Six guys, 1,300 miles and seven burger joints: It's a road trip made in antacid heaven

EDITOR'S NOTE: Three years ago, Alex Bennett and Kyle Buckingham of Sammamish were arguing about which burger was the best in the area. They decided to devote seven days to researching the question, and they have revisited the issue each succeeding year with four more friends -- Ryan King, Tyson Williams, Kyle Flotlin and Mark Benson. This year, Burger Tour 2006 traveled 1,300 miles across Washington to crown a new king. Here is Bennett's day-by-day report.

DAY ONE

June 21, 8:30 p.m.

Corral Drive In


		KAREN DUCEY / P-I
	At the Chuck Wagon Drive-In in Mount Vernon, from left, Alex Bennett, Kyle Buckingham and Tyson Williams wolf down the Bar Six, which sported a full pound of beef.

Clad in the Burger Tour uniform (blue jeans and the Burger Tour Week '06 T-shirts), the six of us arrived at the Corral Drive In in Long Beach to kick off our 2006 tour.

Things couldn't have gone better. The Corral is a classic burger joint. It's small, but the burgers are not.

Weighing in at 8 to 10 pounds with everything on it, the famous Tsunami Burger contains 5 pounds of beef, a head and a half of lettuce, a pound of cheese, tons of tomatoes, chopped onions and loads of relish, all meant to feed a minimum of eight mortals. We knew it was going to be a killer burger when we had to order it 24 hours in advance.

The staff was kind enough to let us into the kitchen to witness creation of the Tsunami. It's quite a sight to see an 18-inch beef patty being flipped by two people holding a pizza spatula as they yell, "Tsunami!"

At our table, a gentle woman wielding a razor-sharp machete carved the monstrosity into eight "slices." Usually, devouring the Tsunami takes eight people roughly 30 minutes. It took the Burger Tour less than 15. Considering how much effort goes into making the Tsunami as big as possible, the production does not take away from the taste.

AFTERTASTE: At every Burger Tour stop, we autograph a poster of the Tour and give it to the staff. After photos and many thanks, we head out to our campsite at Cape Disappointment State Park. We are 20 yards from a beautiful beach and can tell this will be a highlight of the tour.

DAY 2

June 22, 7 p.m.

Big Tom Drive Inn

This morning we awoke to a perfectly clear day beckoning us to play beach golf for hours until it was time to head to Big Tom Drive Inn in Olympia. The drive was spoiled by the stench of six unshowered men reeking of campfire smoke from the night before.

Still, Big Tom had all the signs of a great burger joint. It was a small hut on a street corner, with equally small prices and friendly service. After a shouting match trying to get all our burgers ordered at the drive-through window, we took them to a picnic table in an adjacent park to devour and score the half-pound delights.

The burger's claim to fame is its sauce, affectionately referred to as "goop." Sauces are very important to us on Burger Tour, and this shows promise of being the best sauce we will encounter. It's huge on flavor, isn't too runny and is delicious to dip fries into. Big Tom keeps the ingredients a heavily guarded secret, but we have determined it is honey-mustard based and might contain Thousand Island dressing, mayonnaise or relish. When blended with chopped lettuce, the goop at Big Tom may achieve what I like to call "condimental perfection."

AFTERTASTE: Big Tom burgers are small compared with past Burger Tour contenders, but they are pleasantly filling. A few Tour members enjoyed them so much they went back for another round.

DAY THREE

June 23, 9:30 p.m.

Gustav's

After much needed showers and a night in our own beds, we traveled to the central Washington Bavarian-theme village of Leavenworth to eat at Gustav's, a popular restaurant and beer garden that has a strong reputation for great burgers. Situated right off U.S. Route 2, it was difficult to miss Gustav's thanks to its hand-painted, Bavarian-style sign and the gigantic onion dome atop the beautifully painted chalet. The interior is reminiscent of a cozy ski lodge decorated with deer antlers, lanterns and carvings. The two-story restaurant also features a balcony where we enjoyed the mountain scenery while we dined on the Gustav Burger. Challenger No. 3 was a 1/3-pound beef patty with whole leaf lettuce, raw onions, tomatoes and pickles. The burger drew its originality from the addition of imported Swiss cheese and two thin slices of Canadian bacon.

AFTERTASTE: The burger can best be described as satisfying. It filled us up nicely for our evening in Leavenworth, where we browsed the shops and stocked up on firewood for our night of camping at Sun Lakes.

DAY FOUR

June 24, 11:30 p.m.

The Onion

After waking up at Sun Lakes State Park near Coulee City, we had most of the day to ourselves. We passed the time playing Wiffle ball and cooking hot dogs and s'mores over the fire.

In late afternoon we set out for Spokane to get settled in at our next campground. The river at Riverside State Park was fast, cold and full of rapids, but it didn't stop us from cooling off in it. There were many trails to explore, so we were occupied until it was time to eat at The Onion and conquer the State of the Onion Burger. The relatively normal-size burger is set apart from other burgers by the biggest onion ring we had ever seen resting atop the patty, along with a delicious sauce, of which there was not enough. One member devoured his entire burger before I was even done measuring and recording its dimensions.

