We traveled to Jackson Hole, Grand Teton and Yellowstone for our 9th anniversary in August 2008.
We’d love to return to see the whole gorgeous area blanketed in wintry snow.

Here are some resources to help you plan your own “travels with two” to Wyoming. 

Travels With Two
Posts on Wyoming

Wyoming Guides
Wyoming State Tourism Guide 
National Geographic
Conde Nast Traveler
Frommers
Samantha Brown
Globe Trekker

Wyoming Articles
Sunset Magazine: Wyoming search results
Conde Nast Traveler: Whistle-Stop Tours
Travel + Leisure: 10 Best Romantic Hotels in the U.S.
Westways: Yellowstone
Travel Channel: Romantic Road Trips

Wyoming Travel Agents & Tours
Caroline Wood @ Brownell Travel
Natural Habitat Adventures

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Have a Wyoming tip, story, or blog post you’d like to share?

Travels With Two

I was recently asked to contribute to a wonderful communal travel blog called Travel Blogs.com.  (Catchy name, I know, but it does offer truth in advertising.)  

Editor Eric Daams asked me what book inspired Adam and I to travel this year, and I was able to quickly say:  A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.

You can read about why this book prompted us to visit Yellowstone (pictured here) in a special Travel Blogs post, The Books, Movies and Documentaries That Inspired Us to Travel in 2008.  

See what else might inspire you.

Travels With Two

Geyser Hill, Yellowstone National Park

Encompassing over 2.2 million acres and almost 3500 square miles, the geological wonder known as Yellowstone National Park is truly and absolutely huge. It takes up a large chunk of northwestern Wyoming, as well as a scoche of Idaho to the west and Montana to the north.

I point this out because in one eight-hour day, we did a loop around the center of the park, seeing only a fraction of this national treasure. To do Yellowstone properly, you need four days to a week; one day will only scratch the hot, ashy surface. I’d been keen to visit Yellowstone since reading Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything and learning that the park sits on a massive geological hotspot known as a supervolcano. Can’t see dinosaurs in the flesh, can’t touch the flora of aeons long past, can visit a supervolcano.  Check.

Driving from Jackson Hole, Wyoming in late August (still high season), we approached the park’s South Entrance via the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway. Through October 2008, road construction on the Parkway will continue to cause the 20-30 minute delay we encountered; ordinarily the 60-mile journey from Jackson Hole to Yellowstone would have taken an hour and a half.

Once in the park ($25 per 7 days, including entrance to Grand Teton), we followed the main road along the twisty Lewis River to lush Lewis Lake and chunky little Lewis Falls. The well-honored Lewis in question is Meriwether of “and Clark” expedition fame.

The Lewis River

We stopped for lunch at the Grant Village Restaurant, which has a soaring ceiling, friendly service, good burgers and iced tea, and a sparkly blue view of Yellowstone Lake through thick pine trees.  20 miles long, this is the largest mountain lake in North America, and cold enough to induce hypothermia within a few minutes.

Pretty lake. Nice lake.

We applauded our young waiter’s recent move from Minnesota, but he lamented his inability to make a go of Wyoming’s outdoorsy lifestyle. He admitted that days earlier he had slipped while climbing Grand Teton, falling back flat on a glacier. A novice ice-climber, he was surprised to discover that, unlike Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger, you can’t really use two pick axes at once to hoist yourself out of danger. Rubbing his shoulder, he assured us that our tame day of driving around Yellowstone was a smart choice.

After lunch, we headed a few minutes west to the section of the park known simply as Old Faithful. In addition to hosting a huge tourist infrastructure and the timely spout itself, Upper Geyser Basin is Yellowstone’s most condensed area of geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, and mudpots, most of which you can see from a network of boardwalks and paved walking paths.

