on the oregon trail: day 2

No internet access last night--we stayed in the middle of nowhere, so here's the update on yesterday's activities:

We decided to sleep in a bit, since our trip the day before took 13 hours. After a quick trip to Walmart and a drive through Starbucks, we headed out toward the Grand Tetons. The drive to the Grand Tetons was spectacular. The drive up Highway 191 from Rock Springs to the Grand Tetons was one of the prettiest drives I've ever been on.

We stopped for lunch in Jackson Hole at Jedediah's House of Sourdough (I think--the picture we took just says "Jedediah's.") We girls had breakfast food, and Nate had a massive burger that he forced himself to finish. (Nate said that burger was giving the best burger he ever ate--at a restaurant in Cannon Beach--a run for its money.) We ate out on the patio--it was a beautiful afternoon and a beautiful setting. Of course, we got coffee on our way out of town. (And I could have spent a lot more time in Jackson. Very touristy, but very cute.)

At the visitor's center at the entrance of the Grand Tetons, we heard about the Hidden Falls. Using our handy map, Nate determined that it would take us 15 minutes to hike to the falls. Nate's 30-minute round trip hike turned into 2 hours and 30 minutes! So perhaps Nate isn't so good at judging distances . . . Nevertheless, the hike was beautiful, and the falls were stunningly gorgeous! I will definitely post pictures of them later.

We got back on the road at 5:50. At that point, we thought we might go to Old Faithful before going to our hotel. A couple hours later, after going through lots of road construction, we decided just to head for the hotel. Finally, at 11 p.m., after hours of scary mountain driving (which Val handled masterfully!), we pulled in to the Super 8 at Cooke City. I was mistakenly under the impression that if a town was big enough to have a Super 8, it must also have fast food. Not so. Cooke City was TINY. It mainly consisted of motels and bars. So, we had granola bars and crackers for supper at 11:30.

Of the two parks (Grand Tetons and Yellowstone), the Grand Tetons was definitely my favorite. There's not much to do in Yellowstone other than drive and take pictures of wildlife. We did have a herd of bison cross the road right in front of us--that was pretty cool.