GRAND TETONS (pictures on Facebook - Thomas Michael Foote. Instead of taking 2 hours to upload 21 pictures, Facebook can do 39 in about 10 minutes)
Monday. We just drive
down and out of Yellowstone all day. The
Tetons are a National Park, and everything is closed except Signal Mountain, so
we don’t have to pay to get in. The
views begin changing as we approach the jagged, snow covered peaks of the Teton
Range. Dark teal colored lakes dip down
in the valleys between the forest of barren, white Lodge Pole Pines. They look like pickup sticks up and down the
sides of mountains, perfect size and straightness for teepee poles. It’s $20 to park and have a fire, which kind
of sucks, but it was our only option.
The area had a convenience store for beer, a gas pump, and a bar with a
sick view for more beer. The bartender
tells us some free places to camp and has an epic beard.
After a big spaghetti dinner, I search for a bathroom, where
we also heard lots of laughing and singing.
From the looks of it, there was a camp up the hill on the other
side. I wander through the bushes and
yearlings in the dark towards the exterior orange light of the building. The first door is unlocked. The second door is unlocked. I access a hallway to my surprise that looks
like a college dorm. One gaunt
snowboarder looking guy with a really good Indian face paintjob tells me this
is where the camp employees live and laughs hysterically. I get directions for a bathroom back at our
campsite and tell Jeff about my findings.
Armed with only 4 beers, we charge the hill looking for cool
people. The first dude we see outside
tells us to go inside to the first dorm on the left. Stu, the crazy face paint kid is in there and
laughs some more.
We end up listening to music and playing a Midwest drinking
game which is a bit like beer pong except you use only four cups in each corner
and bounce a dice. The residents are really
excited about us being able to have a fire, because the entire season was on
too high of a fire risk. Stu comes back
to the fire and we laugh all night about the ridiculous beauty of the area. Stu spent only 20 nights sleeping indoors
from now back to May, when the season started.
At the end of the night, he took off into the dark wearing only Chockas
(sp?) on his feet. It was about 38
degrees. He goes to a place in the woods
by a lake a few miles away where his hammock and sleeping bag are. The only times he met some wildlife was one
day in the early summer when he woke up to a couple of teenager black
bears. It freaked him out a little, but
he clapped them away and went back to sleep.
This dude has got it going on. A
little misunderstood by his outrageous, drawn out laugh, but if you can pick
the words out of his strong surfer accent and nomenclature, his descriptions of
the mountains is brilliant poetry. “Your
standin by a lake, alright, and you look to the left and this slab of shale
just shoots up right next to you, seven thousand feet into the sky. You turn to your right and boom! Another straight up ramp of rock just
launches straight the f^@& up.
AAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAA!”
Tuesday. Jeff
destroyed his shin on a wooden, knee-high piling that was driven into the
ground next to the parking space. They
have these all over the park. Jeff wakes
up in a bad mood after finding a warning for leaving one beer can out and not
fully extinguishing the fire. I feel
blessed that the dude didn’t give us a ticket, but also proud that we cleaned
up that well after as long a night as we had.
Jeff decides to get even by posting a note telling the staff that they
need to cut down the stumps and that he could have broken his ankle. This creates a bad element in our
relationship that needs to be addressed.
I don’t ever want to be a contributor to our already ridiculous
over-regulation. I believe this is what
made our country weak.
Lawsuits for
burning yourself on a cup of coffee. I
like the fact that if I’m stupid at these parks, I can actually kill
myself. That is what makes it an intense
experience. That’s what I liked about
living in New York. They have naked
steel bridge columns in the middle of the roads in Brooklyn. It makes people think and therefore there are
no accidents. I don’t want to wake up
in a bubble-wrapped world covered in warning labels. But I digress. So I talk to Jeff about my thoughts and he
says that he is not the type of person that participates in the frivolous lawsuits. He just wanted to let them know, and he is
probably not the first person to have that problem. Being a surfer, he is used to taking
responsibility for his safety and feels bad about the note. We go to take it down, but it has already
been taken by the campsite attendant.
I’m just happy that Jeff doesn’t follow the safety over freedom
ideology. We hash out the differences
and are back on an even keel. I tell
him, anytime he wants to kick me out of the van, I hold no objections and will
give him my share of gas money for the rest of the trip. We laugh about the nature of confrontation
and drive to the Teton National
Forest where camping is free.
Sweet lakes, sweet peaks, and we look at both from our
ranch-side highway leading us east.
Between campsites (some wouldn’t allow fires) there is a pull-off for a
glacier view. There is no glacier and
the information sign is scratched off. I
think, “Maybe because I’m not influenced by melting ice caps, I don’t feel like
climate change is a big deal. If I had a
glacier in my backyard, it might be more alarming.” Our destination for the day becomes a
lakeside campsite off Gros Ventre Road that is closed, but only for collecting
payment. There are a few campers here
and there, and we pretty much have the shore to ourselves. After some Kung Fu and a freezing cold bath
in the lake, we invite some neighbors for a drink and some music. Brian is a dude with a cool black lab named Harley,
and we hang out at the fire playing music and looking at the stars. This will be the first time we’ve stayed
somewhere for a day since Kentucky.
Wednesday. This is
our third week on the road. Pancakes in the morning and we wash clothes and
dishes by the lake. I climb the big hill
behind our camp, to get a better view of the lake. Jeff thinks it is a dumb idea, but I’ve been
talking about climbing something since South Dakota. I want to inspire more off the beaten path
activities, too. We did good Kung Fu while
the clothes dried. Brian and Harley came
back over for dinner and chill sessions by the fire.
More gathering wood and burning wood the next day. That night we go to Jackson Hole, WY.
