June 4 On to the Tetons

 As we drive out of. Buhl, Idaho, were we. Spent the night, Nick says, “sure is flat around here.  Within moments we come to a bridge, look way down and there is the Snake River.  Wow! Sure did cut through all of this flatness.  We cross the river several times throughout the day but never as impressive as the gorge.  

Again, I’m impressed with the valleys and the abruptness of the mountains.  The valleys are agricultural and could almost be Iowa except the soil is rather gray instead of the nice Iowa black dirt and the background of the mountains.

We stop to get new windshield wipers.  There is a car wash place right next door. With all of the driving we’ve been doing, the car is quite dusty.  That’s how we know it’s ours.  But we treat her to a cursory drive through wash.  Haven’t done  one of those in a long time.  Vacuumed the front part of the car, back portion is packed to the gills.  It  is nice to be in a cleaner car again.  The fact that I even mention this is indicative of how dirty it had become.

Jackson, Wyoming is the gateway to the parks.  We are in tourist country here!  By the look of the hotels, restaurants and shops, a rather well-heeled group of tourists.  We stop and get grocery supplies at Albertsons.  I can’t resist their fried chicken.  That is what we always had on our sailing days in Tampa. In Wyoming, alcohol can’t be sold in the grocery store, so there is a separate place right outside.  Shortly after getting out of town, we enter the park.  A very large, green meadow.  Around a curve and Oh Wow! There they are in all of their jagged, snowy glory.  Our campsite is quite far into the park at Colter Bay campgrounds on Jackson Lake.  Our site is nice and they sites are pretty far from each other.  The only disappointment is that we can’t see the mountains from our campsite.  

We head to the Colter Bay visitor’s center and village and walk down to the “beach” of stones. The sun will be setting behind the mountains.  We enjoy the view and people watching for about an hour hoping that a beautiful sunset will develop.  It’s beautiful but the sunset doesn’t develop into anything spectacular.

  

When we went to put our food in the bear box, we discovered that the people ahead of us left 2 big bundles of firewood.  Thank you!  As soon as the sun went down, the temperature dropped dramatically.  It was really nice to huddle around the fire before retiring to bed.  It’s going down into the 30’s tonight!  So much for being just fair weather campers.  But it isn’t windy like back at the Oregon coast so we’ll be fine.