AFTERTASTE: The Onion was packed at around 9 p.m. Many other customers were interested in the Tour. Several groups of people asked us the usual questions: where we went and, more important, where the best burger can be found. We couldn't answer the second question definitively, but it is nice to see the public genuinely taking an interest in what we're doing.

DAY FIVE

June 25, 2:30 p.m.

Eleanor's Corner Saloon

We arrived in Uniontown, near Pullman, not sure if the city actually existed. It was that small. However, what the city lacks in size it made up for by the mass of the Colossal Burger at Eleanor's Corner Saloon.

Since no mortal has ever finished the whole, we ordered three for the six of us to split. The owner, Tim, who waited on us personally and prepared our Colossal Burgers, allowed us into his cramped kitchen. He told us that everything but the kitchen sink was going on this burger. He was not joking. We watched in pure terror as he piled ingredients in the skillet one after another. Later, after sweeping these ingredients onto the bun, we were floored when he reached into the fridge for more.

This process was repeated more than once. The sheer amount of food he was piling on these buns was absurd. When asked if he had ever eaten one, Tim replied, "Oh, no. Oh, Jesus, no." Tim drizzled hot chili over the burgers, added the top buns and jammed two skewers into each one to make sure they didn't fall apart. While adding the chili, Tim warned us that the nearest antacid is 12 miles away.

The finished burgers ended up 6 1/2 inches tall and weighing more than 4 pounds. As we sat down, there came an interesting problem: how to eat them. One member said it was like reaching into a bucket of random food and pulling out a handful.

The final ingredient list: three 1/2-pound beef patties, ham, turkey, roast beef, corned beef, bacon, a fried egg, chili, potato salad, pineapple, lettuce, tomato, green peppers, jalape�os, pickles, onions, mushrooms, olives, blue cheese, Swiss cheese, American cheese, cheddar cheese, salsa, an onion ring, a few French fries and a toasted bun.

AFTERTASTE: The Tour left Eleanor's Corner Saloon absolutely jubilant, for this burger was a delicious and joyous lifetime experience. The only thing keeping us from passing out was the fact that we had two more burgers from last year's tour to eat "recreationally" later that day as we continued "The Gauntlet," which was already more than living up to its name.

DAY SIX

June 26, 8 p.m.

The Public House

The day had finally come. The tour was returning to the 2005 winner of Best Overall Burger -- Fat Smitty's at Discovery Bay, near Port Townsend. Carl "Fat Smitty" Schmidt, a former Marine and close friend of the Burger Tour, runs his establishment out of an all-American -- and dare I say perfect -- burger joint. He is closed two days a week, so we had to plan the rest of the tour around his schedule to make sure we were there when he's open.

Expectations were high and adrenaline was flowing as we pulled up to the place, blasting our theme song, "Rock You Like a Hurricane," by the Scorpions. Our excitement and anticipation were immediately destroyed by a note on the door that read: "Closed -- on vacation."

The potential ecstasy of the Smitty Burger was killed, but our hunger was not. We were a very hungry and very demoralized group. It was the Burger Tour's worst hour.

Simply skipping Fat Smitty's and not having seven stops on the tour was not an option, so we drove into town and found a restaurant called The Public House displaying a neon sign advertising its burgers.

Inside we read that it had won best burger in town a few times, and our morale spiked. After asking the waitress what she would consider to be the signature burger, we ordered a round of Bayou Burgers, which have a half-pound of beef graced with a tasty bourbon glaze and saut�ed onions.

AFTERTASTE: This makeshift Burger Tour stop did not disappoint. More important, though, it shows that the Burger Tour cannot be derailed even by the most devastating misfortune. On to Whidbey Island, where we will camp at Fort Ebey State Park.

DAY SEVEN

June 27, 4 p.m.

Chuck Wagon Drive-In

Our final stop was in Mount Vernon at the Chuck Wagon Drive-In.

When we entered, we were greeted by owner Al Tardif and a comfortable Southwestern atmosphere. We had heard that the menu here is large, but were blown away when we found dozens of different burgers eligible to be judged. We actually had to ask Al to recommend his best, which he suggested was the Bar Six, sporting a full pound of beef, all the usual fixings (including bacon), and his own version of goop, which actually was inspired by the goop at Big Tom Drive Inn.

Al's goop is Thousand Island-based and he admits it's not quite as good as Big Tom, but it still puts most other sauces to shame. The Bar Six presented the largest challenge we had come across so far, and we were told that if we finished it there would be an ice cream reward if we were still hungry.

Unlike many of our stops, this burger did not lack in any category. Only two of the six members (including myself) were able to tackle the Bar Six. When a burger is this tasty and the Burger Tour still can't finish it because it's so big, it is a phenomenal burger.

AFTERTASTE: The Chuck Wagon brought this awesome week to a close and we knew we had ended with a bang. Eager to calculate the results, we began to sort through our ratings to find the champion. After an hour and a half with a calculator we finally had a winner. Narrowly beating Eleanor's Corner Saloon, and standing tall in first place, was the Chuck Wagon Drive-In of Mount Vernon.