Friday morning. The
van gets an oil change and tires rotated after hittiing 5,000 miles for the
trip. While we wait for the van, we find
a mom’n’pop pizza shop that tastes just like the Hut. Afterwards, I get my dreads started at a lady
hair salon (they started naturally a month and a half ago on the sailboat) and then
we drive to Salt Lake City. Jeff jumped
down from the Idaho state border sign and sprained his ankle. It’s late by the time we get to Salt Lake, so
we pass out in a Walmart parking lot.
Saturday. Jeff grabs
a couple ankle braces in the morning. He
tells me people tend to stare when someone in their 20’s scoots around in a
Walmart Rascal power chair. I go
downtown and sell some silver coins.
This is how I keep from spending all of my money too fast, otherwise it
would have been gone by the end of week 2.
Jeff is having a tough time hobbling around with his bamboo cane, so we jump
on Salt Lake trolley lines while Jeff helps me finish my dreads. Eva’s, a tapas restaurant, was recommended
and did not disappoint. I don’t like
Brussels Sprouts (sp?), but they were damn good. At night we hung out with some wise, young
locals at Twilite bar and drank a few Mexican Restaurant sized mugs. With the van parallel parked right in front of the bar, it was funny
to wake up confused yet convenient.
Sunday. We tried
driving to the super salty lake so I could dip my dreads and accelerate the
process. Much of the shoreline is
covered by farmland, so I make salt water in a bucket. We take Utah 191 through Arches Nat’l Park,
past Canyonlands Nat’l Park, to Mesa Verde Nat’l Park. There’s lots and lots of parks out west. It’s dark when we arrive and we make ramen on
the fire.
Monday morning. Kung
Fu and crazy views at Mesa Verde. There
are also ancient ruins from the Pueblos. I think they sound dumb and am in a bad mood
this morning because of how far behind I am on the blog. (Seriously, I take this thing seriously. Thanks for reading J) Alas, they are freaking sweet. We want to take a closer look, so go to buy
tour tickets for 3 bucks a pop. A young
dude with a golden retriever walks into the ticket office. The lady says, “All dogs must remain in
vehicles in the parking lot.” The dude
tells her it’s a therapy dog. She cuts
him off by saying, “All dogs must remain in vehicles in the parking lot” with
robot-tone repetitive precision.
Great. One of these people. It’s like her logic is so strong, she can’t
move forward with new information or processes if something doesn’t line up
with her programming. I can’t take it
and buy the dude’s ticket for him. Aaron
is a cool, cool dude and we hang out for the next couple days. He’s on his way back to Denver to start
several grow houses. Colorado is a
little different than Georgia when it comes to the general image of marijuana. He tells us if he gets an edibles license,
his grow capacity increases from 5 plants to 99. We have an awesome dinner at a Japanese
Steakhouse in Durango, CO. Aaron buys a
couple rounds of sake. It’s a constant
game to be more generous than our guest.
After dinner, we head to a nearby campsite where we meet
more cool people. Jenny and Nick are our
new camp neighbors. Jenny is training to
become a Shaman. Nick grew up in
Argentina, spoke Russian his whole life and then finally moved to the states
and has absolutely no accent. He’s around
35, works at a ski resort and brewery in the winter and spends the rest of the
year bartending, travelling and camping.
Even with his hockey player haircut, he’s so clean-cut, you wonder if he
just stepped out of an American Eagle poster.
It’s hard to believe he’s been camping since March. His power is only exceeded by his
mystery-kind of guy. Doesn’t share
anything but good energy and a level demeanor.
Between all of our new friends, I have a waterfall of inspiration and
information to work with. After all, I’m
shopping for some lifestyle design changes out west.
Tuesday. Pancakes on
the fire. Aaron and I talk philosophy
and physics until the middle of the afternoon and then he takes off for
Denver. The dude is like my partner in
crime from a different time.
Jeff and I talk about leaving all day and night. We give the van a thorough cleaning and I
teach Jenny some guitar stuff. Jeff is
exhausted and crashes before the sun falls.
I chill with Jenny til Nick gets off work at the brewery.
Wednesday. Jeff and I
finally leave Durango and Colorado. The
state is cool, at least the part we saw.
The residents have got style.
Every house and mailbox is customized, but not in the tacky East Jersey
kind of way. Lots of solar panels, lots
of greenhouses. You don’t have to cut
the grass in southwestern CO. It just
doesn’t grow like back east. My brother,
Steve, and I have discussed many times the folly of maintaining grass. Why would you spend money, time, and anguish
on a crop that doesn’t benefit you in any way?
- Back to the story. Colorado is
truly a colorful place. Blue lakes,
glaring leaves (we are moving with the foliage now), and silver mountains
jutting and rolling up the walls. Not to
mention all of the hippie inhabitants and classic cars. It looks like Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder
started a brawl in finger painting class.
The landscape changes steadily to the desert as we head
through the 4-corners. I am not a fan of
imaginary lines and see no reason to stand in four imaginary places at once
unless I’m doing something noteworthy. I
think borders caused by the natural separation of people due to the landscape
are cool. I think straight lines drawn
in the sand to say that sales tax is 7.3% here and 9.4% here is silly. We don’t have to send troups to fight Santa
Anna’s army for silly, meaningless straight line borders. I guess that’s the West. Used to cost a nickel an acre out here. Probably talking out of my ass, but I think
I’m on the right track.
We are back in Indian Country and alcohol is a bit
scarce. We have been told by several
people along the journey that Indian reservations are always dry, meaning no
alcohol. Aaron’s deduction is that they
were only first introduced to alcohol when the white man came and have not yet
adapted. Europeans have been drinking
for millennia. Jeff is googling whether
anyone has ever seen an Indian with facial hair that could hold his liquor.
