Still in Wyoming. As we drove through the changing landscape of river, gorgeous red rock, and evergreens, we went by Jerry Spence’s Trial Lawyer’s College, just out of Dubois (pronounced Doo-boys).
We heard from a very excited Britta that she had secured the 2nd Horn chair, loved her Strategies for Academic Success professor, had landed a six-hour a week job as receptionist in her dorm, made some babysitting contacts, and that generally life was better than best. She actually was giggling.
And so we headed to Grand Teton and Yellowstone today. Funny, in all these decades, I’ve seen neither of these American icons. Grand Teton, by sheer acreage is much smaller than Yellowstone, but it is breathtakingly beautiful. You can drive seamlessly from one park to the other, which we did. That put us entering Yellowstone from the South Entrance.
All the images I’ve ever had of Yellowstone were of lines of cars waiting to get in, and bears going up to the car windows. There were neither. The landscape was pretty dry, and hardly any cars. Our destination was, of course, Old Faithful. It took us over an hour to get to Old Faithful. Ah, here we found cars, and people!
The landscape is more moonscape. The geyser blows about every 90 minutes. We were in luck, as it was scheduled to go in 40! We claimed our seat and waited in the bright sun.
It blew early (ah the poor tourists still buying up souvenirs). It was pretty darned spectacular, and everyone had a grand view. And then it was over. Just the wisps of steam to indicate it would be back (like Arnold!).
The old Lodge is spectacular… several stories of log construction. We headed out of the park (another hour-plus) towards the West side. On the way out is where we saw the wildlife: bison, an elk herd (about 12; some only 20 feet away from where I was standing), and deer. Never did see a bear. Many (people) were river fly fishing on this gorgeous early evening. We drove by one camp ground entrance, but there were no lines! (I wonder how they keep out the dangerous critters?).
Out on the West exit, we were in Montana, but quickly morphed into Idaho. This is a part of Idaho I’ve never seen. The first “metropolis” is Ashton, where we actually have a United Methodist Church (the joke is being assigned to the outermost post of isolated Ashton). It actually is a lovely, well-developed town on the edge of lots of vacation communities.
Also, there is a family in our church who has always talked about their cabin which is two hours “out” from Ashton… but mentioned there is a really good drive-in they always stop at for the French Fries.
Going on that information only, I figured out which one it was! And yes, the fries were amazing (Warning: health nuts, please stop reading right here!). By what I could tell… the fries are given their initial fry (French fries have to be deep-fried two separate times), and then the second time, I “think” they are dipped in a a light batter and fried again. Really tasty, really hot, really crisp on the outside and soft on the inside, really fattening!
Call from Britta: she’s run out of money buying books. Reality check on the cost of higher education.
And so, as the sun set over the flat farmlands of eastern Idaho, we headed for Idaho Falls, our final destination of the day.
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