of French fries (that covered more than half the 10-inch plate), a decent-sized cole slow and a large cup of green beans. (I think the server made a mistake; the dinner was supposed to come with either the green beans or the slow, not both.) That was a lot of food. My Butter Burger was okay--for some reason, I always end up getting the Butter Burger even though every time I do so I realize that other items taste better.

After all that grease-packed meal, a nutritionist-approved decision would be to leave the premises immediately (and never come back again). But who would leave a Culver's without getting the frozen custard? Not us. I didn't want a ton of it, but I did want a few spoonfuls of the creamy, sweet dessert. We decided to share a small (what good boys we were!) caramel cashew sundae. The cold custard and the hot, gooey caramel; the sweetness of the caramel and the salt on the nutty cashew; it was a divine concoction of matching and fighting opposites. "Didn't we get the same thing when we went to Culver's in Port Washington?" asked my mom, and she was right. I'm hooked to that one. Now finally satiated, we left the premise--but, to the dismay of our imaginary nutritionist, only to come back again sometime later during one of our next trips up North.

Who would want to resist the temptation?

I'm rather conflicted about this. On one hand, this unusual bed & breakfast more than deserves a mention. On the other, I want to keep the awesome place to myself. Assuming that this site won't get too much traffic in the future (which it doesn't as of now), I'll share the information.

Due to a small number of inns and motels, it can be difficult to find a place to stay on Washington's verdant Olympic Peninsula. The Hoh Humm Ranch, the place that has won my profound affection, is just a wonderful option in such a case. Perhaps due to its low profile as a ranch house that rents out rooms and feeds you in the morning, the Hoh Humm tends to have an opening when other places are completely booked. (This was the case during our trip.) But the ease of reservation isn't really the charm of the Hoh Humm Ranch, which is located on 101 between the Ruby Beach and the Hoh Rain Forest.

The true charm is the fact that it's a real, working ranch house, run by an elderly couple of a former zoologist and former engineer. Before going to the ranch, Patrick warned me that it'd feel like we're invading someone's private place, like we're staying in a room that used to belong to one of the old couple's grown children (which probably is the case). And it did.

A ridge-backed black dog greeted us as we got out of our car. Upon opening the front door, I stumbled upon an old woman on a recliner in front of a TV (who turned out to be one of the two owners, Mary). There were animals everywhere in the large, open space that included the spacious kitchen, communal dining table with a dozen chairs, two sitting areas and a computer desk. Two cats slept on the couches, while a large, spotted dog raised its head to examine the new visitors (us). A wood stove emitted welcoming heat in the middle of the room. Mary's husband, Bob, in the traditional ranch outfit of a denim overall and a checkered shirt, took us up the stairs to our room.

The room was nothing to write home about, but it opened to a porch that stretched to the full length of the house. From the porch, the view was stunning. The ranch house stood on a cliff, and below, their 200-acre pasture extended to the west, surrounded by hills of various green hues. Cows strolled in a distant field. Barn swallows crisscrossed the sky and delved into their muddy nests on the wall of our room.

One possible drawback of the Hoh Humm is that it's not in a town, and thus lacks restaurants nearby. This wasn't a problem for us, for we swiftly fell asleep after taking a shower at around 6:30. It wouldn't, however, have been too big of a problem even if we hadn't: the Hoh Humm is about 20 miles from the town of Forks, which has a few decent places to eat.

The true fun of staying in a ranch house began the next morning. After a full twelve hours of sleep, we felt reinvigorated enough to explore the pasture, which the owners had welcome us to do so when we arrived. The grass was pretty dewy, so we put on our hiking boots. The ex-zoologist Mary was cooking our breakfast when we came down the stairs. We stole a cup of coffee from the coffee maker, chatted with her a little (while inhaling the stomach-squeezing aroma of sausages), and got out. The black ridge back from the previous day followed us.

The meadow was beautiful with the morning sun illuminating the wet grass from a low angle. And it was chock full of animals: a family of gray goose (with the father quacking proudly every once in a while, with his meaty tongue sticking out of his mouth in a slightly disturbing manner) marched by the fence, while a large herd of sheep intensely gazed at the suspicious intruders (us) from inside their pen nearby. A mallard duck couple took their downy goslings to a swim on a pond.

