No. 174 - From Sunrise to Sunset in the Tetons and Yellowstone
6:45am – Grand Teton National Park, WY
I woke up in a twenty-five-dollar sleeping bag on a twenty-five-dollar mattress inside a twenty-five-dollar tent — in the same clothes I’d worn the day before.
Given the choice between a tangerine-colored tent and a beige hotel room, I’ll take a communal bath and forty-degree mornings over running water and heat every day.
I’d come to Jackson Hole for a business meeting and was trying to avoid being fleeced for $600 a night, so I bought some cheap camping equipment and tried my luck at Colter Bay in Grand Teton National Park.
Finding a campsite there is like winning the Masters lottery — damn near impossible. Sites are booked six months in advance, for good reason. You’re smack dab in the middle of one of America’s most beautiful national parks, and it’s only forty bucks a night (still steep for a piece of dirt in a park your tax dollars already subsidize). With all the waste by the assholes in D.C., why can’t they throw a little toward our national parks so Americans can visit them for free?
The National Park Service budget has sat in the $3–3.5 billion range for years — less than 0.1% of the federal budget — yet they charge $35 per car to enter and at least $40 a night to sleep … on the ground. It’s a textbook case of being nickel-and-dimed by the greediest group of dishonest assholes in the country. I’m not minimizing three billion dollars, but in a nation that spends THREE BILLION on renovating the Federal Reserve building — and nearly a QUARTER OF A TRILLION ($236,000,000,000) on improper payments — give me a break. Let Americans visit their national parks free of charge.
Anyway, I got lucky, as I always do. In twelve years, I’ve won the Masters lottery four times; this time, I found the only available campsite — and it happened to be open for the exact three nights I’d be there. I’ve often considered taking up gambling, but stories of my great-uncle Rodney losing his shirt in Vegas kept my money in my pocket. Still, with my luck, it makes you wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze.
The contents of my nylon abode were sparse: a headlamp, a paperback of Robert Caro’s Working, and a bag of chewing tobacco. I only used it for sleeping. I mean really, what else can you do without electricity in twenty square feet?
I proceeded to brush my teeth in a gas station bathroom and drove south. A translucent glow hovered over the Tetons, like the wings of a million angels letting the perfect amount of sunlight fall across them. I had one of those “Is this really my life?” moments — and it was only half past seven.
8:00am – Jackson Hole, WY
The approach to Jackson is inspiring — from the first glimpse of Snow King’s slopes to the drive through the elk refuge, then moseying into town, where a spinning neon wrangler rides high atop the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar; past the famous arches, where Chinese tourists have commandeered all four corners; and on to mid-century motels that have dodged the wrecking ball. Despite the throngs of camera-wielding visitors, it brings back memories of spending my college summers out there.
The plan was to drive over the Tetons to Driggs, Idaho — the “Savannah” to Jackson Hole’s “Charleston.” Jackson’s billionaire takeover rippled over the mountains, making Driggs — with its east-facing Teton views — the refuge for run-of-the-mill millionaires.
The drive from Jackson to Driggs is picturesque too. First, you climb through a series of curvy switchbacks with sweeping views over the valley; then you casually descend into Idaho.
9:15am – Driggs, ID
I stopped by a breakfast joint on Main Street called Provisions to fill up my belly. I don’t know if it’s real or imagined, but potatoes in Idaho taste a hell of a lot better than anywhere else — like drinking bourbon in Kentucky.
Afterwards, I wrote a few dozen postcards and chatted with some locals before heading back up the mountain — from the Idaho side — even though I’d cross a state line, yet again, back into Wyoming, it would only be temporarily. The state lines are so close it’s akin to driving through parts of New England, where a wrong turn and a “Welcome to Rhode Island” sign go hand-in-hand.
11:15am – Grand Targhee, WY
I had long heard stories about this remote ski town on the back side of the Tetons — from a Jackson point of view. Perched high above the valley at 8,000 feet, Grand Targhee is a “skier’s mountain.” What do I mean by that? It’s mostly locals, the powder is legendary because of the elevation, and it’s not easy to get to — it possesses an almost cultish vibe (in the nicest sense of the word). It’s also small — cozy, really — and has a family feel to it, sort of like the General’s lodge in White Christmas. I found it charming and added it to my bucket list. I bought my kids a few stickers and headed back down the mountain … without a plan, as always.
I decided to visit Yellowstone from the west entrance — partly because I wanted to visit Montana. I had already been to Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho, so I had to complete the Western Slam (Colorado and its mountains are in a league of their own).
