After leaving the scenic beauty of the Grand Tetons and all that is potato in Idaho, our sights were set on Montana. Yellowstone-bound 🙂

But this nomadic life is not all perfume and roses, ya know. Some of our less than perfect experiences this weekend included more fishing without catching; finding the best boondocking spots already taken (resulting in a lot of maneuvering, swearing and cursing); having a thunderstorm appear from nowhere just as I’m ejected from the truck to help park (deja vu!); driving with the Basecamp along a horrific washboard dirt road trying to avoid ruts the size of France, all to reach let’s call it a sub-optimal hike with narrow paths, steep drop offs and river crossings. My favorite! Still, even a ‘bad’ weekend on the road beats a monotonous groundhog weekend.

You might not realize this but we actually spend a good deal of our time working. So finding a great spot to work is an awesome thing. Being this close to Yellowstone brought with it a sparsity of co-working offices. As in none. As an alternative, we started our week with a few days at a (WiFi-d up) Airbnb near Big Sky, Montana. The slight problem was that the views out of the windows were so awesome, I spent every spare moment staring with longing at the outdoors, tongue lolling and chomping at the bit to get out into the mountains. In the meantime, I made do with an early morning run and some wistful distracted looks during meetings.

We were also lucky enough at Big Sky to be right on the Gatlin river. When low cloud put paid to our early morning walk into the mountains, we see-sawed our fun and games to the other end of the day. Sundowner cocktails by the river? Don’t mind if we do.

Half way through the week, we moved on to another equally awesome Airbnb (views within a hair’s breadth of the Big Sky place and comparatively palatial), not too far off the north entrance to Yellowstone. Our main distractions at this place were the herds of deer regularly pronking past the window and the rough-legged hawk that had nested atop a nearby perch, constantly vigilant, occasionally swooping down to the field below, eyes on the prize. The single chick back in the nest vocally awaited its mother’s return, demanding bite size rodent snackettes.

Speaking of rodents… so there we were in the back garden, having just finished up a very tasty barbecue. Sunset a recent memory, darkness was setting in: time to build a fire.

Just as Darren was busy building his masterpiece, there was a high pitched squeal followed immediately by a surprised yelp from Darren as he leapt two clear feet in the air. I rushed over, concerned he’d burned himself. But no. Seems like he stood on a mouse. Or maybe a mouse’s nest with a mouse in it. Either way, it was a little bit squishy, evasive and squeaky.

With no evidence of further movement, we calmed down and huddled around the fire. After I’d gone to bed, leaving Darren to douse the embers, he saw a mouse scamper past. He was convinced it gave him ‘the look’.

It was in full daylight the next day that a higher truth was revealed.

With the national park practically on our doorstep, we ventured to the Mammoth hot springs area one morning at sunrise. The morning light was perfect as we walked past atmospheric plumes of steam, gazing at the cascading petrified waterfalls. We almost had the place to ourselves, a very refreshing change from our previous visit two years ago.

Other highlights from our brief time in Yellowstone included walking through the Lamar valley in search of wolves (none to be found) and prehistoric cows, otherwise known as bison.

You can’t go to Yellowstone without being in awe of the bison. So loud with their grunting and snorting, so entertaining to watch with their mock fights and mud baths. And just so damn many of them. Around 5,000 to be exact.

No bison stories this time, other than trying to shoo one along the path we were hiking, trying to keep a respectful distance but impatient to look for other wildlife. (For a reminder of our bison encounters last time, check out Yellowstone: The Bison Face-Off).

And the grandeur of the park doesn’t immediately stop when you leave the park gates. We snagged an awesome boondocking spot on nearby National Forest land along the Beartooth Highway. Not only that but a full 8 weeks into our trip, Darren finally caught his first fish!

From Jackson, we skirted the underbelly of the Tetons, driving into Idaho to approach the mountains from the other side. And the best jumping off point for hiking and biking on the Idaho side is the Grand Targhee ski resort. ‘On the Idaho side’ is a bit misleading though, because even though we approached from Idaho, the actual mountain area is technically back in Wyoming (as in, they nicked the best bits). Hence, we found ourselves in ‘Wydaho’.

While you don’t get that iconic Teton skyline (should that be Tetonic?) as you’re approaching from the Idaho side, the view makes up for it once you get right up there. Darren is starting to get paranoid that my top walks of the trip have been when he’s not been with me. There could be something in that, but I’m thinking more correlation than causation. So he took off to play with his mountain bike. And I climbed a mountain.

The awesome things about our Work Farm co-working space for the week were 1) we could park outside. Meaning we had everything in the Basecamp at our fingertips, should we feel the need for a coffee or snack. Which we did quite often. And 2) the WiFi stretched to the Basecamp. Meaning we had an extra option to use the Basecamp as an office. Sweet.

Pre-work morning activities were a bit more limited this week, sometimes you need a bit of a break from the work hard play hard thing. In fact, two mornings were taken up with The Great Propane Hunt. Our gas supplies were running low, and no one wants the ice cream in the freezer to melt! There was a closed propane place, a non-existent place (showed up on a map but just wasn’t there) and a place that wouldn’t do walk-in refills due to Covid. Darren had to do a good bit of phoning round until we eventually found somewhere.

A couple of other days, we still managed to stretch our legs and take in some fresh air and scenery.

By day, we ate potatoes and worked in Victor, Idaho. Ok, maybe I made the potato bit up. But that’s what Idaho is known for. By night, we retired to our cool campsite, just four miles up the road at Trail Creek, Wyoming. It was a secluded national forest spot, just a dozen sites, very pretty. We made the most of it with a few cozy evenings spent by the campfire – maybe another reason we didn’t get many early hikes in.

And for a small town, Victor over-indexes with two breweries. Of course it’s very important to support local businesses.

We also embraced the diversity of Wydaho with some unusual overnight camping spots.

Located near Driggs just outside Victor, we spent a night at one of the Harvest Hosts, the Grand Teton Distillery. Obviously, it’s only polite to pay them a visit before camping there. The state of Idaho dictate an unfortunately low limit on the amount of liquor you can taste in one sitting. And it’s not a lot! To the point of supplementing our potato vodka and whiskey tasting with their bourbon maple syrup and ‘drunk’ cherries (which didn’t count towards our liquor intake), bonus 😀

Another novel place to lay our heads was the Spud Drive In movie theater. How cool is that – even going to a drive in is such an old-school all-American experience, I felt like an extra in Grease. Except this was the latest remake of Disney’s The Jungle Book. Whatever, we improvised. It was cool.

And you can even have a cheeky beer or two cos you don’t have to drive home afterwards. As the final credits rolled, the car engines revved and the line of red tail lights faded into the distance, our commute was all the way from the truck to the trailer. Night night.

Skirting the southern edge of the Grand Teton national park lies Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Given its ideal location location location, it’s a touch on the posh & pricey side, and definitely busier than anywhere else we’ve been to so far.

Instead of our usual choice of camping and co-working office, this week we plumped for a motel in Jackson Hole. Not just any motel but the Modern Mountain Motel. Night and day from our go-to Motel 6 standard, I would say more hotel than motel. And having WiFi meant we could work from the hotel room, the lobby, the cafe or the outside area. Oodles of options and no co-working office needed.

It did mean saying goodbye to the Basecamp for a week though. Being such a shit-hot tourist destination means no parking in town for trailers overnight. Which also meant we had to venture into the zoo of a town to find food.

We kept it simple with Snake River Brewing, seated outside (although tbh, not one of my favorite breweries), and Bin22, an open patio seating area that did decent tapas style dishes. It had a wine retail store attached, from which you could choose your wine with no additional corkage. Nice.

The housekeeping arrangements at the Modern Mountain were such that they did a deep clean in between guests, and then no maid service during your stay. Which suited us just fine. Clean towels and keurig coffee pods (told you it was posh) were available in unlimited supply. And for the first time in six weeks, I had a hairdryer! (Should have taken a selfie but nope sorry, hair photo fail again).

You probably get the deal by now: Mornings before work involve either hiking, biking, running or SUPing. Being on the edge of the Tetons enabled us to really make the most of it this week.

And then before we get to Friday (for me the highlight of the week), let’s skip ahead to the weekend, when we did a longer hike into the heart of the mountains up Death Canyon.

Not far from the trailhead was a bear. I’m not going to tease you with another Where’s Wally/Where’s The Bear type pictures as this one wasn’t much in the mood for posing.

Now, back to Friday. So I have been known to get a bit excited about wildlife sightings. Ah but this was no ordinary wildlife sighting, it was a wildlife encounter, no less!

So there I was, on a single track trail by the river, doing a trail run shuffle in an attempt to make up a bit of time as I was behind schedule to meet Darren from his morning SUP.

Another trail runner was coming towards me and I stepped aside to let her past. Instead of a ‘thanks’, what I thought I heard uttered from her lips was “Moose”. Twas a bit difficult to make out as she had a face covering on and she wasn’t hanging around, so took me a while to assimilate. My initial thought after “Did she just say Moose?” was “Screw you, not looking too hot yourself”. Which swiftly turned into, “Ooh, maybe she means there’s a moose up ahead somewhere, I should keep an eye out”.

I rounded the corner, eyes scanning the horizon and the trail way ahead. And then I stopped. Right up ahead and nowhere near the horizon was A Moose. Literally right there on the trail in front of me. And still moving. In my direction. On a single track trail.

You don’t have a lot of time to think in these situations. I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t getting past That. It also didn’t seem a good idea to about turn and run back the way I came with the moose following me. I’m not very fast and there’s a lot of ways that could potentially end, most of them not good. Instead, I ran back around the corner and scrambled up the bank. Covered in thick undergrowth and mighty steep, this was not a bank I would normally attempt to climb. But this wasn’t normal circumstances. The adrenaline was flowing, you’ve never seen me move so fast. Albeit with phone in hand at the ready.

And without a care in the world, just a casual sideways glance at me as if to say “funny place to hang out, you don’t look too comfortable precariously balanced up there on that slope”, she just moseyed on past.

Not to be outdone, Darren reported that he’d seen a family of ducks & ducklings on his SUP outing 🙂