Vacationing in the back of beyond

Okay, really, where we are has all the modern conveniences. And you can get cell service in town. But not once you get out of Winthrop proper.

On vacation with friends in Mazama, WA, we come here because the cell service is nil and the silence is so complete it has weight and mass. It is a way to escape our everyday lives and yet still have internet when we want it. :o) It’s kind of like ‘roughing it’ going camping by the Metolius River. You can go to the Camp Sherman store where you can only get domestic brie. And the best BLT on the planet.

This tradition (annual for some, occasional for others) started several years ago with just a handful of us and it became almost sacred time to me in subsequent years. That first year, it was a get away I desperately needed, with people I knew wouldn’t judge me while I contemplated one of the most difficult decisions of my life.

There is something about this place and the people with which we share it that is soul-reviving. Some of those people are not with us this year and we miss them. But then N and I have missed the last two years because we just weren’t able to get away.

Not only has this pilgrimage east of the mountains been a way to recharge batteries, but it has also been about great exercise (including snowshoe badminton) and great food and wine.

During that first trip over with M, E and T, I grabbed a bottle of wine from the local grocery. It was local wine from a winery not far from where we were staying. I’d never heard of Lost River Winery, but I loved the wine so much that I went back for a couple of additional bottles that I saved for the following year’s trip. That’s when the love affair started. A friend who came over the next year bought two cases of wine from their new (at the time) tasting room just outside Winthrop.

Then they only made a cabernet sauvignon, a merlot and a white blend called Rainshadow. I think maybe they were producing their first batch of syrah that year as well. I was happy to see, seven years later, that they still produce the Rainshadow. It’s a wonderful white blend.

So it wasn’t a surprise that when I went to the Winthrop grocery store, I made a beeline for the wine section. And found a nebbiolo that I decided was the wine to try this year. Delicious!!

When we do this vacation, we also tend to try and make meals special. There are a lot of people I know who are amazing cooks and we like to all try and show off our skills a little when we get together.

This year, because we are only two small families with two small children, there is a lot more convenience food and much less fanciness. But still some very excellent food.

Last night we decided to go out to dinner. I had been curious about a place off highway 20 that we’ve passed every time we come over here called East 20 Pizza. I looked at their menu online and thought the variety of toppings and the ingenuity of pairings was definitely work checking out.

So we packed up and headed into town where could get dinner and let our phones connect to the cell network. :o)

Let me tell you, we were not disappointed!

It’s a tiny place…a total of 6 4-tops and counter space for maybe a dozen more people. You can also call ahead and take out a hot pizza or a take-and-bake. Their business is definitely set up to serve as many people as possible, even with limited dine-in space. They have some table out on the front porch, but this time of year is not conducive to outdoor seating.

The Papa Dan’s graced our table. A pie with thin crust, a blend of their red sauce and their cream sauce (I requested this modification…their menu version comes with the red sauce), pepperoni, sausage, canadian bacon and extra mozzarella.

It was a phenomenal pie. Even the two-year-old inhaled most of a large slice. We had a couple of pieces leftover. I’m really looking forward to lunch.

At the other table in our party, individual pizzas were the rule. Each person got their own. We had shied away from the little 8” pizzas because personal pizzas, in our experience, tend to be all crust and no topping. But these were just as thin as the 16” my family shared.

There was a pesto chicken, a chicken royale (minus sun-dried tomatoes) and a mozzarella & feta pizza for the four-year-old. All were rated exceptional by their consumers.

Their red sauce is bright and fresh tasting and they apply it to the crust judiciously. To me, the perfect pizza must have the right balance of crust and toppings. And nothing turns me off a pizza more quickly than too much sauce.

The pesto was a vibrant green, which tells me it had to be pretty fresh, too. Basil oxidizes quickly, which is why jarred pesto sauces are a dark, deep green.

The cream sauce is thick and redolent with garlic, which added a wonderful richness when blended with the red sauce. Those two sauces and some pasta sheets and they’d have a killer lasagna!

One of the things that makes East 20 Pizza very Northwest is that they locally source as much of their pantry as possible. Including their wine.

Not only was I very pleased by the food, but they had Lost River wines on their menu. So I had a glass of the Community Red with my pizza last night. It was what I wanted to buy at the store the other night, but couldn’t because they were sold out.

Since we’re hoping to get back into the annual swing of this vacation trip, we are already planning to call ahead our first night back next year so they have a couple of take and bake pizzas ready for us. We can pick them up on the way through town to whatever cabin we stay in.

We can also stop at the grocery store and pick up some Lost River wine and we’ll be set.

I, for one, am already looking forward to next year!