Road Food

Posted by Degan on July 15th, 2011

“It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark… and we’re wearing sunglasses…Hit it.”

There is something magical about taking off on a road trip into parts unknown, driving and driving and driving through different countrysides and cityscapes and having all kinds of adventures. The “something magical” is magnified ten-fold when your ride is a Ducati and once you throw some road food into the mix there aren’t many other things I’d rather do on a long weekend.

On the long weekend, we were riding up to Salmon Arm, so we had a destination in mind but we stopped at the Husky House Truck Stop in Hope for gas and – because I was freezing and because Matt needed to call the Ducati dealership at 10 AM – breakfast.  He tried to make me have coffee from the gas station and it was all I could do to point plaintively at the truck stop diner on the other side of the Husky campus lot and we were nestled into a booth surrounded by classic truck stop decor.

The scenery in Hope is spectacular – the highway is flanked on one side by forest-covered mountains with ribbons of water cascading down and on the other by the swollen Fraser river. The company (Matt excluded) swings wildly from sweet waitresses who call you “hun” to faux headband-sporting gangstas to other city people, clearly “not from around here”.

I spent most of my childhood driving around B.C. – my grandmother lived in the Rockies and my grandfather lived in Creston and the rest of the relatives were scattered about the country in a pattern that could take weeks to drive through – but it’s been a while since I’d been in such a proper truck stop. There were oil paintings of rigs above the cotton curtains, shelves of toy semis for the children of drivers (lucky only if they liked trucks, however), and this masterpiece mural. Also there were pancakes and unlimited coffee so I was in heaven.

Since we got the motorcycles we’ve been riding a lot. We’ve been over the Duffy Lake Road twice in a week (once in each direction). We’ve been through Hope 3 weekends in a row. It’s a bit different than my usual circuit of Gastown watering holes but I love it. Breakfast is pancakes and bacon, lunch is grilled cheese, dinner is a burger and with luck you’re settled in wherever you need to be by dark so you can have a drink.

Food somehow just tastes better when you have to travel for it.