Day one, day two

All photographs are © Robert Sommers 2011

My wife and I needed a vacation. The last several years we have managed to scrape our rubles together and chill out in Hawaii but this year we decided to do something different. Like most Americans, money is tight and we had neither the time, energy or the funds to do anything extravagant. One day a lightbulb went off in my head. I consulted a neurologist and he thought that the cranial blindness was probably only temporary and that is when I had the big idea - tap into the several hundred thousand AmEx reward points that had lain dormant in my account and use them for a getaway. I looked into going back to the Grand Hyatt in Poipu, Kauai and we could certainly swing it, but would the resultant hangover and guilt for spending the money come back and bite me on the ass later on? Would I feel like an idiot for eating the seed corn sometime down the road?

Leslie had never visited Yellowstone and it had been a former lifetime ago for me and I thought, why not? The kids are in school, the crowds are out of the park, the trees might be turning. If we could hit the narrow window before the park closed down and the only way in was on a snowmobile, the thing might actually work. For a fraction of the cost of a trip to Hawaii, which as much as I love it, was becoming sort of old hat. I think that Yellowstone is our most incredible National Park, for variety of scenery, wildlife and sheer beauty. At least of the ones I have visited. Glacier isn't far behind. In fact, I think it should be a requirement that every citizen of our fair land visit the park at least once in their lifetime.

I asked, she assented, we booked. Through AmEx travel, which gave us even more points, a self perpetuating circle. Plus, Leslie's younger brother has a second home in Jackson, one which we could use as a base camp, so we would save bucks on lodging as well. Free is always good.

We stopped the paper and made arrangements for our child Nigel, the black burmese cat that Leslie had once rescued from the alley. Paid the most pressing bills. Leslie and I went looking to fill the voids in our winter wardrobe. I visited the high end outdoor stores but couldn't pay the kind of gelt they were asking for the high end apparel and managed to get by with a new forty dollar shell jacket from the Sports Authority that would suit my needs just fine. We looked at bear spray, about forty five bucks a can and decided to pass. We could always get it there. I had hiking boots somewhere in the closet.

We drove up to Ontario, the most convenient local airport, for the flight to Salt Lake City and the next flight to Jackson. The flight delayed three hours and we started getting a bit chippy with each other. It is hard to get away, especially when one party is always pushing for punctuality (that would be me) and the other party is actually responsible for making sure that everything was covered. I am not going to retread the Utah stop and layover again and the resultant flight to Jackson except to say it is a gorgeous airport to fly into, with breathtaking views of the Snake River and the Tetons. The Tetons, the twin bumps that the early and horny french explorers thought looked like tits. When you are on the road that long, I guess everything looks like tits.

The Jackson Hole Airport looks like it was designed by Ralph Lauren. Faux hide couches, a long fireplace. Over saturated panoramic photographs so sweet that they give you a toothache. The place is really more ski lodge than airport, I was waiting for my hot chocolate and fondue. Upscale trendiness, pretty much like the whole town, replete with it's expensive clothing stores and galleries, it's fly fishing and outfitting shops and the other delicious little spots that are the favorite of the mega-rich.

Jackson sits at the foot of the Grand Tetons that are situated due west. Humans first arrived on the scene about 12,000 years ago. The indian tribes that lived in the area were the Crow (Absoroka), Blackfeet, Shoshone and Gros Ventre. Trappers and other folk stopped in the valley in the early 1800's but found that the native climate was too inhospitable, with its harsh winter and short growing season. Jackson is the name of the town, the hole being the whole forty eight mile long valley, bordered by the Hoback range to the south, the stately Teton range to the west and Gros Ventre Butte to the east. The town sits at slightly higher than six thousand feet while Grand Teton itself rises to 13,772' above sea level.

In the 1920's some of the local population thought about finding ways to keep the area pristine. An organization called the Snake River Land Company started buying up all the land it could gobble in the area. It turned out to be a front for John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of the richest gents in the entire world, and he tried to give the land to the federal government for a new park. Locals were incensed, like today the native inhabitants having a tendency to want to exploit and despoil the natural finery. The government initially balked but finally assented when Rocky Jr. threatened to sell it to the highest bidder. FDR created the Jackson Hole National Monument in the forties and it was expanded in the fifties to its present form.

