What have the Hawkers been eating?

I know that you have all been very concerned about how well we are looking after ourselves. You will be pleased to know that we are doing pretty good (as my U.S. colleague from Deutsche Bank, Charlie Dwyer would say) or pretty well (as my Dad would say).

Of course, there has been plenty of sitting in the car, while we enjoy the incredible scenery that has been laid out for us. We have managed some hiking / walking on our own, with the promise of more hiking in the Rocky mountains with our friends, Mike and Joy McQuillen this weekend and later in Lake Superior in 8 days time.

Unexpectedly on the breakfast scene, we have yet to come across the “As much as you can eat for $5.95”, so that remains on the “To Do” list. We may settle this point with Waffle and Maple Sirup.

It will not surprise many of you to know that we have been mostly self-catering. Those skinflint Hawkers would not eat out every night, if they can save $20 a time. To help us out on this, we have discovered that almost everything here that needs to be cooked, can be cooked in a microwave. Add to this, the fact that most motel rooms have microwaves and “Bingo”. You can have a three course meal, two beers and a glass of wine, no grappa :-( for $16.35 (or something similar) for two people.

The motel rooms also have fridges. As well as keeping the beer and wine cold, all kinds of other useful goodies can be kept. Once you get on to this self-catering direction, you need butter, ham and salad and cold drinks for lunch (although you can buy a huge sandwich from “Subway”, enough for two people for $6.)

The boxes in our hire car now testify to the fact that we are a mobile kitchen. Clingfilm, salad dressing, paper cups, plastic cutlery and glasses, peanuts, Pringles, pitta bread, left over rolls (which can only be bought in packets of 8, as far as we can tell), half drunk bottles of wine, partially drunk bottle of Bourbon (40% proof; cost $6.95!!) etc are transported from place to place.

In building up this armoury of self sufficiency, we realised that our packing list was incomplete. A Swiss Army penknife would have been useful, so an equivalent U.S. model ($9.95) was purchased. How did we good Swiss people manage to forget that?!

We have bought a “Yellowstone” cold bag to transport the contents of the fridges and we bought a bottle opener, only to discover that there was one on the U.S. army knife and that it was not necessary anyway, as the bottles are all screwtops.

A Final note on the fridges. With the exception of the one at Estes Park (which was as quiet as a mouse), they are all designed to come on every 30 minutes, and make a noise like a lawn mower. My theory is that as most people have the air-conditioning on as well, no one notices. As we do not have the air-con on, and I can hear an ant breathe at 100 yards ....well, you have to write the last line yourself.