A little further afield, we could see the morning mist rising among the trees around the estate. Nearly black-and-white in silhouette, the trees looked as if they were in a Japanese sumie painting. The air was absolutely fresh after a midnight rain that had washed away what little contaminant in the air, and the slight chill was just delightful. Patrick kept an eye on his watch, lest we miss out on the communal, all-you-can-eat breakfast. We snapped a few shots of the cows in the farthest field, and made our way back.

The breakfast was on the table when we came back into the house. The twelve-seater table had literary no open space, cluttered with steaming-hot goodies like homemade hash browns, sausages, cornbread, homemade "freezer" jam and a large Dutch baby. (There was also a hot oat meal, but I ignored it.) We piled our plates with these, poured some orange juice in our glasses, sat down and ate. It was all very good in a very homey way, but the best thing was the fluffy Dutch baby with a spoonful of raspberry jam poured on top. The slight saltiness of the Dutch baby went great with the sweet-sour jam, which, the former zoologist wife told us, was made by freezing the fruits without ever cooking them. (I have to try this trick sometime--the jam had a freshness that's impossible to achieve with the traditional simmer-down method.) There was a large number of people, both guests and the owners' family, and the food quickly disappeared. Good thing we came back on time.

After breakfast, we went out again to see the Japanese "shika" deer that they keep in a pen. I have no idea where they got the idea of keeping a herd of exotic deer, but then again, Mary was a zoologist, so she should know. (She was the first female student of zoology in the university she attended--she had to fight her way for her dream job, for the then-male-dominated industry simply rejected female applicants.) Mary gave me two hot dog buns to feed the deer with. Bob said that the deer "will squeak at ya," which indeed they did. Remembering my school trip to deer-filled Nara Park fifteen years ago, I fed chunks of the bread to the two eager deer. Their warm, moist lips enveloping my fingers felt strangely relaxing. (And their gentle eyes! Oh, boy, they were very cute.)

A magnificently colorful chicken commanded a sweeping view of the meadow below, as we headed out for the third day of our trip. The Hoh Humm Ranch isn't an agriturismo inn, for they don't feed you with the produce and dairy grown on the premise, but it does have the wonderfully relaxing and refreshing feel of one. Everything is quite low-key, and you get to experience the fun side of the ranch life (animals, beautiful scenery, tasty home-cooked food) without the rough & tough part of it (cleaning the barn, stacking up the infinite 50-pound bundles of hay, having to tend the animals 365 days a year, etc.). For $45 a room, I think it's an awesome deal.

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Hoh Humm Ranch
171763 Highway 101, Forks, WA
360.374.5337

When we staggered out of the Quinault River Trail in the Olympic National Park after a 13-mile, overnight backpacking trip, we were dusty and hungry (and slightly on the grumpy side as a result). It was around 2, and we still had a few miles of drive to the B&B we were to stay for the night, so we decided to find something hot to eat in the little town of Quinault.

Across the street from a quaint-looking, shingle-covered inn on the South Shore Road, we found a promising neon sign for a snack bar. It was a little snack counter tacked in the back of a general store, and the owner had to go find the lady who runs the snack bar part of the business, but we were lucky enough to get our afternoon bite.

Patrick went for a cherry cream soda. Apprehensive, I settled for a boring glass of Diet Pepsi. On a whim, Patrick got small curly fries, on which he sustained himself in his poorer days in Florida, while I went extravagant with $2.95 onion rings (my recent addiction). We both got salmon burgers.

We took our seats in a closed-in porch and waited for the food, studying a world map with about a million pins sticking out to show where customers of the little establishment have come from. It was a pretty impressive array of places of origin: quite a few people had come from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and of course Europe and the North America. There was a pin or two even on the Madagascar Island, and I was delighted to note some standing (rather crowdedly) on the tiny islands of my home country. Beside the map was an odd "recognition of support" from a troop stationed in Fort Lewis. The framed "recognition" sported two soldiers clad in Japanese samurai armor, with their swords up and ready for a quick attack. Why in the world did they use this image instead of that of an American military figure, I do not know.

