I'm sitting here on a Sunday night, eating pumpkin soup and avocado. The soup is great, if I do say so myself -- fresh pumpkin carved from my outdoor decorative pumpkin, a little bit of italian sausage, onion, garlic, curry, nutmeg. A touch of coconut milk or cream and rosemary would be good too, if I had it. I'm not sure how to explain the avocado. I've been on an avocado binge since I came out West. They're cheaper and fresher here, like the salmon. They must be California avocados.
Last weekend, the leaves were down from the trees so that I could see the snow on the mountain range as I was sitting at my table, looking out toward the east. So, rather than waiting for snow to find me in the valley, with its 50 degree temperatures last week, I thought I'd go try to find it. I took off for a place about 20 miles into Logan Canyon called Tony Grove. I had heard several people talk about it. I thought I might find snow and maybe even an Italian guy there.
I will include pictures. As always, they don't do justice to the beauty. But they'll give you an idea. Here's a view of the drive up, which was full of aspen trees and tall evergreens. To give you a sense of the scale, the twiggy trees near the bottom of the frame are full grown aspens.
The road to Tony Grove is a groomed snowmobile trail, maintained by the U.S. Forest Service, in Winter. There were lots of signs warning "Know Before You Go" and such. I suppose snowmobilers are a reckless lot, and student snowmobilers from USU even more so. That's the idea, isn't it? If you fall off, you land in poof of powdery stuff. But it looked kinda dangerous to me, with drop offs, and being out pretty far in the wilderness.
I saw 2 adult dear with a baby crossing the road on the way up. My car was scraping bottom (about a foot of snow) by the time I got to the top. There was a beautiful little glacial lake there at the end of the road, one carload of Asian tourists, and a young couple with a 3-year old on skis getting his first lesson.
I wondered why the place wasn't named Tony's Gove, rather than Tony Grove. There was a sign at the top that explained. Apparently "tony" is slang for socialites or jetsetters. A big banking family in Logan used camp there for 6 weeks at a time, back in the 1950's. They must had fun since they stayed way out there for 6 weeks. I suppose it's still something of a tony grove, with all the snowmobiling (jet-skiing rather than jet-setting).
I'll have to find someone to go Winter recereating with. Last week I went to a dinner at a Logan Indian Oven restaurant, put together by a group called the Logan Newcomers. There were lots of different types of people there, all ready for socializing, I think. There's a Winter resort fairly close called Beaver Mountain. So if I can find some "tony" cohorts, we could take a trip to that place, which is just beyond Tony Grove, and maybe a little tamer.
I didn't find the Italian guy named Tony up there. But, as usual, I got to see some beautiful country. And I traveled from Fall to Winter with a 7-mile drive that "took me higher," from the normal altitude of 4775 feet to 8100 feet in just a few minutes.
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