We had a nice night’s rest at the Swiss Mountain Motel in Thayne, Wyoming. We slept in a bit, but were up by 7:00. Chris and the owner of the place traded stories in the parking lot again while I got myself ready to go and we were on the road by about 8:15.
Since we had stayed an hour outside of Jackson, thanks to the exorbitant price of accommodations there, that placed Jackson at the perfect distance to be our breakfast destination. While the price of a hotel room there might have been beyond our willingness to pay for, a bougie coffee was not, and I offered to treat Chris to a fancy coffee in downtown Jackson.
The ride there was great north on US-89. The Star Valley had whispy clouds floating what seemed like only a hundred feet above the valley floor. When we turned right to continue into the Snake River canyon the scenery changed suddenly from the broad verdant valley to a steep-walled canyon. The clouds had the canyon socked in with overcast, and thus was the ride into Jackson.
Traffic in Jackson was nuts. There was barely a break in the out-of-state SUVs crawling along every road in the place. Our stop was right in the middle of the action in downtown Jackson, Snake River Roasters coffee shop. Chris must have missed me mentioning that I was going to get breakfast there too, or couldn’t bring himself to have me pay the prices they were charging, I couldn’t get it out of him, but we both enjoyed some pretty great coffees and people-watching in downtown Jackson.
After we had coffee and I had breakfast, we decided to take a walk around the town square as Chris had lost his Zippo lighter the day before someplace. Chris stuck his nose into each establishment that had a chance of having lighters, striking out each time, and then following up with “Do you know where I can find a tobacconist?” to absolutely befuddled looks from all the poor store clerks at what that even was. By this point it was 11:30am, and we needed to get a move on, so we made our way out of Jackson toward Grand Teton National Park, finally!
We rode only a couple miles out of town on US-191, and got our first view of the Tetons, man what a sight!
At the first roundabout, Chris decided to take a left, despite every sign and GPS unit indicating that the park was straight ahead, because he knew of a “scenic way”. Well, the scenic way involved touring around a very well-to-do subdivision of giant Wyoming-scale mansions dotted around the Jackson Hole valley floor. Eventually when every road was dead-ended with a private gate, he acknowledged that he’d gone the wrong way, but I think it might only have been because he needed help to get his bike turned around from knocking his tank bag off making his u-turn. You’d have to ask him to be sure.
After we returned to the highway and followed the signs, we made it into Grand Teton National Park. I went in to the visitor’s center to find some souvenirs, while Chris had a smoke with the bikes.
As a bit of a backstory, the final destination for this trip is in Ottawa, Canada, my hometown. Well, the day before we were due to leave from the Bay Area, I received a text message from Chris’s friend Jeff Zane, asking if US citizens can enter Canada with only a Real ID drivers license and no passport. I thought he was joking, since Chris had tried to do that his last riding trip that was due to go to Canada and been denied entry. Jeff being famous for trolling Chris, I thought it was a joke, referring to that trip. But Jeff wasn’t joking. Chris had “misplaced” his passport and had been trying to convince himself that the nice CBSA officers would just roll out the welcome mat for him if he showed them his Real ID drivers license. They will not. Hopefully they accept that and his birth certificate as it says on their website. We’ll see when we get there, I haven’t tried crossing the border without a passport in over 20 years!
Anyway, with that backstory out of the way, you can now understand why, when I saw that they were selling National Park Passports at the gift shop, I knew just the guy in need!
After that deed was done, we continued to take the scenic route around Grand Teton National Park, passing by several beautiful meadows, lakes and vistas taking dozens of pictures along the way:
Having had a sample of the bourgeoisie lifestyle that morning, Chris tried stopping in for lunch at the Jenny Lake Lodge for some fine dining, only to be turned away, as it was 1:10pm, and they stopped seating for lunch at 1:00pm sharp. Dang, our taste for the high-life had run out! The best we could get was a selfie with the Grand Teton in their meadow.
We pressed on continuing northbound toward Yellowstone National Park, when Chris decided to try another spot for lunch, this time at Grand Teton Lodge. They had an incredible view out of the lobby.
Instead of picking the upscale dining experience at the front right, Chris picked the cafeteria-style option. They had great food, however, and very quick service, which was good, since by now it was nearly 3:00pm and we hadn’t even left Grand Teton National Park yet! We had to jet!
We carried on north out of Grand Teton National Park and up to Yellowstone National Park, passing along a great river canyon below of what I’ve now looked up to be the Lewis River, a tributary of the Snake River.
We then made our way through Yellowstone, stuck going just over the posted speed limit of 45mph. Chris’s previous experience going through the park had taught him to not mess around with the Yellowstone NPS police.
We stopped in to see the Old Faithful geyser, and man, what a crowd assembled. While we waited, it was neat watching the half-dozen or so vents in the field billow steam out constantly. By the time the geyser was good and ready there must have been about 3000 people there to watch it steam, spurt, gurgle until eventually it fired its water nearly 50 feet into the air, awesome!
We continued northbound through all of Yellowstone, unfortunately having to skip most of the other sights and attractions at the park, as by now it was after 6:00pm and we had another 100 miles to make it to our destination of Livingston, Montana.
We took only a couple of breaks along, the way, including one where the Glen creek drops down a steep waterfall down into the Golden Gate canyon below. I went off to take some photos while Chris had a his union smoke break. The wind was whipping into the canyon, so Chris went to try to get shelter from the wind next to the retaining wall holding the road out of the canyon and tripped only 5 feet from the edge of the 100 foot-plus-high cliff. Luckily, he didn’t tumble and only scraped himself up a bit, and with some help, and some band-aids we were able to patch him up. And wouldn’t you know what we found when cleaning up his paraphernalia? His Zippo that we’d spent nearly an hour trying to replace this morning in Jackson!
The final road out of Yellowstone between Mammoth, Wyoming and Gardiner, Montana was an absolutely spectacular stretch of road with the sun setting into the Montana Rockies. It was awesome!
Past that, Chris and I finally put the bikes into 6th gear for the first time since we’d arrived in Jackson at 9:30am and booked it up US-89 as the light failed us to make it to a hotel in Livingston, Montana. I’m tired, it’s after midnight as I finish this. I’m going to sleep.
Tomorrow’s another slab day of heading east on I-90 and I-94, following the Yellowstone River hopefully as far as until its confluence with the Missouri near Williston, North Dakota, about 430 miles.
Mike, the Grand Teton Lodge is also known as Jackson Lake Lodge. My wife and I stayed there for two days last summer. Ate in that very same cafeteria as well . . . good (big) pancakes! That falls area in Yellowstone looks familiar as well. Safe travels to you and Chris.
Enjoying the wonderful story. Another great day of riding and you had good weather in Grand Teton. I had a lovely breakfast at Jackson Lodge in 2010 with my then fiancé, the Airhead. It’s a beautiful view. We were riding to Paonia circuitously, having left the BMW Rally in Redmond (2010). We ran into a killer lightning storm south of Jackson all the way to Rock Springs. There was a huge NPS rescue operation of a bunch of climbers that had been hit by lightning on Grand Teton. Wyoming is always entertaining. Have fun!