Chicken Fried Prison Music

What?
One Ton Pig.
What?

I'll get back to that later.
Today Dad and I left Colter Bay and drove to the main lodge in Grand Tetons for breakfast. The view was amazing and of course the lodge is structured so you dine next to enormous windows that look out over a meadow, the lake and then the Tetons.

We followed the lake and stopped along the way at different lookout spots and when we saw an elk and its baby!

On the outskirts of Jackson was an area I would love to return to, called Jenny Lake. Great cabins along the lake, a smaller lake south of Jackson Lake. There were brand new bike paths all around and the view of the Tetons was just as gorgeous as where we were at Colter Bay. Great area to paint!!

As we entered Jackson we found the National Museum of Wildlife Art! I'd read about it and wanted to visit, so hooray for stumbling across it on our own. Fantastic building! Stunning lobby and very impressive collection. There were Rungius (moose painting), Nieto (wolfe painting), an O'Keeffe and an entire exhibit of Robert Kuhn (moose sketches) who did artwork for Field and Stream magazine, zoos and everything in between. He's basically the "grandfather of wildlife painting" and he sure deserves that reputation!

Once in Jackson, Dad and I visited their Snake River brewery which has won just about every brew award possible, we ate lunch and of course had a beer. Dad the Heffeweisen and me the IPA.

I picked out a wonderful historic hotel called The Wort. Built in 1941, the year before my Dad was born ;) it is famous for many things, one of which is its Silver Dollar bar. The bar is covered with 1921 silver dollars, they're embedded in the bar, you can feel them with your hands- it looks really cool. Dad liked it.

Are you still wondering about the One Ton Pig? The house band, their Tuesday night band, is named One Ton Pig. Bluegrass music and all the waitresses had band Tshirts on which read Chicken Fried Prison Music written on the back. Pops and I ate dinner in the Silver Dollar Bar, listened to the band and watched the cowboys dance!

Yellowstone

Dad and I were both surprised to see it was already 8:30 when we woke up this morning. Double days of 8 and 12 hours of driving will do that I guess :)

We drove the 49 miles up to Yellowstone and our timing was just perfect; we got out of the van, walked over to Old Faithful and 5 minutes later it erupted. Spectacular!

From there we walked a wooden, looping path to a variety of geysers. Each was beautiful with either boiling, bubbling water or steaming, silty deep pools in oranges, yellows, blues or crystal clear. I learned that the blue is the hottest and clear the next, the orange and red pools are very hot too but can sustain algae and microscopic life forms. Huh!

Our walk-about-the-geysers took about 90 minutes and we did see 2 bull elk (which another tourist excitedly told us were moose) and an aged or molting buffalo.

There are some other geysers I really want to see but they are at the very north of the park and I'll have to come back... It is a huge place!

On our way back to the Grand Tetons we saw more elk but I was hoping to see a moose! No luck. We did encounter a storm of some kind when we pulled into Colter Bay and wind and dust were blowing like crazy, storm clouds were above us, but it was still 75 degrees. The power went out! The restaurant was on generator and the wait-staff all seemed crazed and confused by this... Funny.

Power is still out so Dad is now reading by sunlight in our cabin and I'm thumb-typing this day's adventure on my iPhone. Tomorrow when we find wifi this will publish :)

WYOMING!

Over 440 miles and about 8.25 hrs of driving and we made it to the Grand Teton National Park!

But I can't start there...

We booked it out of that little dive motel early this morning and headed the 25 miles back west on the road to where we originally planned to sleep. Along the way we passed a "tour of Nebraska" bike ride so that also explained why every room for miles was completely booked.

We also drove by a 'yard' of rusty old cars and an old wagon, so my Dad pulled the car around and we got out to check them all out. Dad and the owner of all the junk (er, cars) Jason commiserated and I took some pix. It wasn't even 8:00 am!

The scenery out to Casper, WY and then on to Shoshone didn't change all that much; scrub, flat and nice clouds.

It then got really interesting! Bluffs and buttes and gorgeous red rocks, we went through a town called Dubois that was very cute and had lovely log cabins dotting the Wind River.

Up we climbed and then... Snow!

Finally we spied the Tetons and the lake. Glorious, worth all the back roads and flat lands and long hours in the car!

We have an adorable cabin near the lake in Colter Bay; there's a grocery, two restaurants a boat dock, laundry (where I am typing this and Dad is doing a load.) After dinner we walked the lake path out to some spectacular views, it felt fantastic to walk after sitting in the car for so many days.

The Tetons look like Patagonia or Torre del Paines (can't remember how to spell that right now and I have no Internet access to check.) This post is going out as soon as I can connect so will be officially the first, late post ;)

Tomorrow, Monday, we are driving up to Yellowstone for the day - I haven't been since I was a baby!

