We awoke to our last morning in the Tetons. It has been wonderful having the Grand Teton looking over our cabin during our stay but all good things must come to an end. I managed a short run in the park – trying to get in one run in every state! – before we hit breakfast and headed to our next adventure: Idaho!
I confess that I had to do a bit of work to figure out how to make a stop in Idaho fit the itinerary. But since we lost our one night in Montana to the condensed first part of the trip, it was more important than ever that we make this work and be enjoyable. We made a pit stop in Jackson – what a cute town, we need to go back – get the car and some clothes clean. Then we headed across the Teton Pass with it’s 10% grades to go from Wyoming to Idaho. And then the next 250 miles or so was somewhat surreal.
Once we left the mountains, we crossed flat barren terrain. Lots of bare beigeness as we ran alongside the Snake river. And heat. After coming down from the mountains, the glaring sun drove the temperatures up. We stopped for lunch in Idaho Falls at a lovely brew pub across from the falls before heading west once more. We passed more flat, bland fields – mile after mile. I was looking for potatoes but all we saw was nuclear research facilities – Atomic City anyone?
At last we reached the National Park du jour: Craters of the Moon. A park that no one I know has ever visited or in most cases even heard of. Yellowstone gets more visitors in one month than Craters gets in a year. But it is so much cooler IMHO. It’s a large volcanic field that looks like a set from Star Trek – we kept waiting for a red shirted Trekkie to pop up from behind the volcanic rock and get shot. If you ever want to know what post apocalyptic America looks like – I think I’ve seen it.
There were hills to climb up and caves to climb in. We had to get certified before going into the caves to prevent the spread of White-Nose syndrome which has apparently been devastating the bat population. We didn’t see any bats but the caves were really cool.
We wrapped up our visit and headed to the Bed and Breakfast in bustling Hailey, ID. It is literally a one-stoplight town just south of Sun Valley. With a population of nearly 8,000, it is a bustling metropolis by Idaho standards (we passed through several towns that had populations in the 100s). We walked downtown and had a FABULOUS dinner at CK’s where we sat at the chef’s bench overlooking the kitchen and got to watch all the food being prepared. I had a wonderful gaucho steak with corn-jalapeno cakes and Frank had fresh Idaho trout with Idaho potatoes. We wandered around town before heading back to call it a night. Our room at the B&B has an extra deep tub so I decided to have a relaxing soak before bed. I can’t even tell you the color of the bathwater when I got out – apparently volcanic rock dust is black and very fine. I didn’t even notice it in the restaurant but it was certainly obvious in the bathtub. Ick.
Numbers for today:
- Miles driven: 279
- Layers of sunscreen: 3
- French lessons: 1/2 (we turned it off to pay attention in the mountains and never got back to it)
- Number of photographs at Craters: 49
- Steps taken: 12,248
- Flights climbed: 24
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