Anyway, that is a brief introduction to the city, surrounding a town square with it's arched antler entrance, shops and nice restaurants, a place where your average wall street CEO can get a little respite from the restless mob with their torches and pitchforks.

We got our car, a sweet little red Toyota Rav 4, which I heartily endorse by the way, and found our way to our host, a shirttail relative who has lived in the area for about five years and who has a passion for climbing, skiing and mountain biking. Really an incredible place for those who love both looking at and interacting with nature. He like many natives, tends to steer clear of the parks, the millions of visitors every summer having a way of terrorizing the local population. He said that he knew unknown roads that led fifty miles into the wilderness that matched the beauty and easily surpassed the congestion of Grand Teton and Yellowstone.

But not this week. We saw none of that, largely having the place to ourselves. But I skip ahead. David suggested that we try one of the better restaurants in the area and we settled on one called the Gun Barrel. It was near the K-Mart and Albertsons. I needed cough syrup, I have been coughing and hacking for a couple weeks and it was driving my wife crazy. I thought that going up to the cold mountains was probably just what I needed for my cold, that is if my aim was to contract long term pneumonia and get carted out of the quaint mountain burg with a toe tag.

Frankly, we were at each other's throat pretty good by this time. I couldn't do anything right and was failing on a thousand other counts. Because I am a "fucking asshole." The shrinks call the pattern the dark dance and she was about ready to get back on the plane. I apologized profusely, falling on my sword a good half dozen times and we agreed to a temporary truce as we entered the large rustic dining establishment.

The  room was filled with old reels and snowshoes and dominated by a large collection of animal mounts. I don't know about you but mounts make me kind of sick. We once sold a painting to a very rich guy from Beverly Hills who was actually a very little man. His office had a 9' tall mount of some giant bear that he shot in Alaska. His prowess must have made him feel about 6' tall or about 8" taller than his actual height. I am not anti hunting, if you need food for you or your family but find sport and trophy hunting really quite deplorable. Give the animal a gun, make it even.

Anyhow they sat us at a table near a stuffed cougar, bit nauseating, really a shame to take these magnificent predators out of the ecosystem, but explain that to your average god fearing conservative and they won't have a grasp of it. The concept of biological balance, healthiest for all of us if left to function naturally, a precept tough to square with man being given dominion over all the flora and fauna by the creator of your choice.

Be that as it may, end of sermon, the food was pretty damn good. The meat in this meat and game restaurant, was simply phenomenal. Leslie had trout stuffed with crab. I tried the elk chops, served with about five tired and limp green beans. Not a lot of fresh veggies in the wild northland. My elk chop, which was really four nice size chops was maybe the best bite of meat I have ever had, only challenged by the cabrito (baby goat) in Loreto many moons ago. The seasoning, the flavor of this elk was so extraordinary. Leslie had a bite and said that she was now off beef, elk being the best thing she ever tasted.

We were now getting along better, shaking off the long layover and the rushing and the bad mood and my bad attitude. We found our way back to the pad on the side of the ski slope and turned in for the night.

Next morning we got up early and found our way to the recommended breakfast place, the Bunnery. Leslie is a breakfast person, I am not, but I wanted to be a team player, being that kind of guy. A local favorite, it was so so for me. Cold hash browns, good bread. Nice waitress from Belarus. I met more Moldavans and Belarussians in the area, don't know why they congregated there but the area is thick with them. Maybe it has to do with a similar climate. Anyway we got hassled by a worker for not waiting outside in the cold after one of the locals told us to just walk in. Folks just don't know how to behave sometimes. Can't you read the signs?

After breakfast we headed into Grand Teton Park. We drove past the Gros Ventre River and saw four moose ambling through the willows. The locals call them swamp donkeys. We past an elk herd to the east and saw our first of many serious photographers with the zillion mm scope and lens outfit.