I drove north through parts of Idaho so gorgeous my heart swelled with American pride — the same feeling I recently had in Texas Hill Country.
2:40pm – Yellowstone National Park, MT and WY
I entered the park through West Yellowstone, which is a city that a lot of folks confuse with the name of the western entrance of the park. In addition to being adjacent to the park, West Yellowstone has a few interesting claims to fame:
It sits halfway between the equator and north pole.
It holds the lowest recorded temperature in the lower 48 at -66º.
Yellowstone can be a gamble during late summer with overcrowding. Once again, I got lucky — I sailed through the park without so much as a single traffic jam.
There are prettier national parks to visit, to be sure — Yosemite, Grand Teton, and Glacier — but at the top of everyone’s list, both Americans and foreigners alike, is Yellowstone because it’s truly one of a kind.
There’s a reason Teddy Roosevelt made it the first national park in the world (and did you know the good old U.S. of A. invented national parks?).
From hot springs to canyons, wildlife, mountains, rivers, and all sorts of geological oddities, there’s a reason it’s in our nation’s lexicon when it comes to showcasing national parks.
I worked a few miles from the south entrance during two college summers, and I can assure you that even when Yellowstone is your backyard, even with two summers of complete freedom, even when you befriend park rangers who give you the skinny on things they’d no sooner share with a tourist than bring a grizzly bear home as a pet — you still can’t begin to experience all the park has to offer.
So when I saw tourists doing what tourists do — zipping from one place to another at breakneck speed, all the while taking hundreds of pictures — you realize that the only people who “get” Yellowstone are the year-round employees, and even they’ll tell you they’ve barely scratched the surface.
I swung by the Old Faithful Inn for an ice cream, but mainly to sit in awe of its magnificent lobby. Few places in America feel as purely “American.” I could sit there for months with nothing more than pen and paper and be content. If you need a reason to pull the trigger on a summer trip to Yellowstone, this lodge is it — an American gem on par with the Empire State Building or Golden Gate Bridge. And if you go, check out the Crow’s Nest; it’ll stir your imagination to a child-like state.
6:30 pm – Grand Teton National Park, WY
I drove south through the park as the sun descended, passing a few waterfalls and the lodge where I once worked. It was getting late, and I planned to head back to Colter Bay for supper before the sunset — but first, one last errand: picking up knickknacks for my family in Jackson.
I was tired from driving all day, but I had that thought that plagues every drifter when he’s on the road: “I don’t know when I’ll be back, so might as well.” Which, in this case, meant driving through Grand Teton National Park for Jackson Hole — again.
I’d seen the sun rise over the Tetons 12 hours earlier — now I was watching it set. There are good days, great days… and legendary days. This was one of them.
In Yellowstone and Grand Teton, everyone does the speed limit — 45 mph tops, with plenty of 35s and 25s. No one’s in a rush, so when you’re on a flat highway paralleling the Tetons, the sky painted in cranberry and honey hues, you can savor it for nearly an hour — ain’t nothin’ like it.
7:30pm – Jackson Hole, WY
My phone died on the drive and wouldn’t charge, but the timing was perfect: no distractions, no pictures, just the Tetons and Jackson. I turned on the radio, and Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” came on. Damn if I didn’t get a surge of Kerouac-like emotion, singing at the top of my lungs.
How does it feel, to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a roooolling stone!
Man, I was feeling it — worn out, throat dry from a day’s worth of chewing tobacco, hair unwashed, same clothes as yesterday, Dylan blasting … this is what I live for.
I grabbed dinner at the old drug store soda fountain, where I sat next to a mother and her daughter, a boarding student at Miss Porter’s School. I eventually swung by a tourist shop to get sweaters and stickers before heading back to Colter Bay.
I drove through the dark of the night with the Tetons in an omnipresent slumber. The skies were brushed with a dark charcoal, while the peaks were outlined in a silvery pewter, like shark fins, but thousands of feet tall, looming over the valley.
If anyone had told me when I was watching the sun rise over them that they’d be just as majestic with the sun falling behind them, I would’ve thought it impossible.
I eventually got back to my tent, where the heavens were darker than the sweet spot on a catcher’s mitt, offset with a constellation of diamonds. I crawled into my sleeping bag, took a deep breath of mountain air, exhaled with the ease of a baby’s yawn, and thanked my Maker for a day of exploring my favorite part of America.
*Composed, Edited, and Published in Atlanta, GA
