Tio Wally Eats America: Bear River Valley Country Store

I’m happy to have Tio Wally (long-time Me So Hungry reader) aboard to send in his eating adventures from across America. Here he is in Buford, WY and Corrine, UT.

Greetings from Corinne, Utah
N 41° 33.356’  W 112° 07.647’  Elev. 4207 ft.

I find myself today at the Bear River Valley Country Store (2780 N 4800 W), a Convenience store attached to a Farm and Ranch store, or vice-versa, attached to a gas station/truck stop. If the address seems sort of like a geographic position, it’s because it is, of sorts.

Here in Utah, there is a rather large religious *cult that’s very prolific at breeding and building things. When they laid out their towns, all the roads were laid out in a grid and numbered with Temple Square in Salt Lake City as the focal point. Thus, if you follow the addresses and streets in a descending order you’ll end up running right smack dab into it.

It certainly makes it easy to find places, especially for  my evil twin Skippy, crack lead navigator of the SS Me So Hungry. “It must be, uh, that way?” he’s wont to say. Often.

On the way here, I made a stop in Buford, Wyoming (I-80 Exit 325, Population 1, Elevation 8000). Billed as the Nation’s Smallest Town, I wanted to get a postcard and, hopefully, meet its sole resident.

I went into the Buford Trading Post and asked the only person in there, ominously, “Are you ‘The One’?” “No,” the guy says, obviously bored to death by this tiresome query, “he’ll be here in about an hour.” And so was my near-brush with “The One.”

Are you detecting a religious theme here yet? Well, so I bought this pastrami and pepper jack cheese sandwich ($5.25) at the Bear River Valley Country Store and “Oh. My. God.” It was huge! Being more loudmouth than big-mouthed, I was wondering how I was going to eat it. While not as intimidating as, say, one of those mile-high sandwiches they make at the Jewish delis, it was a pretty scary sandwich, especially considering it was made by a shiksa.

I hadn’t had pastrami in a long time and this stuff was really good. I suspect it was probably made by Boarshead or some other quality deli-meat maker. I got it on a Hoagie roll, with extra meat (which I discovered later she didn’t charge me the extra dollar for), mayo and deli mustard. Just to make it more awesome, it came with crisp green leaf lettuce, ripe(!) tomato, and crisp red onion. Good God, y’all!

Included in the price was a delightfully crunchy pickle spear and a choice of macaroni or potato salad, or chips. I got the potato salad, which tasted suspiciously, deliciously homemade.

Truly a quality pastrami sandwich, whether made in New York City or the wilds of Utah. And who’d of thought of finding one here? What a deal!

Meanwhile back at Temple Square stands a statue of the Angel Moroni holding a trumpet. Facing a hotel across the street, it is rumored that the statue will come to life and blow his horn, heralding the Second Coming. The joke hereabouts is that should a Second Coming ever occur it will be marked not so much by a heavenly trumpet herald but rather by Moroni blowing copius amounts of pigeon shit all over the Hotel Utah.

And so we roll.

*Being a Pastafarian, I think all religions are cults. For a succinct, accurate history of this one watch the South Park episode “All About Mormons”. If you want more song and dance with your history, go see “The Book Of Mormon”, now playing on Broadway. If you’d rather read it than see it get Jon Krakauer’s “Under The Banner Of Heaven”.

Tio Wally pilots the 75-foot, 40-ton(max) land yacht SS Me So Hungry. He reports on road food from around the country whenever parking and InterTube connections permit.