Thank you, Theodore Roosevelt

 

Day One: One Wild Animal Sighting

We’re off on a National Parks Adventure, Dan and I.  The Parks are high on his bucket list of travels and we have been, as the saying goes, grateful, thankful and blessed to have the wherewithall to take advantage of the foresight Theodore Roosevelt demonstrated in placing into government trust so much of our spectacularly beautiful country. Click here for a brief annotated history of the National Park Service. This trip we’re visiting Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, a ten day vacation.

Yesterday we flew into a newly renovated Jackson Hole, WY airport.  Dan thought it one of the most beautifully designed airports he’s ever traveled to.  I was impressed by the recycling bins, which encourage more sorting of materials than trash, paper and recyclable.  Also saw on the tarmac a pretty fair number of private jets.  Dan speculated they belong to the wealthy land owners in the state; I wondered if they weren’t from various news sources who had been in town to cover Liz Chaney’s resounding defeat.  A good friend, former editor of the magazine Art of the West, recommended a place for breakfast, tourist places to be seen and some galleries to visit in Jackson Hole before we headed to the Park.

Dan channeling his inner Rip Wheeler (from Yellowstone) sitting on the saddles lining the bar at the Cowboy Bar in Jackson Hole

We played pool (as the cowboys do), something we probably haven't done since playing at the Union at the University of Illinois over 50 years ago

The entrances at the Town Square in Jackson Hole are arched with elk antlers.  

 

In art galleries, I always find myself stepping far back from a piece that catches my attention, then gradually inching forward until I am nose to nose with the art work, marveling at the brush strokes comprising the finished product.  “How do they DO that?” I wonder aloud, she who can barely execute a stick figure.  Thank you, artists everywhere, for the beauty you bring by sharing your talents.

On most trips we’ve taken to scenic places, there seems to be a moment where the car turns a bend or clears a stand of trees and then…it’s breathtaking.  What you see nearly defies description and I find the words inadequate to describe the emotion behind the vision.  (I then wish my talent lie in paints as opposed to words).  Yesterday as we drove to the Grand Tetons, it was this:

Dan's mother, my beloved Maggie, and her friend, Ernestine, visited this park in their retirement.  She was fond of telling Dan what the true meaning of the Grand Tetons is: Other adventurers followed in Colter's footsteps, including the French-Canadian trappers who gave the mountain range the bawdy name of “Grand Tetons,” meaning “big breasts” in French.

Because we’re on vacation, we took advantage of multiple “Pull over!” moments, resulting in this:

Glaciers!  I am not the best researcher before we go on a trip, relying on getting a lay of the land we are about to visit then leaving it to, "We'll figure it out once we get there."  Because of that, I anticipated seeing glaciers in Glacier National Park (duh) but did not realize in advance there are glaciers in the Grand Tetons.

Jenny Lake

The author at Jenny Lake.  Cut me some slack.  I had been up since 4:30 a.m.

My favorite for the day was veering from the beaten path down to the shores of Jenny Lake, resulting in this:

Lokah Samastah Sukinho Bhavantu (May All Beings Everywhere Be Happy and Free)

Om Shanti Shanti Om

Our abode for the next few days is this lovely cabin (which might qualify as a tiny house on AirBnB) 

and we’re taking somewhat seriously the repeated admonitions to avoid the bears.  In fact, at the Jackson Hole Airport there is a specific recycling bin dedicated to bear spray.  Thus far we have seen only one form of what I’d label wildlife, at the Jenny Lake Overlook.  There we spied, in her most unnatural environment, Surlius Femalae Teenagerum, her back to the lake so she had an excellent view of the parking lot, vainly attempting to get her phone to work in an environment basically devoid of cell signal.  We know she will revert to her normal self once she is returned from the wild to civilization.

Last night it was rumored that the Aurora Borealis would be visible, so we set our alarm to go out for a possible sighting.  No luck, but the stars…

Due to what our adolescent friend has discovered, I might not get a post in every day but I’ll try.

As one hikes or visits the villages surrounding each place to stay, you hear many voices not speaking English.  When we were in Yosemite, we were sitting with a young couple from England and I asked why they had decided to visit the National Parks.  (After all, there is Disney on both coasts, right?)  She said, “There is nothing like this in Europe.  Beautiful places, yes, but not National Parks.”

And to think our former president wanted to privatize all this beauty which would, in my opinion, limit its availability.  Staying in the parks is not necessarily a bargain, unless you camp and those spaces are often hard to come by, or backcountry camp, which is not for everyone.  But coming into the Parks is a relative bargain.  Once we turned 62, on the advice of my by then deceased father, we purchased what is the biggest bargain for the retirement crowd.  Our Lifetime Senior National Parks pass cost us less than $25 (Dan thinks it was $25; I thought it was $10; when my parents got it, it was free). Today it's $80.  For that, you get to see this!