Upon arrival, we’d just missed an Old Faithful eruption and faced a 90-minute wait for another; luckily, a kind tourist urged us to head off the main drag to the boardwalk at Geyser Hill. Turns out there are larger geysers with more staying power everywhere you look, and within a few hundred feet you’re bound to see the Anemone, Beehive or (shown here) Plume Geysers do their remarkable things.

Beehive Geyser

To say the Basin is hot is a grand understatement. The ashy grey ground fairly ripples, burping flakes and jets and clouds and ooze. Bubbling, funneled pools of striking teal blue water bleed out into rainbow rings of color caused by ancient, heat-loving organisms known as thermophiles.

Yellowstone's Beauty Pool, color courtesy of thermophiles

Safe as houses on the path, walking for over an hour, we had the unsettling sense that if this part of the Earth wanted to kill us all, we’d already be dead. Darwinian signs warn visitors not to bathe in these pools or let their pets wander; in our upswell of pro-American feeling on this trip, we allowed ourselves to imagine that these signs were surely meant for hapless foreigners.

Sunset Lake in Yellowstone

Our favorite cluster of geysers and pools, Black Sand Basin, required leaving the Old Faithful area for a two-minute drive. Here, startling Cliff Geyser erupts about 30 feet every few minutes, cool Iron Spring Creek melds into a hot spring, and steamy Sunset Lake casts a cerulean glow. Hardly more than a 15-minute square walk, this mini-basin reads like a Hotspot Top Five.

From here we went in search of mudpots, or as they’re often more delicately named, paintpots. Sad thing was, it was by now well after 4pm and we were close to exhausted. The weather in late August wasn’t exactly hot, but anytime we wander around in the sun for a couple of hours, we’re bound to need a little rest.

Mudpots/paintpots in Yellowstone

Sadly, resting is not often our travel m.o.; we tend to go until we’re slightly gray, driving like it’s our job rather than just our choice. Cruising through the waterfall-heavy Madison portion of the park was lovely, but by the time we got to the central Norris, ground zero for mudpots, we could hardly have cared less…

…and it was three some-odd hours back to our hotel, the Rusty Parrot in Jackson Hole.

We should have learned our lesson a few months prior when we almost made it all the way from Canada’s Lake Louise to the Jasper Icefields, then had to turn back for our hotel:  if you’re going to keep moving like shark, book different rooms along your route.

In this case, if we’d booked a room in central Canyon Village for even one night, problem solved. We could have even awoken the next morning to explore the adjacent 1,000 foot deep, colorful Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and its 2.5 mile scenic North Rim Drive.

Without this hindsight, though, we had little choice but to soldier on and head back to Jackson Hole.

We were almost immediately rewarded with this big, woolly roadside bison, hunkered in the dust. It wasn’t until twenty minutes later, when we’d pass through the Hayden Valley and see whole herds of bison clustered the traditional half-mile from the road, that we’d realize how very unusual this was. Now we can only wonder if the poor guy wasn’t well.

Roadside bison in Yellowstone

The Hayden Valley, which lies between central Canyon Village and the northern tip of Yellowstone Lake, is easily the most spectacular wildlife viewing opportunity. Nigh on 5pm in late summer, one side of the road has plush and golden-lit creek marshes, and the other a tall ridge blanketed with tourists and the telephoto lenses they love. As the sun creeps down, elk, bison, wolves, moose, bears and more tiptoe out from the far-off trees in search of the tasty grasses on this Yellowstone River plain.

Ah, to have had the time (and fortitude, and nearby lodgings) to stay awhile…

However, there were two advantages to the evening drive back. We were lucky enough to drive the full length of Yellowstone Lake at golden hour, the peaks of Wyoming’s mighty Absaroka Range gauzy in the distance, and encountered only a handful of cars the whole way back.

Traffic-free national park driving, even on the verge of hunger and sleep?  Priceless.

Yellowstone Lake at golden hour

PLEASE NOTE:  The South and East entrances (in Wyoming) and the West (in Idaho) are open all summer,
but are closed from early November to May; your only winter entrance options, the North and Northeast, are via Montana.

