Sunday we were lea
ving Jackson Hole to detour around Yellowstone and get to our hotel in West Yellowstone. First we needed to take advantage of an actual real town and a good grocery store to stock up on food, buy a cooler, get ice, etc. Here's the view from the grocery store. Terrible, eh?To get to Idaho from Jackson Hole one has to cross over the Tetons. Lots of switch-backs and steep hills. I'm sure it's not fun to drive in the winter, but the view from the top was nice. On the other side of the mountains the terrain quickly turns flat. You can see forever, and there's always mountains in the background.
Flat turns to rolling hills, potato farms, and oodles of hay pastures.We made a stop at the Mesa Falls, upper and lower, which I think is on the Henry Fork of the Snake River and is the last un-dammed river in Idaho. The lower falls we could see from far away, but we could walk on a boardwalk right up to the top of the upper falls. We took a few photos, toured the museum, and continued on to the source of this river - Big Springs. It was
entertaining to see the river just starting out of nothing - literally just bubbling out of the ground. We did a quick tour of Johnny Sack's cabin - some guy who bought the land at the head of the spring and built a cool cabin there, entirely by hand.Ended up in West Yellowstone and made the long (ok, 5 blocks) drive to town for some dinner, then spent a few minutes wandering the two main streets of tourist stores, ice cream, and rafting guides. West Yellowstone is not exactly a booming metropolis (although we were later warned by Kathy and Jonathan that Gardiner is even smaller).
And then we were off to bed, ready to get up on Monday morning for our first trip in to the park!
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