BOULDER, Utah

It’s not often you encounter a world-class restaurant in the middle of nowhere, but Hell’s Backbone Grill and Farm (named for a local landmark) may qualify. It’s received multiple nominations from the James Beard Foundation and was described by one Salt Lake City food writer as “Utah’s Chez Panisse.” In February, Salt Lake magazine named it one of the best restaurants in Utah.

“It’s gained a reputation as one of the best restaurants in the Southwest,” said a profile in the New Yorker magazine, “and also the most improbable.”

Boulder, Utah? A friend who grew up in Salt Lake City, 250 miles away, said she had never heard of Boulder, Utah. For a long time, there was no paved road into this town. At dinner in a crowded restaurant, we wondered: In a remote village with a population of less than 300, where did all these people come from?

If you crave good food with a counter-culture vibe, you can find Boulder on Highway 12 between Torrey and Escalante. It’s a gorgeous drive — famous, too — but it’s not always a highway for the faint of heart. Travel websites describe a particular section of road as “jaw-dropping” and “vertigo-inducing.” It drops off on both sides of the road. And no guardrails.

We spent two nights in Boulder, and we might have been compelled to spend a third when snow began falling on the main road out of town. We made a hurried retreat, driving — slowly — through the snow that fell on the 9,600-foot highway summit of Boulder Mountain.

Snow was not on the itinerary for this trip. But the unexpected will happen. Even snow in springtime.

As you may have guessed, we’re partial to road trips, especially in the western U.S., where the diversity of landscapes is as different as it is stunning. The advent of spring — and the impending arrival of summer — becomes the right time to make plans and hit the road.

We did some of the usual stuff. We walked the galleries of Canyon Road in Santa Fe. We saw the landscape that inspired artist Georgia O’Keefe (Ghost Ranch, outside Abiquiu, New Mexico). We marveled at the cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde National Park, outside Durango, Colorado. We hiked in the Island in the Sky section of Canyonlands National Park, near Moab, Utah. We were wowed by the landscapes of Capitol Reef National Park.

But we also shopped for beans in Dove Creek, Colorado, the self-proclaimed Pinto Bean Capital of the World.

We listened to live music at a restaurant outside Abiquiu, and in Arizona, we wished Route 66 a happy birthday. (The fabled Mother Road — made famous by John Steinbeck’s novel and Bobby Troup’s song — celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.)

As we’ve learned from other road trips, these places become home to tough, independent people. There’s something about the desert that attracts folks who crave the opportunity to go their own way.

The owners of Hell’s Backbone Grill and Farm were the subject of a 2018 New Yorker profile. It’s the story of two women, Jennifer Castle and Blake Spalding, who defied the social and political culture of this remote place to open a farm-to-table restaurant. Before they came to town, smoked trout pecan paté and desert rubbed roasted cauliflower weren’t the usual fare.

Once settled, they took exception to Donald Trump and his eagerness to take a spectacular landscape and make it home to mines and oil wells.

Trump, then in his first term as president, decided the beauty and the Native American history of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was not worth protecting. And so he dramatically reduced the size of the monument, created in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton.

In the western U.S., it’s an old and familiar story. Local political leaders want to make money now. Others want to imagine what the landscape will look like 50 years from now.

In the case of the Escalante Staircase, Trump reduced the size of the protected area by more than half, only to have his successor, Joe Biden, restore the monument to its original size.

Now Trump is president again and so the battle is rejoined. Utah lawmakers want to do whatever they can to water down plans to protect some 1.9 million acres.

“A fight over dirt in Utah,” reported Bloomberg Businessweek on Tuesday, “hints at the future of America’s public lands.”

We’ve come to expect Trump to side with anyone who wants to make a buck. Earlier this month, he removed protections for 245 million acres of public land. Meanwhile, the New York Times reported, he is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to prevent the closing of five coal mines.

The Trump administration, added Bloomberg Businessweek, is “opening the door for unprecedented control by state and local governments — and use by industry.”

Castle, Spalding and local businesspeople say they make more money from tourism than they ever could make from grazing, mining or oil.

“We never would have moved here if the monument hadn’t been declared,” Spalding told The New Yorker. “We’re crazy, but not that crazy.”

We live in turbulent times, but the beauty of the West remains a piece of our heritage. If we let these treasures slip away, we may wake up one day and wish we weren’t so shortsighted.

Hell’s Backbone Grill deserves its accolades, and while I don’t pretend to be a restaurant critic, I was darned happy to be there.

I was happy, too, that we were able to navigate the snowstorm and come down on the other side of the mountain. We liked Boulder, Utah, but it was time to go.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com