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See related posts
TWT Travel Binder: Wyoming
Wyoming, the Land of…Land
Mighty Grand Tetons You’ve Got There
Jackson Hole: The New Old West

Travels With Two

The Grand Tetons and the Snake River

Gajillions of tourists flock each year to Yellowstone, but for our dime, it’s all about Grand Teton National Park.

True, you could scale a mountain face or tramp through a dozen hikes, discovering a little-seen waterfall or tracking a herd of tule elk.  But Grand Teton offers more passive pleasures for those, like us, who care to see nature unfold from a seated position.

The roads here are beautifully paved, so you can always put the car window down and gape open-mouthed. But you could also float the willful Snake River, dream awhile by  Jenny Lake, wait patiently for the sun to blaze behind the jagged Teton Range, watch wild animals graze in the sagebrush flats while you enjoy a glass of wine, or wander to a hand-hewn bench to see a magnificent floodplain stretch out before the mountains, lake, and forest.

One sixth the size of Yellowstone, Grand Teton is the only national park that boasts an airport within its borders; Jackson Hole is just ten minutes’ drive away.  The flight into this area is nothing short of spectacular, unless it’s always been your worst nightmare to swoop down into a towering line of mountains.

The park’s dramatic landscape soars from its snow-sprinkled namesakes to:

Forests in a dozen shades of green;
spongy golden hills like shaved wheaten terriers;
dry plains of bonsai-esque sagebrush;
squishy-soft meadows and marshes;
great big lakes;
and the twisting, braided Snake River.

If you’re looking to stay inside the park, we didn’t find a setting comparable to Jackson Lake Lodge.  I initially ran into this little slice of 1950s history to use the ladies’, and ended up fetching Adam in from the car to see the cathedral/lounge.

The fireplaces here are massive, and so are the 60-foot tall windows; inside or out, the sweeping view of the lake, the Tetons, Willow Flats, and a handful of pristine ponds will leave you speechless.  If you’re just stopping in, check with the front desk about booking a boat trip on Jackson Lake or dinner in the Mural Room.

Jackson Lake Lodge

Our one meal in the park was a lovely lunch at Jenny Lake Lodge.  At this elegant, polished-pine cabin with a mountain meadow view, meals are served on white tablecloths and good china, but the food isn’t overly fussy.  Adam loved his portobello panini, my salad had actual green lettuce (not always a given in a national park), and the soup of the day, mushroom lavender, was the perfect accompaniment to the scene outside.  Apparently, the rooms here are the fanciest to be found outside of Jackson Hole (and at $500+, you’re definitely paying for it), but the lake is across the road and through the trees, not viewable from the lodge.  Your call, but at $269 with a view at the Jackson, this wouldn’t be a hard choice for us.

Jenny Lake itself was our favorite part of the park.  Stash your car midway along it — keeping an eye out for foraging elk —  and stroll down to the water’s edge for a pebbly little spit of beach cushioned by a fringe of pines.  The water is clear and teal blue at the edges, an sun dapples through the shade of the trees; on our late-August visit, a light breeze quietly ruffled the surface.  Here, the Tetons themselves appear to rise from the center, and you can clearly see each crag and snowdrift.  An occasional canoe will drift by, and so will your sense of time.  Not a bad place to fall in love all over again.

Jenny Lake

A Snake River float will seal the deal. If you have time for only one adventure in Grand Teton National Park, this is it.  We had the concierge at our hotel, the Rusty Parrot, set this up for us, but you could also contact Barker-Ewing Float Trips on your own.  They offer whitewater trips as well as floats, but going slowly enough to catch animals in their wild habitats appealed to us far more.

We were two of eleven passengers in a sturdy rubber raft, floating for the two prime animal-viewing hours just shy of sunset.  It’s calm and quiet on the water, and as the light grows soft, the reeds and marshes glow.  Seeing the sun glint over the Tetons just before dusk was especially silent, save for the harp music in our heads.

