Day 4 - Scenic Road to the Tetons

I got on the road about 7 am for the long drive to the Grand Tetons.   I say I, because Trey was still sleeping in the camper…. We decided to take the scenic/mountainous route 550 starting by going over the pass to Silverton.  We reached  about 11,000 feet at one point.  Along the way we saw some big horn sheep in the road and off to the side.  The views at the top of the pass were amazing.   One of the pulloffs said to “take a deep breath,  you may never breath this pure and clean air anywhere else”.  I tried some panoramic pictures,  taking the full 360 degrees from the point at Molas Pass.  We will see how those come out.

We continued a lot of up and down and many back and forth curves.  It took a while but it was worth it.  We only covered about 100 miles in the first 3 hours.   As we were coming out of the mountains,  the speed limit increased so we hoped to start making some good time,  but ended up behind an old truck hauling cattle,  that was only going 35 mph.  The line was way backed up with no way to pass. After over a half an hour,  we saw a place called Ray’s Jerkey,  a local guy that produces all kinds of Jerkey.  We tried Buffalo, Elk, Hickory Smoked, etc.  and bought some Elk Jerkey and some licorice and blue raspberry ropes.  By the time we got back on the road,  the slow person was gone and we finally got to make some pretty decent time.

We continued on with fantastic scenery the whole way.  We were only in Utah for a little while and then into Wyoming to Take Hwy 191 for a few hundred miles all the way to the Grand Tetons.  The trip was a little over 600 miles and took us almost 15 hours.  So far we have covered about 1600 miles since Monday.   A long day of driving, but averaged over 13 mpg even with all the mountains.  We arrived at Jackson,  picked up some groceries, firewood, beer and an additional bear spray at Smiths.  The bear spray was only $30 here.  Then we headed up to Teton Village to grab some dinner.  We got there about 9:30, but it is pre-season and EVERYTHING was already closed and shut down for the night.  So we decided just to “stealth” camp in the parking lot.  We just closed all the blinds and put the shades on the back door.  And no one knew we were in there for the night….  A lot better than paying a couple hundred for a hotel…