700 miles, 12 something hours

And we are still in Nebraska, but just barely.

Arrived in Scottsbluff and there are NO rooms anywhere because of a softball tournament. Seriously?
We are in a motor lodge 14 miles back the way we came... In a rinky dink town with coal trains blowing their horn as they pass, even at 9:45 pm. We're in Bayard and we got the last room for 25 miles.
Drove through a crazy rain and lightning storm to get here, unbelievable. Couldn't pull off to see Carhenge because of it :(  
We are just happy to not be sleeping in the car.
435 miles to go, then it's the Tetons.

Surprises

Today we left the suburb of Chicago, Lansing, for Decatur Illinois. Should have been about a 2 hr drive. Instead we somehow missed a turn in Decatur and cris-crossed the town about 3 times before we found the Chevy Museum.

Big surprise there was that it was part of a Budget Rental Truck center in a nowhere nothing strip mall. It was a big warehouse with consignment Chevy's so actually no big whups. I did see the truck I'm trying to talk my Dad into building for me to go with my trailer :) I like the 50s style and this one was a 53. I'd like mine white and yellow though, please.

Back on the road we knew we just needed to head West and go as far as possible. We stopped in Hannibal, MO for gas and a quick walking break and discovered it is the hometown of Mark Twain! Too bad everything shuts down at 5pm, since we rolled in at 4:50!

We were able to drive about 30 miles more to Macon (like bacon) where we found a Comfort Inn and a very chatty desk clerk who told us we HAD to drive 5 miles west to the town of Bevier and a wonderful restaurant called The Pear Tree.

Wonderful is an understatement, crazy good and who could possibly know about this, 5 star restaurant in the middle of nothing nowhere. We got a discount from the Inn thankfully which more-so than the price (23$ instead if 47$...) we were able to order the 12oz rib eye instead of the 26oz! OMG! As it was I have about half a steak in a to-go box in the little fridge here. If you are ever about 2 hrs from Springfield or 2+ hrs from Kansas City MO, well stop by this place for dinner. We met the owner (30 yrs in this location) we met his son and they pampered us. Big surprise.

Tomorrow is our only do-nothing-but-drive-across-Nebraska day... Hopefully we make a big dent in our 1120 miles to get to the Tetons!

Great Day for Gilmore

Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners Michigan was where we spent our day. Beautiful 90 acre farm speckled with giant red barns filled with classic cars.

Truly works of art; beautiful cars, motorcycles and even two trailers (yeah, I like those!) are on display in the various barns, some are even two story.

Dad really loved the 48 Chrysler Woody convertible and a 57 Cadillac El Dorado Broughm. I loved a blue and beige car (ha ha, forgot the make!!) and I also loved a matching car and trailer called the Conestoga Covered Wagon from 1937 that I took a photo of with my camera and not phone so cannot post here!

It was raining pretty good so we ran from barn to barn to all the different exhibits. Dad would always tell me something about the car (year, make, why it was special) as we walked up to it - and then we'd read the exact info on the sign next to the car! I knew my Dad liked old cars, knew he knew a lot about them too but now I am über impressed with how much he knows! Comes from his love for them, you can tell. He just lights up. Plus, I had NO idea how many of them he's owned over the years!!

They have an authentic old dining car on site so we ate bowls of chili for lunch, then we checked out barns with toy push cars, a HUGE fake car from a Disney movie "The Gnome-Mobile" which Walt Disney personally donated, collections of hood ornaments and even a vintage Shell gas station. Superb place.

Still raining hard as we left and it was pretty late so we drove 1.5 hrs to near Chicago and stopped at Applebee's for dinner.

Because we added the Henry Ford to our agenda we have had to cut out the RV museum. I've seen some beautiful trailers and an airstream at the various museums so far so that will work out fine. Next up is Decatur, IL about 3hrs south of here for the Chevy Museum and then we make our 2.5 days of big miles to make it to WY!! Phew! Thank goodness for our Harry Potter books on CD :)

Having a great time!

The Henry Ford

Ok, this place was amazing! Dearborn, MI - the Henry Ford is a working Ford factory (we toured, watched them assemble F150 trucks.)

It is also a Museum with one of the largest steam locomotives ever built (1941), a wonderful auto collection from Fords, Buicks, Model Ts, an Airstream and a 1959 VW Westfalia as well as the presidential limousines of Roosevelt, Eisenhower and the limo from Kennedy's assassination.

We saw airplanes from the Wright brothers, the Rosa Parks bus from 1955 and Lincoln's chair from his 1865 theatre assassination. Truly, around every corner was an amazing piece of history.

I thought we would stay only a few hours but we actually shut the place down! We are settled in for the night in Ann Arbor and will continue the adventure tomorrow.