Our guide, a young guy born and bred just minutes from the park, pointed out every beaver, deer, eagle and osprey, and spun yarns about the river in every aeon and season.  The Snake gets choppy and tree-choked in places, but he never lost his bearings or his narrative thread.

In late summer, it’s advisable to wear sneakers or Teva-type sandals, take along a sweatshirt or jacket, and if it doesn’t make you feel too dorky, bring a little pillow for your tush.  After two hours, though happy and relaxed, we were lamenting our partial loss of coccyx function.

Snake floating with Barker-Ewing

After ending our float at dusk, we drove one minute up the road to the commercial center of Moose and the ever-popular Dornan’s.

A two-story cafe, bar and comprehensive wine shop, Dornan’s is where locals and tourists alike come to listen to concerts at the Chuckwagon across the parking lot, or have excellent wines, simple salads, pizza and good company in the open air.  The hot tables here are first-come-first-serve on the second-floor deck; they look out over a brushy plain beside the Snake and Tetons, a prime viewing spot for evening-foraging elk and bison.  By the time we arrived at 8pm, it was wall-to-wall jammed, so we gave up waiting; it was enough for us to just drink in the scene and check out the dizzying array of California reds.

The animals will keep in this protected space — no reason not to go back and see them some other night.

The view from Dornan's in Moose, Wyoming

For more of our photos from Grand Teton National Park, please click here.

See related posts
TWT Travel Binder: Wyoming
The (Steamy) Heart of Yellowstone
Jackson Hole: The New Old West

Travels With Two

Downtown Jackson Hole, Wyoming

It has been said that Jackson Holeisn’t really Wyoming, in the same way that Aspen isn’t really Colorado. But I can only say that in our late summer experience of Jackson Hole, glitz is at a minimum and hippies, outdoorsy locals, and affluent transplants easily breathe the same clean, dry air. Jackson’s downtown isn’t, at first glance, stretching too far outside the box you might expect of the Wild West. It’s a cleaned-up version of an old Western town, with wood-plank sidewalks, arches made of bleached and high-stacked antlers, touristy stagecoach rides around the main square, and lots of cowboy imagery.  It’s not surprising that you can find a bolo tie or microfleece, but your head might be turned by an exciting piece of modern art or a damn fine bagel.

Proximity to nature, though, is what makes this town truly unique. One minute outside town in any direction you’re surrounded by the magnificent Tetons, a golden, grassy elk preserve, a pine forest, and an enormous marsh full of ducks and geese. People have spread out into this wilderness in different ways over the years: A late 1890s homestead, Miller’s Cabin, sits alone at the edge of the marsh, while at the opposite end of a long, barely-paved road favored by joggers, a sprinkling of far newer mansions abut each other with just 1000 feet between.

Jackson Hole Elk Refuge

To get a bit of both worlds, I booked us into the famous (and rightfully so) Rusty Parrot.

It's hard to take a great photo of the outside of the Rusty Parrot, but the inside is wonderful

I’d mistakenly thought the hotel would be in a wheaty field with a mountain view; turns out it’s right in town, set on a quiet public square. Out front and across the street is a little park with a playground, while out back our room faced a sheer, rocky hill, rushing stream, and the parking lot. Inside, though, it’s pure, cozy elegance.

We rarely enjoy a bed more than our own when traveling, but here it was like sinking into a big hug every night. Each of the hotel’s beds has its own floppy teddy bear, and each time you leave your room and come back, the bear is posed in a different comical position. (I loved this, and was happy to discover Adam had bought me my own bear for our bed at home.) Fresh-baked cookies waited in the upstairs sitting room every afternoon, the bathroom products were from L’Occitane, and if we’d had the inclination to soak in the second-floor hot tub vs. make a fire in our river-rock fireplace each night, we would have had a view of one million stars.

