With a recommendation like that, who could resist? So, first thing in the morning, we proceed along towards Soda Springs. We quickly found a sign pointing us to the geyser, which was apparently behind the parking lot for a bar and a movie theater on Main Street. We found a sign post that explains how the spring was first found, and also mentions in passing that the spring has long since been capped and a timer releases the valve every hour to produce a geyser. The first *man-made* geyser. Ahh, raw, unfettered wilderness.
Traveling along these rural backroads has been interesting. We’ve seen a number of “towns” small enough that they have no stop light, and a single convenience store that also served as the local post office. The one we stopped at today even had horseshoes for sale. Not as a novelty, but boxes of real, nail-them-into-horses’-feet horseshoes, available in a number of sizes. Try finding that at Fry’s.
From there, we crossed from Idaho into Wyoming (another new state for me) and headed north on Route 89, alongside the Snake River. We stopped in Jackson for a bit, site of the Jackson Hole ski resort. We wandered the touristy strips, which reminded me greatly of some of the Colorado ski resort towns I’ve seen. We also found an independent music store which also had computers you could rent time on, as well as some free ethernet cables where you could plug in your own computer. Sweet! So, we brought the PowerBooks from the bus and got online for the first time in five whole days! Mainly I spent the time posting the travelogue from the previous days.
From Jackson we headed north into the Grand Teton National Park, towards the far north edge of the park where we would camp on the shore of Jackson Lake.
Along the way we spotted a moose and her calf grazing in a meadow and stopped to take about 200 photos.
Once again, the evening campfire started with a single match. My Camp Fu is strong. All those times watching Dan and/or Ed start beach bonfires really paid off. Thanks, guys! Just as were we getting ready to stop watching the fire and go to sleep, lightning started appearing in the distance, with low, slow thunder rolling in seconds later. We watched it move nearer and nearer, and decided to start moving gear from the picnic table into the bus and closing up the popup top. Sure enough, within minutes rain started falling in earnest and we moved into the bus, listening to the droplets drum on the roof and watching the fire struggle against the rain.
It feels like there are still seven days of hard driving to get to Memphis from here, and we have eleven days left in which to do it. As it is, we’ve pretty much ruled out Chicago on this trip. From here we’ll head north to Yellowstone, then across Wyoming into South Dakota and the Badlands National Park. Then down through Nebraska, across Missouri and down into Tennessee and into Memphis. So, where to spend the free time? On one hand, I don’t want to be late getting to Memphis, but on the other I want to make the most of seeing these sites and there’s no real benefit to arriving in Memphis too early. I mean, I know I’ll visit Memphis again, but the Grand Tetons I’m not so sure about. So, we may spend tomorrow doing a raft trip on the Snake River and easing into Yellowstone and that’s about it. Not a lot of mileage, but it seems like a really great place to spend one of those “extra” days.