Teton National Park, Jackson Hole, Fossil Butte National Monument, Flaming Gorge
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We successfully completed a nights camping without getting rained on. It was still pretty cold this morning but nothing a hat and 3 layers of clothing couldn’t fix. We got up just as the sun was coming up so I talked Les into heading up Signal Mt. Road to try to catch the morning sun on the Tetons.
We headed up the road before breakfast, using Pop Tarts to stave off hunger. The view from the top is pretty good. You can see for many miles for about 270 degrees. The only problem was, the sun was behind clouds as were the Tetons. We stayed up there trying to stay warm for about half an hour while the sun peaked in an out of the clouds (mostly in) and the mountains got more and more fogged in. Tetons at sunrise. Denied.
We headed back to camp and had breakfast, then set off south. The lower Teton range is probably very pretty too. We got glimpses of it but not much more. The valley heading into Jackson is wide with the Tetons on one side and “other” mountains on the other. It’s really quite a spot and I’d like to go back again to see it better.
We had to stop in Jackson for a new mantle for the lantern which had fallen off. You’d think that a town in this part of the world would be sick with camping/sports stores. Not the case. Jackson is trying its best to become the Carmel of the Tetons. Lots of galleries and expensive clothing shops with trendy names. The entrances to the park in the middle of town each have an arch about 7 feet high and 4 feet wide made of elk antlers.
Our first try for a mantle was an “outdoor store” with some fancy name like Dennis Jensen or something. The people running the store were all from Texas or somewhere. You could hardly understand them and they didn’t even know where the mantles were let alone which ones were right.
We tried a few more down the road with no luck. Finally we found one. We were also looking for another sleeping pad for Les since his was kind of thin and not performing well. We finally found that at K-Mart of all places. So, by 11:30 we were on the road again. A little behind schedule for making Utah.
We continued down along the mountains through a really pretty valley (Star Valley?). Bridger-Teton National forest (and mountains) on one side and Idaho (and some other National Forest) on the other. We passed through a whole bunch of nothing little towns with 3 stores and 10 houses, although we passed a school while it was getting out and there seemed to be a fair number of people.
Towards the end of the valley we passed through Afton whose claim to fame is they have the worlds largest elk antler arch. I don’t know if that’s true but it put Jackson’s pitiful attempts to shame.
At the bottom of the valley we turned back to the East to head to Flaming Gorge (or Flaming George as we called it). Wyoming returned to its rolling hills with sagebrush and no trees state and continued that way for some time. The only real break in the landscape were signs for Little America (a roadside rest stop, gift shop, motel, gas station, etc.) every 5 miles or so. We realized these were the first billboards we had seen in probably a week. (The last ones were the one every 5 mile ones for Wall Drug I think).
We passed the Fossil Butte National Monument and stopped in (primarily because we knew they’d have a bathroom, and our habit of stopping in the trees didn’t work anymore because there weren’t any trees!). It turned out to be pretty interesting. It was located in the bed of an ancient lake. They found no end of fossils in the layers of limestone. They had one of a full crocodile, probably 6 feet long, and lots of different kinds of fish. They also had a turtle and some bugs. Really cool.
On the wall was an interesting display showing the history of the earth and when various types of animals appeared. It started about 800 million years ago with single celled animals. The wall was about 30 feet long. At the very end on the right there was a tiny red mark, about the width of a piece of paper, indicating how long man had been on the earth. Kind of humbling. In fact, on the left it said that to show the full age of the earth (roughly 4.5 billion years) on the same scale, the wall would have to extend left for another 100 feet. When you start feeling like man is the master of the earth or of nature or anything, you should look at this display. We’re an anomaly if anything.
We finally succumbed and stopped at Little America. We needed gas anyway and I wanted to call my sister for her birthday. She was surprised since she didn’t think I’d make it in from the wilderness to call, but I did. Little America has a long way to go to reach the tackiness level of Wall Drug. Les remembered it as being tackier but they’ve up-leveled and now they reached a level where they aren’t unique from any other place (except for the excess of billboards).
From there we headed to Green River, gateway to Flaming Gorge. (We missed Green River Days, sometime in July). Right outside of town there was a very interesting set of buttes which I tried to photograph without highway signs or street lights but I’m not sure I did.
The road to Flaming Gorge was more of the same sort of Wyoming stuff but without the civilization. No houses, farms, animals, anything. Just rolling hills of sagebrush. The sun was going down and the sky was really pretty with color. On the map the road runs along the edge of the gorge and I guess I expected to see, well, a gorge. But you can’t see it from the road. We finally reached the Buckboard campground area (100 tent sites, no waiting) and set up camp. There were of course 2 RVs here. I don’t think there is a campsite in America, anywhere, where there isn’t at least one RV parked.
Dinner was ravioli and potatoes. The sky, which had been sunny and partly cloudy all day, started to look threatening as darkness fell. Once again, the risk of rain rears its ugly head. We’ll see.
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