The Rusty Parrot’s Body Sage Spa consists of just a few warm, comfortable treatment rooms on the ground floor, furnished in deep shades of red and brown, but it’s nonetheless transporting. A full range of treatments in styles ranging from Hammam to Japanese are given by kind, comforting people who will happily get your kinks out and then tell you where to find their favorite waterfall. Adam was turned to jelly by a long stress relief massage, and I walked on air after The Aphrodite, a two-hour steam-wrap-rub odyssey of mint steam, rose oil, and honey.

Breakfast at the lobby’s Wild Sage, included in our stay, was one of the highlights of each day. Have an omelette here even if you’re not planning to stay. The coffee cups aren’t big enough, but you can have as much as you want and there’s always a newspaper lying around. Fruit can be hard to come by in these parts, but it’s plentiful here. Share your table, and you’ll meet someone unexpected.

Dinner at Wild Sage, while offering excellent service and a warm, glowing ambience, is very expensive and the food hit or miss. The cuisine lacks nothing in complexity; my entree, a red curry bouillabaise, had no less than twelve different flavors, including pineapple, and tasted just like a curry you’d find in any good Thai restaurant (for $11 rather than $42).  Many things on the menu are “stung” with fruit sauces, which automatically inspired us not to order them. Their wine list, though, is simply divine; to find a half-bottle of the 2004 Ridge Zinfandel was a real treat.

Coke machine in downtown Jackson Hole

Less fussy meals can be found at both Trio and Rendezvous Bistro.  At Trio, we flipped for the salads and even the vinegary horseradish accompanying the short ribs. My gluten allergy was indulged with an incredibly rich flourless chocolate cake topped with a candied orange. At Rendezvous, exhausted after a full day of driving in Yellowstone, we still managed to thrill to the day’s carrot-cilantro soup, spicy harrissa on tandoori chicken and the Friday night special, gingery seared sea scallops with crispy onions.

By all means, chuckle over the name Mile High Pizza Pie (120 West Broadway) and take a deep, garlicky breath as you walk by to Trio, but resist the urge to eat here. It’s cardboard-y crust is, sadly, just not very good.

Next door is local favorite D.O.G. (which stands for Down On Glen). Young folks seemingly ripped from the pages of an REI catalogue flock here for fresh, cheap fare like momo (dumplings with a side of tomato sauce) and arguably, Jackson Hole’s best burritos.

After lunch, stop into the Diehl Gallery to see impressive paintings, photography, and metalworks. One of many galleries in downtown, this was our favorite for its modern twist on western themes like mountain views, birds of prey, and wildflowers. We were especially fascinated by the sinuously floral steel creations of Tyler Aiello, which manage to be both polished and rustic.

You might want to catch a movie at the local theater, The Teton (120 North Cache), a single-screen throwback to the 1950s.  There are no cupholders on the seats, but there’s enough legroom for tall cowboys in sturdy boots.

If you’re a coffee fan, stop by Pearl Street Bagels (145 West Pearl Street) for rich, deep-roasted brews; while you wait, you can watch them make their signature bagels, even pumpernickel. (In Jackson Hole, no less – who knew?)  The crowd is a mix of white-haired hippies and young, artsy professionals, as though Portland, Oregon had uprooted itself and landed just so, east of Idaho.

Take your coffee, hop on Broadway heading east, and at the far back edge of town it becomes the Elk Refuge Road, a real adventure in Jackson Hole proper. Cutting through rugged Curtis Canyon, this dusty, narrow lane passes the back of the Elk Refuge marsh, Miller’s Cabin, and turquoise ponds full of Canadian geese and wild ducks. You can wind up into the piney and rock-studded forest, with its sweeping views of the almost endless valley below; the occasional emerald green plots of alfalfa are cultivated to provide winter forage for migrating tule elk. From up here, the Teton Range cuts the sky ahead, the hills are soft and golden, and save for the wind and the occasional click-clack of a grasshopper, there is no sound to break the reverie of being in the American West.

