Teton the magnificent

Day 5
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Custer, SD to Moran, WY
479 miles

In spite of the fact that the air temperature was colder last night than the night before, we were more comfortable because there was no wind and we used the furnace from the beginning. With all of the flaps zipped up it maintained an inside temperature of 60 degrees—toasty.

We awoke at 5 AM to get an early start on our long day of driving and hit the road at 6:30. On our way out, we stopped at Sylvan Lake to take advantage of the low light and windless conditions. Sylvan Lake is one of those places that can make anyone a great photographer!

We have learned to make any necessary cell calls when we’re in towns because more often than not there is no service in the vast open areas between them. When driving through Custer for the last time, Bob and Frank both called their families and caught up on news. It was good to hear their voices.

We spent the whole day crossing Wyoming. The most direct route from Custer to Grand Teton National Park passes over the Little Big Horn Mountains in northeastern Wyoming, but those peaks are where tow vehicles’ transmissions and brakes go to die, so we decided to take a slightly longer but much flatter route by way of Casper, Wyoming. This took us across the eastern part of the state on a ribbon of two-lane highway—Wyoming Routes 450, 387 and 259—that exist simply so people like us can traverse an absolutely immense, empty expanse of open range. “Nothing” and “Nowhere” have been redefined for us.

Halfway across Wyoming, with little else to do but listen to Satellite radio, Frank told Bob his whole life story. Then we rode in silence. Can we tell you how BIG Wyoming is? We drove a distance today equivalent to the distance from Baltimore to Myrtle Beach and passed through only two towns of any size, Casper, population 35k, and Riverton, population 9k. Most of the rest of the way we saw pronghorn, antelope, sage brush, snow fence the size of billboards, rocks and dust.

Oh, and one skunk. Unfortunately, Frank ran him over. We were tooling along at 80 MPH on I-25 about 20 miles outside of Casper, when the car three seconds in front of us swerved hard to the right. Frank copied the maneuver, but didn’t want to jack-knife the trailer, so he had to dampen his reaction. We got him with the left front wheel. What a mess. It smelled for 200 miles. We tried putting the windows down and using the A/C. The only thing we could do was wait for it to wear off. Bob said Frank took him out here so he could see wildlife, he didn’t know we were going to be killing it.

This was on top of an accidental killing of a bird two blocks from the Corn Palace a few days ago. Frank was going very slowly when a large black bird struck the driver’s door window. Frank saw him in the rearview mirror fluttering around on the tarmac for an instant before the car behind us finished him off. Bob said who needs a gun to hunt we you have a Honda!

As part of his life story, Frank told Bob about the several times he and Sessy stopped their car in the middle of a desolate road and took a picture of it. Bob thought that was a great idea, so we did it today. Frank put the Odyssey in park, opened both front doors, leisurely walked about 100 feet down the road and snapped several pictures of the spectacle as Bob waived. No one ever knew we did it. At one point, we drove at 75 miles per hour for seven minutes before a vehicle approached in the opposite direction.

About 35 miles east of Riverton, we got our first glimpse of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains, which grew taller as we drove toward them. After Riverton, we turned more northward and paralleled the Wind River and the Front Range until we eventually turned west and lumbered up Togwottee Pass (elevation 9,658 feet). Snow was quite deep up on the mountain and we saw numerous snow mobile tracks.

Then, shortly after we crested the pass, the Teton Range appeared above the conifers in the foreground and eight hours’ of driving was suddenly worth the effort. Beauty embodied.

We will be camping at 7,000 feet tonight in the Colter Bay Campground in Grand Teton. The predicted low is 40 degrees. We don’t have electricity (which is required to run the furnace), but we’ll borrow a page from Sessy’s Aunt Barbara’s playbook and use a propane Coleman lantern to heat the trailer. We should be fine in our sleeping bags.

Frank felt very privileged to have the opportunity to come back to Grand Teton National Park because he knows how special this place is.