The Omelet to End All Omelets

Shadow gets friendly with a totem pole in downtown Seattle.

It was a typical September day in Seattle, Wash.  Beams of sunlight splintered through mostly-cloudy skies. The crisp air smelled of fallen rain and pine trees.

It was 2005.  I had graduated from Taylor three months prior and my old roommate, Shadow, one year before me.  We flew into Seattle to begin our road trip down the Pacific Coast and rented a car at the airport.  After a two-hour detour in downtown Seattle, we drove another 10 miles north -- with the windows down and the sun setting -- to our first real destination.  He parked on a hilly residential side street. 

Around the corner was Beth's Café.  I had read about their infamous 12-egg omelets in a book called Road Food and couldn't pass up the challenge.  It was a modest-looking restaurant, painted blue.  Inside were a wide variety of people.  Hipsters in flannel.  A retired couple.  Teenyboppers in black.  Mexicans.  The walls were covered with taped-up scraps of paper with crayon illustrations from customers.  A mellowed-out waitress with several tattoos seated us and poured me coffee. 

Giddy, we explained how we had sojourned 2,500 miles for a pair of 12-egg omelets.  I felt like I was in a Monty Python movie hunting down the holy grail.  She didn't share our enthusiasm, and threw down a fistful of crayons to keep us distracted.  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived:

They were served on a veritable mountain of hash browns.  It wasn't really my plan to conquer it all at once, but we did our best.  I ate a little more than half of my plate.  We boxed up the leftovers, dropped them in a cooler -- which didn't help much -- and finished them off over the next couple days as breakfast outside our tent.  It was the first of many adventures on that trip.  (That same night, in a tent about 50 yards away from ours, a tripped-out woman screamed through the night that her leg was broken and she needed a medic.)

Last night I was talking with Shadow on the phone and the topic turned to the Seattle leg of our trip.  Turns out, his brother tipped him off that Travel Channel's Man vs. Food featured Beth's Café and the very same "throw rug of eggs" earlier this year.  In fact, they held an eating contest between two guys to see who could finish it first.  It should be noted that their Southwestern omelets -- loaded with beef brisket chili, salsa, and sour cream -- are a slightly different animal than our more traditional plates.  (If the video below doesn't work, follow this link.)

Generation Y Meets the Outdoors

I went camping for two nights last weekend at Fort De Soto Park with an extended group of friends. The campgrounds are surrounded by water but are protected from the Gulf by another peninsula, which boasts the pristine Fort De Soto Beach -- a true gem with powdery sand and partially shaded by huge Australian pines.

Fort De Soto North Beach

It's almost unfair to call this "camping." The weather couldn't have been more ideal. Gas stations and condos were five minutes down the road. The grounds are impeccably maintained. Many sites are occupied by posh RVs with more amenities than my apartment, and the restrooms are cleaner than my own, at times.

Then, we barrel in with air mattresses, a coffee maker, a fancy propane grill, and speakers wired to a vast library of digital music (or Pandora radio, if we preferred). Not to mention Blackberrys, chargers, etc. I didn't even set foot in the camp office -- an iPhone could access their FAQ page within seconds, so why bother?

Note the queen-size air mattress inside. This was after Friday night. On Saturday night, an even bigger air mattress was squeezed into this tent!

There's something special about being outdoors with other people, isolated from modern conveniences. The simple act of removing yourself from the grind of the corporate world, school, or whatever your lot, creates memories. The entertainment, as we know it, is muted. The ping of an email, whir of traffic, and beep of a timer -- it all stops. Instead, waves lap. Treetops rustle. Fire crackles. We are forced to entertain ourselves.

I'm beginning to think I was born in the wrong century.

I worry, sometimes, that my generation -- and all generations to come -- has forgotten the importance of silence. Our time at Fort De Soto was refreshing, and we had a healthy turnout. I would totally do it again. But looking back on it, the weekend was tainted. Is it still possible, today, to spent a few days outdoors without a cell phone, iPod or air mattress? Without coffee, beer or bottled water? To cook food without propane, charcoal, lighters or matches?

I'll take the credit/blame for the coffee maker.

Maybe I'm getting carried away. After all, I cheated last weekend, too. I'm not much of a hunter, gatherer or fisherman. I'm the only Boy/Girl Scout dropout in my family. But if John the Baptist can subsist on locusts and wild honey, I think we can do a little better.

I'm concerned because many of my fondest memories in life are rooted in camping trips, or some variation of them: Fourth of Julys at Fireside Inn. The August 1998 family voyage to Montana and back in a 15-passenger van, and the countless KOAs where we bickered at night. Quiet bonfires at the cabin in Michigan. My college roommate, Shadow, and I trekking down the Pacific Coast Highway, camping next to a Washington riverbed and Crater Lake in Oregon, beneath California redwoods, and in Death Valley.

Will my kids and grandkids be able to appreciate God's creation in moments like these, or will they be too distracted by their video games, iPods, texting, and whatever else is hip in 2053?

Such advanced culinary skill!

The view of the bayou that our campsite bordered.

**All photos stolen from Heather Bale via Facebook**