Mostly Plants

August 6, 2008
Around 7 AM

Gross Ventre Campground, Grand Teton N.P. 

This is my first real chance to write so far on the trip.  A recap so far:

August 3: Our 5 AM departure became a 9 AM departure.  We were planning to drive 13 hours today and camp at Badlands National Park, SD, where buffalo roam freely through the campgrounds.  Instead, we found a motel in Murdo, SD–population 612.  It was hard to find a room due to the huge population of bikers en route to the rally in Sturgis.  We got the “family suite” in a little hole in the wall motel there, and breakfast in a beautiful little diner–also full of bikers.  

Every town in SD has some little bit of kitsch to stop for: Wall Drug, the Corn Palace, etc.  We stop for none of it, but Adrienne remarks of the Corn Palace, “what else do you do in a state that doesn’t exist besides go see things that shouldn’t exist?

I took no pictures on the third–nothing was very photogenic that day, and what there was we didn’t stop for.  You’ll have to read below the cut to get to the first picture.  

August 4: Due to again getting a late start, not making expected progress yesterday, and multiple stops along the way, we realize that we won’t make Grand Teton NP tonight–at least, not in time to get a campsite.  I note that we are passing LOTS of National Forest campgrounds, and we agree to stop in one of them.  We identify Shoshone NF, near the park, as a potential target.  The road passes through the Wind River Indian Reservation, including the gorgeous natural wonder of Wind River Canyon–made slightly less beautiful by the fact that most of the inner cañon outside of the river is taken up by the freeway and the railway.  This is typical of US Indian policy, and must be supremely insulting to the folks who live there: we, the beneficent United States, will “allow” the Natives to keep nominal sovereignty over their cañon, but we shall “improve” it for them by paving it and running smoky trains through it.  They should thank us.  Really?  There’s no other route that I-90 could have taken?  That cañon would have made for such wonderful hiking and backpacking!  Now, admittedly, it makes for very nice driving…

We stopped in the town of Riverton for Ice Cream.  Yum!  But, more time lost.

Coming off the rez, Marj is interested in finding the earliest possible camp, due to worries about bear activity at night.  We try to reassure her that the bears do not think we are food, either at night or during the day.  But nothing short of getting a tent pitched and herself into it (bear-free) will calm her.  We turn off the road at a brown sign for a state campground around dusk, but we’re not sure how far back from the main road it is.  A very Western man in a felt hat with a big dog reassured us that it existed and wasn’t far, but after a couple of miles the majority of the party agreed to turn around and proceed to Shoshone N.F.    More daylight lost.

We stop in the town of Dubois, WY, and ask at a motel for directions to the nearest campground.  The proprietor gives us directions to the KOA campground, and a map that shows the Brooks Lake area of Shoshone NF being not-far-off.  I expressed my feeling of profound distaste for commercial campgrounds, and we proceeded to Brooks Lake.

We finally arrive in the National Forest around 2130, and after a tense trip up dark forest roads, we arrive at the Pinnacles Camp.  We are all too exhausted to eat, so we make camp and go to sleep with little fanfare.

Have I teased you enough yet?  Anxious for a picture?  So was I!  And now, I present the view from Brooks Lake the next morning:

Panoramic View of Brooks Lake: Continental Divide in Background