Friday, June 19, 2015

Favorite Thing #5

Teton Road Trip

Driving up to Jenny Lake Lodge is favorite thing number five in my continuing series started five years ago when I wrote about mornings in front of the fireplace at Jenny.  In sixteen days we will make our nineteenth drive to Jackson Hole and I'm looking forward to it just like I did the first time.

We always leave on the Fourth of July.  I don't know if that was an intentional choice, but we soon discovered that whenever we weren't on an I-25 or I-80, we had the roads to ourselves.  It is a different story when we drive back on the eighteenth.

We have already started piling stuff up--bug coils, bug spray, rain gear, back packs--in the living room.  Soon we will be adding piles of shorts and hiking boots and water shoes for kayaking to the growing stacks.  We will eventually put everything in bags and stuff it all in the back of the car the day before we leave.

Whenever we travel somewhere, we wake up ridiculously early, raring to go.  That is especially true the morning of the trip to Jenny.  By five everything is somehow crammed into the car and the kayak is strapped in place on top.  A quick check of the house.  Windows closed.  Coffee pot turned off after filling our Disney World travel cups.  Computer shut down.

We are on the road--C-470--traveling by Red Rocks and on our way to Fort Collins on I-25 by six and at our first stop three quarters of an hour later.  We try as much as possible to avoid eating in fast food joints, particularly McDonalds, so we always stop for breakfast at Johnson's Corner outside Loveland.  I think we started stopping there the year after we entered a McDonalds parking lot in Laramie the same time two busloads worth of a high school marching band spilled their cargo.  The next year we started breakfasting on over easy eggs and German sausage so good my mouth is watering as I write this and all served by bustling middle-aged ladies who call you "Honey."

After breakfast, I check the straps holding down the kayak and we head for Fort Collins where we mercifully get off the interstate and take 287 cross country to Laramie.  Kathie's dad always insisted that it was better to stay on the interstate all the way to Cheyenne and then take I-80 to Laramie.  He was as wrong as he could be.  287 triangulates its way to Laramie and at speeds fast enough to keep you from getting bored.  It's beautiful country with rolling hills and cool snow fences lining the way.  I like driving through little places called things like Virginia Dale with one steepled building nestled next to the road and nothing else to indicate a village worthy of its own highway sign.

Once into Wyoming--I mean the instant you cross the state line--the first thing you see after the big welcome sign is a good sized fireworks stand already with cars, mostly from Colorado, filling its parking lot.  Other than that, Wyoming is pretty much like Colorado.  I have noticed that Wyoming tends to have better roads and rest stops than we do, but maybe I've just traveled in the best part of the state.

I've always managed to resist the temptation to check out Wyoming U's campus.  Instead, we take the I-80 exit and head west toward Rawlings.  Even though I hate the truck traffic on I-80, I like this leg of the journey for two reasons.  The first is the wind farm which fills the horizon with its giant white whirring blades.  I suppose I'm supposed to be aghast at the blight those scores of windmills have placed on nature and the noise pollution they create to anyone unfortunate enough to be living close by (of course, no one is living nearby which is probably one of the contributing factors to placing the wind farm in that desolate and wind blown section of the state).  But when I first see them spinning away in the distance, I feel a kind of a thrill at the juxtaposition of man and nature.  It's the same way I feel when I drive through Glenwood Canyon.  Sure, the canyon in its pristine state was a testament to the power of nature, but that same canyon with the swath of concrete carving its way along the Colorado River is just a marvel that can't help but thrill you.

Anyway, I like the windmills.  The second reason is Sinclair.  By any objective standard, Sinclair is a smelly eyesore.  It is a town developed around an oil field and you can smell the place before your first glimpse of sooty smokestacks belching dark clouds that settle over the dreary little community.  I find the whole place--the fact that anyone would choose to live there no matter the remuneration from the Sinclair Corporation--fascinating.  It reaffirms my cynical world view.

