This morning I walked next door for breakfast at O’Brady’s Family Restaurant. The décor was reminiscent of circa Brady Bunch 1974 and the waitresses were of similar vintage. They all looked the same: 4” gray roots with some other unnatural hair color, sunken eyes with deep black circles, husky voices and a surly disposition. Coincidentally, every booth was stocked with a rack of books, so I picked-up a book entitled “How to Cheer Up Crabby People”. The inside flap read “Back in 1857, a small group of abolitionists crept into a military compound at Harpers Ferry VT, WY or KA [We’re not sure which]. They either surrounded or shot the sleeping guards and yelled “Trick or Treat” [OK, we don’t know what they yelled because it was a long time ago]. But the point is that by doing this, these crabby people made the entire South so crabby that they shot and hung the abolitionists. This, in turn, made the rest of the abolitionists’ friends crabby, and before you could say “The South is Toast!”, we had a whole mess of battles where lots of crabby people killed thousands of other crabby people. The point is, you just never know when someone around you might be crabby enough to start a civil war.” So after reading this, I was nice to my waitress and I bit my lip about the décor. Breakfast was good.
As I departed Idaho Falls, I witnessed the falls for which it is named. These falls are only about 20’ high, but they are about ½ mile long and there’s a pretty park all around them. Like every major city in ID, the Snake River runs through it. The first 20 miles out of ID Falls was a slow ride due to road construction and I hit at least 6 sections of highway under construction throughout eastern ID and western WY. Lots of gravel and freshly tarred asphalt don’t make for good riding conditions, but I can attest that your tax dollars are hard at work. I saw hundreds of supervisors and a few workers repaving miles of interstate highway today. Apart from the road work, the ride was fantastic as I snaked my way towards the Grand Tetons [get it, snaked, Snake River, never mind]. Amber waves of grain and green potato farms gave way to purple mountains majesty and some phenomenal twisty mountain roads. The weather was comfortable, but cool, breezy and mostly cloudy.
Jackson Hole is a pretty little tourist trap that looks like a cross between Calistoga, CA and Scottsdale, AZ, but with more mountains, antlers and Wild West atmosphere. The town has 8,000 residents and 35,000 tourists from everywhere. I checked into a hotel and headed out to the Grand Tetons. It’s time to bust out your Bucket List again. These mountains jut-out straight up from the flat sage brush plains. This must have been the inspiration for Jon Anderson’s lyrics for the Yes tune Roundabout “Mountains come out of the sky and they stand there.” The only thing similar that I've seen are the Swiss Alps. I saw a nest with a pair of Harrier Hawks and one was carrying a fish back to the nest.
As the sun started to set, it got cold and I changed into my winter gauntlet gloves and headed back to the Visitor’s Center in Jackson Hole. They gave me some maps and we charted my course through Grand Tetons and Yellowstone. However, I was warned that it will take two days to see Yellowstone and there’s a 40% chance of snow and road closures tomorrow. Oh well, we’ll play it by ear since there is no set plan for this trip. There are worse places to be stuck than Jackson Hole, WY.
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