The lady kindly brought our food to the table and said we'd be ready for the rest of the day. We nodded and digged into our baskets. The onion rings were on the greasy side, but the salmon burgers were surprisingly good, considering the location and the clientele. When the burgers were gone, we licked our fingers clean, took the last sips form the soda, and headed out. My calves complained when I stood up form the chair, quite understandable after a long hike and a short while of sitting, but my stomach was quite happy with the first "real" meal after more than 24 hours.

So, having refueled ourselves in Aberdeen, we started our overnight backpacking trip at the Graves Creek trailhead in the Olympic National Park. The Enchanted Valley (East Fork Quinault River) Trail followed an old road for the first few miles, and descended steeply into the bed of glacier-fed Quinault River. The trail was rated moderate, and true to the rating, it was mostly flat with a few ascents and descents. Until our pathetic backs got used to the load of the backpacks, though, even a slight ascent was a torture.

We moseyed on, stopping now and then for quick sips of water and photographs. The trail had been badly damaged from the severe winter storms that attacked the Olympic National Park. The first three miles were clear of downed trees and re-equipped with foot bridges, but beyond that point, we had to either clamber up the gigantic trees or squeeze underneath them. (In the former occasion, I loathed my shortness; in the latter, I delighted in the same physical feature.) One major creek (Fire Creek) in our itinerary had had its bridge washed out, so we had to tiptoe on the rocks and logs.

The rain forest was stunningly beautiful with golden moss gently covering the gigantic tree trunks and countless varieties of smaller plants on the ground (including dwarf dogwood and numerous fern species). Since we started relatively late around three, the sunlight was low enough to make everything glow with golden light. All along the way, we heard strange hootings--very low "woot, woot, woot" sounds that we heard more with our torso than with our ears, it seemed--from somewhere overhead, and wondered what they were. When we came out of a brush, we came across a big brown bird perched on one of the branches of the brush. It recognized us, but didn't make any attempt to fly away--the bird was truly wild, oblivious of the human presence. Similar indifference to human presence was still intact in the three magnificent Roosevelt elks we came across about half an hour later. The elks were munching on the undergrowth about fifty yard from the trail, and when we emerged, they glanced over at us and kept munching without changing their elegant poise. (The hooting bird turned out to be the blue grouse, which also was the big brown bird in the brush.)

By the time we set up our camp near O'Neil Creek, darkness was quickly descending, and by the time we had our trail dinner of apple sauce, smoked hot sausage and slightly stale bagel, we needed headlamps. (Thus no picture, again.) When we were done, we put all our food and trash in a plastic bag and hung it from a branch of a tree away from the camp, as the ranger told us, to deter the bears.

I poured some water on a towel and wiped off what little sweat and dirt I could, and inched into my sleeping bag, still feeling the grime on the back of my knees and around my face. I could do a two-day hike, but wasn't sure I'd survive the filth of a showerless trip any longer than that. I fell asleep in a while, but could hear some unidentified wild animal strolling around our camp site. As Bill Bryson convincingly documents in his hilarious book A Walk in the Woods, when you are pretty much alone in the dark woods, even a subtle rustle of fallen leaves can sound like a large bear sniffing around your tent. So I had no way of telling what was making the sound, and had to force myself to not mind it in order to fall asleep.

When I woke up around 5:30 (being still accustomed to the Chicago time), the sky was already white with morning sun, and the rain fly of the tent was moist with dew drops. I quickly went over to the bear rope setup, and was relieved to find the food bag intact. I took the bag down, and we sat down on a fallen log by the blue-hued Quinault River. Our breakfast was (slightly more) stale whole wheat bagels, a few pieces of grass-fed cheddar from Whole Foods (which survived the lack of refrigeration just fine), another smoked sausage, and a few dried prunes.

We also had a cup of cold coffee, made with a packet of Java Juice coffee extract and water. (We don't own a stove.) Considering the fact that it came out of a little plastic pouch and was diluted with plain cold water, the coffee tasted surprisingly good--just like coffee from yesterday, right out of the fridge. The stale bagels were a pain in the neck to swallow--we'll stay away from bagels for the next trip. The food may not have been that attractive had we not been in the beautiful wilderness (sky-high pine trees, beautiful blue water, birds chirping, silver-green moss hanging down from branches, absolutely clear and crisp air... the list goes on), but the environment more than complimented the lack of hot meals and coffee.