We get off the interstate at Rawlings and fill up the tank at a Shell station there we've been going to for years.  The most remarkable thing about this particular stop is that we have made it all the way from Johnson's Corner to Rawlings without either one of us needing a bathroom.  Of course, in Rawlings the need is urgent.  We take our time, buy a  big bottle of cold water, and reconnect with 287 for the rest of the trip.  I like the idea that 287 goes all the way from somewhere south of Denver through Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Parks.

We drive up and out of Rawlings, past a multiplex movie house (Rawlings' biggest) and a relatively recent softball/baseball complex and head toward Muddy Gap.  There's nothing at Muddy Gap--not even a muddy gap--except a gas station and a road sign letting you know that going straight will lead you to Casper, while a left turn will take you to Lander.

If I had to live in Wyoming and couldn't afford Jackson Hole, I would live in Lander. It's a mid-sized high plains town with a killer hamburger joint on the southern end of mainstreet and a Fourth of July Parade that draws folks from as far away as Riverton and Washakie to line the street and watch floats on flatbed trucks, a marching band--30 strong--from the local high school, shiny new tractors from the John Deere dealership, and horses, lots of horses, pooping in unison every third block.  By the time we roll into town, it is close to noon and the parade is wrapping up.  We take the detour through a small neighborhood and reconnect with 287 on the northern end of town right where that John Deere dealership I was talking about takes up the entire block.

The road from Lander to Dubois is called The Chief Washakie Trail and runs through the Wind River Reservation.  It is a beautiful drive of mostly three lane highway swooping up and down rolling green hills with only a few smallish casinos littering the way.  There probably isn't enough traffic through this area to support the kind of casinos that trash the countryside through Arizona and the traffic there is--people carrying kayaks and pulling campers to Yellowstone--is unlikely to stop off at a casino anyway.  But there is the little town of Washakie sitting by a river bed with FORT WASHAKIE  spelled out in giant boulders on the side of the mountains above the town.  Even better than Fort Washakie is Sacajawea's grave and you begin to fully realize that you are tracing the steps of at least part of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  It makes me happy I read Ambrose's UNDAUNTED COURAGE.

We hit Dubois an hour later just as their parade is finishing.  We stop and fill up the car again in an attempt to avoid the prices in the park and to give us another pit stop before the final leg.  Kathie usually likes to drive at this point and I happily sit in the passenger seat.  This section of the road is called Togwatee Pass and as it curls down the mountain into Jackson Hole it offers tantalizing little glimpses of the Tetons until the whole range opens up around a right hand curve.  Even after nineteen years, the view still takes our breath away.

From here it is an easy jog down to Moran Junction where I flash my lifetime senior parks pass (one of my favorite possessions) and drive immediately to Jackson Lake Lodge for drinks and bar snacks.  It is usually only about half past one by this time.  Still too early to get to Jenny.  Besides, the bar at Jackson Lake is a great place to sit by massive windows and look at Mount Moran.  Sometimes there will even be a moose or two in the willow flats below the lodge.

But enough about that.  It's time to head to Jenny.  The mountains are everywhere and getting closer by the minute on this final stretch.  When I hit the sign that points to String Lake and Jenny Lake Lodge, I'm home.  I like making this turn.  It makes me feel like I belong.  And I especially like making the final turn into the lodge.  I want the people riding in other cars to know that we aren't just there for some touristy reason.  No.  We Are Staying At Jenny Lake Lodge.  It is the one time of the year that I can pretend I'm wealthy.

When we walk into the lodge, it is like a family reunion.  The people at the desk either already know us, or have been told of our arrival.  If the chef is around, he'll come out and say hi.  Same with any waiters who happen to be in the main building.  It is all so familiar and so wonderful.

We order a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and enough champagne glasses to cover any other guests--old friends-- who might be stopping by.  Kathie deals with the paperwork stuff and I drive the car over to Bluebell.  She joins me there shortly and by the time we get the kayak down and the car unpacked, our champagne has arrived and our two utterly joyful weeks have begun.




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