Helps you understand how someone might move here just to watch the seasons change…and then never leave.

Curtis Canyon, way above the Elk Refuge Road

For more of our photos from around Jackson Hole, please click here.

See related posts
TWT Travel Binder: Wyoming
The (Steamy) Heart of Yellowstone
Mighty Grand Tetons You’ve Got There

Travels With Two

The Grand Tetons in northwestern Wyoming

We’re just back from a glorious trip to to northwestern Wyoming, and a curious change has come over us.

The stretching landscapes, gentle and rugged at the same time, were so breathtaking, the air and water so clean, the people we met so connected to the land around them, that for one of only a scant few times in the past seven years of G-Dubya Disaster, we feel truly proud to be Americans.

While environmental issues are a regular topic of discussion in our house, we hadn’t intended to think much about politics on this trip: we were simply celebrating our 9th anniversary. Turns out they don’t give you a medal in Los Angeles for being married this long, but it will earn you a few stares, as if you’re unusual animals. We thought, then, it would be fitting to honor this passage by going to in search of some unusual animals.

We stopped over in Denver, as that city prepared for this week’s DNC; starry-eyed volunteers were stationed at the airport, ready to help those just arriving for the festivities. Obama, often accused of being too inexperienced to lead, would within 24 hours make the announcement that six-term Delaware senator Joe Biden, respected on both sides of the aisle, would be his running mate. By the time we were halfway through with our trip, local news was reporting that a healthy chunk of redder-than-red Wyoming voter sympathies were, for the first time since the mid-1960s, purpling when faced with the prospect of President McCain. (Anyone willing to bet on a Wyoming majority for Obama, though, is a terrible gambler.)

Meanwhile, at Jackson Hole‘s small airport, Air Force Two and a handful of military helicopters were parked, having delivered almost-native son Dick Cheney for a visit to his home at the nearby golf resort, Teton Pines. The locals we met had this to say about the Vice President being once again in their midst: the only thing more hotly contested by Wyomans than using riverfront land to build private golf courses for the wealthy is the fact that Cheney’s security helicopters, when on the move, scare away the very wildlife that locals treasure/hunt down for sport and that millions of tourists a year come to see.

One imagines that the animals scatter like, say…birdshot on a turkey shoot.

In general, though, Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks are revered and protected places.

You’re all but guaranteed sightings of bison, moose, tule elk, beavers, eagles, ospreys, geese, ducks, and even a fox or two. Sulfurous steam and vibrantly-colored mineral water bubble up from deep within the Earth. Vast lakes stretch across verdant floodplains, and sawtooth-jagged peaks tower over soft waves of hills. Thick, emerald marshes provide quiet shelter, and sparkling rivers wend willfully past alders, willows, spruce, and lodge pine. Layers of clouds, some days big and fluffy, others brushed wispy by wind, stretch across ancient flat valleys carved out by glaciers.

Most real estate development still hovers on the fringes of these valleys, and people here prize the premium of open space.

So, yes, it’s true that funding for national parks is down and that golf courses (only usable in this area for three months a year) are still being carved out of the plains. But in this corner of Wyoming, American values also extend to preserving and protecting what has always made this land special.

Land.

More to come…

Travels With Two

Fair readers, we’re off to western Wyoming in the morning!  Tomorrow, August 21st, is our 9th wedding anniversary, and we’ll be celebrating it in Jackson Hole (at the Rusty Parrot), Grand Teton, and Yellowstone.

Rumor is, there’s a herd of buffalo that sometimes roam into Jackson Hole proper…If this is true, we’ll try to restrain ourselves from hugging them (to avoid potential bodily harm) or running alongside them snorting, “Tatonka! Tatonka!” (to avoid ending up on You Tube).

We’ll be back early next week, with tales of our adventures.

Travels With Two