The Tetons

We wandered into Teton territory 28 years ago with our kids and a pop-up camper behind our GM van since it's just south of Yellowstone.

John wasn't all that impressed then, but as we discovered this year, his younger self had not seen the entire Teton National Park. He feels a lot better about it now. Also he's corrected the mistaken impression Hollywood's cowboy movies left with him.

He had thought Jackson Hole was a small canyon nestled into a mountain's flanks where

black hatted outlaws had established their own criminal town. Stupid Hollywood. Never believe anything you “learn” from a movie! Our Bonanza fantasy about Nevada's Virginia City was destroyed last year.

Other signs explained (because the National Park Service all but eliminated every bit of information in this Political Pandemic) that Jackson Hole is a fifty mile long north-south valley –a graben– that fell while tall mountains thrust up to the west and lesser mountains climbed on the other side. 

This view looks south from Signal Mountain; the Tetons are just off-camera to the right.  The valley is home to the Snake River and others that fill with snowmelt waters in the spring. Not so much now in September, although one NPS Ranger remarked that five inches of snow had fallen just this Labor Day weekend. The storm was short-lived and our temperatures were in the 60s and 70s with lows comfortably above freezing most of the week we were here.  Grand Teton is the largest of the glacier-topped mountains between Wyoming and Idaho. 

While the valley floor is quite high, about 6,500 feet above sea level, the peak of Grand Teton soars twice that height into thin air.

We took a couple scenic drives in our Honda “toad” and even had a lunch on a shore of picture-encouraging Jenny Lake where we met

 a Park Volunteer, Bill Apel, who told us yellow is the predominant fall color in this high country. He said the only red color (and, really, it was more like a dull rust) comes from clusters of sumac bushes on the hill- and mountainsides.  The air is just too thin for the oaks and other hardwoods that Michiganians are used to.  Of course by far, the overall color is green from the needles of the lodge pole pines and other high altitude firs.

One of our scenic drives also took us up the Teton Pass. As we later learned, it is not the only way to get by the mountains nor even necessarily the most scenic, but it sure is beautiful –and steep in its own right.  Neither of us was entirely comfortable meeting the speed limit on the curves, and Debbie

is always antsy when the dropoffs march right into the shoulders.  “Slow down!” you might suggest.  How about as slow as these cargo wagons in this historical picture?  The caption dates this photo at “early 1900's.” About a full minute after reading that, both of us snapped our eyes wide open in astonishment.

The 1900's were our times, both having been born in the first half of the 20^th Century. We thought of it and ourselves as so modern, but––! In the early 1900's, our Grandparents –people we knew!– were older children, even teenagers!  And once again, John recalled his shock at learning that Old West Legend Wyatt Earp had died when John's own father was already nine years old!

If nothing else, these past two years of touring the other part of our country have shown us that History is not so old!

These days, of course, the valley is frequently traversed by regional and private jets on the approach to KJAC's runway.

 

We also should mention that, here at the first of October, we are more than halfway through the time allotted for this trip and we thought we were at the Western Terminus. Except that–– going over the Teton Pass we found ourselves in Idaho!  Yes, we look at maps, but we really had no concept that Idaho was just over the mountain. Really.  This is important; keep reading.

We ate out again, too. Debbie should not learn that John thinks she's mellowing. The Bird is a beer and burger place south of Jackson city. They had a stout called “Ruckus” that we both liked from a brewer in Melvin, thirty miles distant. They also had imaginatively named and pleasingly complemented burgers that disappointed us for being served between halves of some type of thin roll (for burgers?!). And raw-meat-Debbie thought hers was overcooked anyway. Well Done John disagreed.

We had parked the coach in the Gros Ventre campground. Both Google and The Bitch call it, logically enough, “GROHSS VEN-terr.”  But it's really French, from a people who never had managed to learn how to spell properly, throwing in extra letters all over the place; they would say,  “groh-VAUN,” n'est-ce pas? (...which is pronounced nay-PAH, isn't it?)

How that name happened, in an area famed for the Mormon architecture of the still preserved farm buildings is a mystery to us.

Original iconic photo by praise winning Debbie

Anyway, back at the coach, we noticed a wet splotch and an active drip behind the front bumper. It was red, like transmission fluid, but we knew that just couldn't be because the transmission (and the engine) are forty feet behind the front bumper of Bry RV. Looking at the dirt encrusted tubing and where it went, we deduced it probably was power steering fluid and called the nearest Freightliner repair shop where the Service tech also thought it likely. We went out and bought a quart of the recommended fluid to top off the power steering reservoir.  Then we we learned the big metal canister holds wayyy more than a mere quart and also is forty feet behind the front bumper. Then John checked the dip stick and it seemed okay. So far, so good.

The Freightliner place is in Idaho City, Idaho. This is how we learned there is another way to get by the mountains because we didn't really want to push our house-on-wheels up a curvy ten percent grade and try to keep it from falling down the other side, especially with power steering we didn't trust. So, our Trip has been expanded with another full week farther West than intended, but it was an educational week. And fun, too.

Stay Tuned for the next chapter.

{and the repair bill....}

––