Advertisement
Published: September 25th 2009
Edit Blog Post
September 24, 2009
Today is a driving day so I wanted to take a minute to record a few things. As I mentioned, we stayed in a town called Ten Sleep last night. The hotel was owned by a woman who had just bought it and was planning many renovations. She’s moved there to be near her sons, one of whom is a Rancher…that’s right, like in a John Wayne movie…there’s a lot of John Wayne-like scenery and people….but I digress. I wanted to tell how Ten Sleep got its name. Back in the days of Indians there were several Indian winter encampments surrounding the town. Each was equidistant from the town. The Indians measured distances by how many nights, or “sleeps” it would take to get from one place to another. Each of the encampments was “ten sleeps” away from the town…so they named the town “Ten Sleep”!
Today as we drive, the land is moonlike in terrain…my God I can’t believe all of the faces of America we’ve seen so far…we were all saying that there is really no reason to travel to any other country…anything one wishes to see is right here!
Some interesting realizations/observations so far:
We’ve
been in 9 states.
We’ve experienced temperatures between 84 and 38 (South Dakota at night).
Canada is more expensive than USA
Almost always it’s cheaper to call a hotel for reservations. They quote you a lower price than on line.
The Native Americans that we saw live in abject poverty.
The people we have met along the way have been kind, industrious and contented.
We are constantly amazed by the number of people travelling…we thought we’d be alone!
That’s all for now. We’re heading to a cabin in the Tetons tonight…we’ve bought food to make dinner there…I don’t know that we’ll have internet.
Oddly enough at Teton Valley Cabins there was internet so continuing…We travelled on through Wyoming where we entered Wind River National Forest. There we saw mountain views that again defy description. We were in a most stark and sacred place…unfathomable. A sense of wonder overtook us as we stared at our glorious, glorious surroundings. Moving on through the rest of Wyoming we continued to see incredible scenery…finally entering Teton National Park. The Tetons were also amazing but there was a fire of some nature that spread smoke along the Grand Tetons and somewhat obstructed out view. We
landed in Driggs, Idaho after going through the Teton Pass…Scary!!!
And now a little story I’d like to call “John and the Switches and Buttons.” John has been in the seat of co-pilot for several days now…why I don’t know. The man does not even know how to turn on the radio!!! Today we bought a Janis Joplin CD (keeping with the hippie theme) and we asked John to put it in and turn it on. What followed was like a skit from Saturday Night Live. He pushed EVERY button on the console…but not franticly…quite methodically…ending with a quick jab at the “hazardous lights” switch! Bill had to immediately switch them off! We were laughing so hard Donna almost choked on her beverage. In addition, we were happily driving along and we kept hearing the door locks opening and closing for no apparent reason…after a little detective work we discovered that our John-o isn’t quite clear on the “opening and closing of windows”!!! So every time he opened the window he’d hit the “door lock” switch a couple of times for good measure!!! Soon John will be riding in the back seat where there are no switches or buttons.
Today’s
Road Lesson: Even Janis Joplin is not immune to the “Buttonator“!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.164s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 6; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0557s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb