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.
I cheated and took the chairlift down.
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.
My first aperol spritz since we left home seven weeks ago.
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 😀
Bit of a difference in the sky!
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.
Time to move on to our next destination: Yellowstone.