We cleared the camp and trekked back to the trail head, with our backpacks slightly lighter (with much of the food and water gone). As we ran out of energy, we snacked on Larabars and trail mix, and drank about 5 liters (1 1/4 gallons) of water between the two of us.

Some of the (obvious) surprises during the hike were as follows:
a. cheap crackers (that we got on our flight) taste much better than bagels
b. apple sauce is the best thing when you're too tired to move your jaws (I was)
c. mixing a few salty snacks among sweet ones is a good idea d. electrolyte-conscious drink tablets (like the ones from Camelbak makes you less exhausted

We've done our first overnight backpacking trip, and have made it back home in one piece, sometime around three this morning. But before going into the food situation on the trail, I have to talk about the lunch on the first day. On Thursday, we caught an early flight to Seattle, arrived there at 9:30 and drove to the Olympic National Park via I-5 and 101. Before setting out to the 14-mile hike (round trip) in the rain forest along the Quinault River, we stopped at the town of Aberdeen, Washington, for lunch. I'd come across a favorable review of the Mallard's Bistro on Chowhound, so it was our first aim. We then discovered that the restaurant doesn't open for lunch, and opted for a Chinese restaurant next door.

When we opened the door, I felt like walking into a Veteran's Hall or something of the sort, for it was a large, dimly lit space with the ceiling two-story high and a wrap-around balcony overlooking the dining area. Quite a few number of elaborately carved teak tables were arranged around an open space in the middle, and booth-style seats accompanied the tables. Along the green, tiled wall were a bunch of decorative Chinese furniture, statues and scrolls, some for sale, others not. The wrap-around balcony was supported by faux-Doric columns, which gave an odd sense of lost grandiosity to the space. We should have been dancing in our best 50's-ish clothes, instead of eating Chinese food in hiking outfit, it seemed.

Despite the over-the-top space and decoration, the lunch specials were reasonably priced at $5.95. My broccoli chicken came with fried rice and sweet-and-sour shrimps, while Patrick's Mongolian beef came with the same fried rice and sweet-and-sour chicken. (By the time we got to Aberdeen, I was starving, and I wolfed the food down as soon as it arrived--thus no photograph. Sorry!)

The ingredients were fresh and the seasoning wasn't too bad. The only thing that took me aback was the color. The sweet-and-sour sauce was brilliant vermilion, thickly draped around the battered shrimps. The sauce for the broccoli chicken was less exciting yellow, but quite stunning nonetheless. Fried rice looked more like Spanish rice, in its bright orange tint. The all-natural, deep green of the broccoli added the finishing brush strokes to this Gauguin-esque canvas of colors. All in all, I felt like I was eating Americanized Chinese food from thirty years ago. Here's a photo of the mostly finished, one-plate lunch--behold the Technicolor goodness.

Again, this is not to say that the food was bad. It was a decent, passable Chinese. The sweet-and-sour sauce was a bit on the sweet side, but then again, it's supposed to. So, except for the stunningly vivid colors, there was nothing wrong with the food. (I'm sure it was chock full of MSG, but coming from the additive's country of birth, I don't believe in its harmfulness.) Combined with the odd space in which it was served, the lunch in Aberdeen was quite an experience.

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If you want to know which Chinese restaurant I'm talking about, leave a comment--I don't feel like badmouthing the restaurant in an overly public manner. The people there were very nice. When Patrick asked for direction, all the servers (and the daughter of one of them) milled around our table and discussed it, and when all of them couldn't be certain which way it is, they pulled out a local phonebook to show us the local map.

We're taking an extended weekend trip to the Olympic National Park till Sunday.

This is what I look forward to while in the Pacific Northwest, food-wise:

a. fresh fish just off the ocean
b. Russian stuffed bread right out of the oven at a bakery in Pike Market that Patrick's been telling me about
c. good coffee, in abundance (I hate Utah on this regard)

This is what I don't particularly look forward to, food-wise:

a. gnawing on Clif Bars and dried fruits while on the trail
b. morning coffee from a little pouch diluted with cold water (better than none)
c. bears eating our food
d. bears eating us (and there are cougars, too)

NibbleKibble will be closed till we come back. Happy eating till then!