We stopped at a turn out and then drove up to south Jenny Lake. We started walking the trail around the lake and had our first commune with nature. A bald eagle sailed over head and landed on a tree limb above us. We walked the trail gingerly and unmolested. I am ashamed to say that we never did buy bear spray the entire week, confining ourselves to fairly short hikes and the whim of the fates. We felt the bears but didn't see them, at least while hiking. Once I climbed down to a shelf on the backside of Oxbow Bend and ran into deep and fresh tracks that put a chill on me, not knowing where the responsible ursid may lay. We had watched a film interview with a grizzly victim, picked up and shook like a ragdoll by a giant of a bear that covered 90 yards in a blink of an eye.

Our first walk together in the woods was fantastic, we were visited by a few birds that I don't ever recall seeing in the past. Leslie held her hand out once for one and the bird flew over and landed in her palm. There was an eery quiet and a brisk chill in the air. Our semi out of shape legs ached in the altitude and the clean air burned our lungs a bit.

We managed to finish our hike unmolested and continued driving to Oxbow Bend. Oxbow Bend is in the northern part of the park, west of the Moran Junction. This is one of the famously beautiful and most photographed spots in the region and we found it on a fine morning. The aspens were a bright gold color and got redder every day. They shimmered and glistened in the breeze. Ducks played in the water and geese flew overhead.

 From Oxbow we entered Yellowstone Park, the nation's first national park. Yellowstone is 3472 square miles of some of the most pristine scenery and wilderness known to man. Bigger than Rhode island and Delaware combined it has a enormous multitude of eco-zones, from mountain crags and plateaued prairies to alpen lakes, scenic river canyons and huge forests. The park is located over an enormous volcano caldera and is home to over 300 geysers and 10,000 thermal features, from fumaroles to mudpots.

Yellowstone was discovered by the white man in 1806 when John Colter, an advance scout for Lewis and Clark wandered into the area. He stayed for three years blissfully exploring his new found place of wonder. Those that followed him called the place Colter's Hell on account of the belching, sulphuric geothermal activity. Prior to his arrival the park was inhabited by a nomadic group of shoshonean indians called the Sheepeaters. There were also Crow and Blackfeet living in the region and a small insular nomadic band named the Bannock.

Leslie and I drove and stopped seemingly every two minutes to take pictures of some waterfall or cascade. Lewis Falls and Gibbon Falls and so many other wonderful spots in between. We drove to Old Faithful and checked out the geyser field. Leslie got up close and personal with some of the huge herd of bison in the area. We continued around the lower loop, to Madison, Norris and Canyon Village. Crawled around the huge Yellowstone Lake, the highest altitude lake in the United States, a particular point of which is the most remote spot in the whole country. We were headed to Cody, Wyoming for the night and slightly overshot the road to the east entrance. We doubled back and at Elephants back saw some cars stopped. In the distance was a grizzly  and her cub, foraging in the meadow. We stopped and took some photographs with my 300mm lens. Saw a bunch of elk in the woods. Then we started on our way east out of the park.

There was a lot of snow on the 20, the road that led us to Cody. We traveled past dark and foreboding vistas of black and white. We were practically alone for the roughly hour and a half it took for us to leave. Dark fallen trees were imprinted kinetically on the icy white background in a scrambled abstract worthy of Franz Kline.

We stopped at my favorite spot the whole week, a place of no color called Sylvan lake. In the late afternoon, the lake was pitch black like oil. Languid dark pools. The moment was perfectly sublime in its simple beauty and austerity. I didn't stop to take many pictures. I will have time to do it tomorrow. We continued through the 8530' high Sylvan Pass.

Sylvan Lake

We drove through the eerie and desolate landscape, seemingly forever, parallel to the Shoshone River.

Here is a picture of the sunset over Shosone Lake. The lake is dammed and just before you get to it you pass through a huge tunnel blasted through the base of the mountain to find the wild and wooly town of Cody, established by Wild Bill himself.

We booked a rather expensive cheap hotel, had a shot of whiskey at the Silver Dollar Bar (me - Bushmills, she - Makers Mark).  We went to dinner at the Wyoming Rib and Chop House located next to our friend's Colleen and Steve Aichle's Cody Fine Art. Cody is great, bad winter and all, one of my favorite small, funky towns in the country. I had a cedar planked salmon with a maple syrup glaze. Pretty wonderful, Les had a steak. Nice staff, nice glass of wine and a great evening after an exhausting but ginormous day. Tomorrow, breakfast at Buffalo Bill's Hotel Irma.

(to be continued)