The Alpine Loop Hasn’t Changed

The Alpine Loop

Ted D. Nelson

October 10, 2015

Today Sandee and I loaded our dog Rocky into our white Chevy Tahoe and headed for

the Alpine Loop (we’re staying with Kim & Craig and their girls in Springville Utah).

Anybody who is familiar with Utah knows the Alpine Loop; for the rest of you, it is a

connector road between Provo and American Fork canyons. The Alpine Loop goes past Sundance Ski Resort and Aspen Grove Retreat and behind 11,752’ Mount Timpanogos; the summit for the road is just over eight thousand feet. Just a few more weeks, one good snow storm and the road will be closed for the winter.

The road was surprisingly busy. Taking our own sweet time, we pulled off the side of the road several times to let other cars and trucks pass us by (I hope they got there on time, wherever they were going!). Well, I guess there is an outside chance that we may have been driving overly slow; we did pull over once on our way down the back side into American Fork Canyon to let a half dozen bicycle riders coast by. (As they came up on our rear bumper, we figured they deserved a clear path down the steep grade after all they had endured to make it over the summit.)

As we were coasting down the backside, alternating between second gear and first gear, (just to see if we could make it down without using our breaks so much), we crossed over a mountain stream which flooded our heads with old memories (if you call memories from 44 years ago old).

You see, forty-four years ago, in the summer of 1971, Sandee and I were newly weds, we had been married for one year. We were living in our luxurious Mobile Home (my first “Rehab”) in southwest Provo. We lived in a very special location. That’s right, we were situated just one space away from the Provo River (oh yea, and the back of our home was firmly pressed against the chain-link fence separating us from interstate 15).

As we relaxed on our patio cooking pork chops on our hibachi (our freezer was full thanks to Grandpa Bangerter and his pig farm), we could here the babbling of the rushing water in the nearby river (well, at least we could hear the river between the roar of passing eighteen-wheelers on the freeway).

I had a job waiting for me in Orange County with PriceWaterhouse & Co. which was set

to start in September (and they were going to be paying me $10,500 per year…Wow!) I

was two essential classes short of graduating in June on the four-year schedule I had

hoped for (I think one of the classes was “Weather & Climate”), so it was necessary for Sandee and me to hang around Provo for the summer to knock out those final two classes so I could graduate in August.

It turned out to be a pretty fun summer for Sandee and me. We were able to spend

significant time with some of our relatives in Bountiful and also spend time exploring the beautiful canyons (which were always so much cooler than the valleys during those overly hot Utah summers). For transportation, we had a red four-wheel-drive Ford Bronco. The Bronco was the perfect vehicle for exploring the off-road beauty!

The first time we took the Alpine Loop past Sundance and heading for American Fork,

we were in the Bronco. We were in the Bronco when we first came to that same

mountain stream 44 years ago that we saw today. That day, I don’t remember seeing

more than one or two other vehicles on The Loop (I’m pretty sure there weren’t any

bicycles either).

When we came to the stream that day, we knew that we had arrived at a special place; we pulled off of the road, actually drove through the stream and picked a perfect spot for our picnic.

Once we were out of the Bronco, we quickly picked the perfect spot in the stream to

place our watermelon so it would start chilling. Next, I cleared out a good clear spot on the ground, gathered the precise fuel I would need and proceeded to build the often practiced “teepee” from the kindling, designed to produce the perfect fire “with just one match”!

Next we would use my pocket knife to prepare the appropriate skewers from small

branches with which we would turn a mere weenie into a sumptuous “Pig in a Blanket”. The key to completing this transformation relied on Sandee’s expertise as she took the dough of the individual biscuits out of the 10cent Pillsbury Biscuit Tube and stretched them out into long strips that she carefully wrapped around the wieners (being careful to make sure the dough stuck to itself after each wrap). The challenge was then to demonstrate supreme patience while cooking the wieners (soon to be “Pigs in a Blanket”) over the hot coals of the open fire without burning the dough.

The only thing better than the perfectly browned “Pigs in a Blanket” was desert; the stream-chilled watermelon!

Today we had our dog Rocky with us; back then we had our dog Nooley. Other than that and the color of our car, nothing has changed… MUCH!!!