Our Crowded Mantel: Jackson, WY to Bend, OR

We've spent a long few days on the road and I have been reminded just how far away Oregon is from home! Though spending hours upon hours in the car can be annoying, mostly it's lovely and there's something about knowing you are so far from home that makes the traveling feel real. You can't deny you're on vacation when you've driven fifteen hundred miles from your front door.

On our second day of driving we made it from Rapid City to Grand Teton National Park. We were hoping to camp at the Jenny Lake camp ground, but it was full so we ended up at Gros Ventres which was just fine and had nice views of the peaks. We set up camp late in the early evening and made for a new bike trail that follows the inner park road. Sixteen miles went by like nothing when focused on amazing panoramic views of the peaks.

After the ride we headed to Jackson for dinner at a restaurant and nano brewery that Ry had been to before called Thai Me Up (classy name, huh?). The beer was great and the food was nummy. We enjoyed sitting out on a little patio table. I'm sure Jackson used to be a rugged little mountain town, but now it seems overpopulated by rich folk dressed in worn down mountain clothes and everything looks a tad over-touristed.

My dad came on a trip out here a long time ago and he had this sweatshirt that he used to wear from Jackson Hole with a silhouette of the Wyoming cowboy. I remember that sweatshirt well and a coloring book he also got me from Sun Valley, ID full of mountain drawings to color in. Those items are both long gone now. But, I can't help but thinking that Jackson isn't at all the same as it must of been back then.

The ride, food and beer tired us right out and we hit the hay right away. Unfortunately I had scary and strange post-apocalyptic dreams which kept me awake most of the night and I woke up in a sweat in the morning.

My toesies on the windshield. Ry does not love this because it leaves little toe prints but it helps me stretch out on long rides.

Grand Teton beer in the Cowboy Cafe. DuBois, WY on the way to GTNP.

A shot in the other direction.

Sign at a look out on the way into Jackson Hole.

View from the lookout.

In bike regalia at the creek on the path.

Morning view of the peaks.

The next day we had organic breakfast at a little health foods store where we realized that Ry never got his credit card back from our waiter the night before. We decided to head for OR anyway because they wouldn't be open for several more hours and we didn't have time to waste on our journey. Ry got them on the phone around lunch time and told them to cut the card up. Casualty of the road!

We traveled across all of Idaho and got onto Highway 26 a remote road that runs about 350 miles from eastern to central Oregon. I slept for a good deal of the first hour and woke just as the scenery was changing. Eventually we rode through extremely remote forests and watched the landscape change from sage brush scrub desert to high desert to mountains and back. We went through a few tiny valley towns but overall it was amazingly unpopulated. It was long, but I am so glad we took it. We rolled into Bend around 10pm and hit the hay in a cheap, shabby but clean motel on the outskirts of town.

Today we will find a campsite and try to decide what we will do since we learned the mountain we intended to climb, South Sister, is still covered in 5-7 feet of snow at the top. We're learning that lots of peaks are still full of snow and some passes are even still closed due to a rough winter. We're contemplating trying to ride a few passes on our bikes that are closed for cars, but that seems sort of ambitious to me. We may be heading down to Crater Lake and over to the coast sooner than we thought. We'll see...