Wy-o-ming

The room was really bare and didn’t have much in the way of “let’s stay and spoon” appeal, so we got the early start we needed and headed toward Yellowstone.

The ride was immediately entertaining and loaded with anticipation – Mickie’s never been, and I drove through once with barely a stop as a young kid.

Of course we stopped along the way to eat and sun our bottoms.

But we needed a place to stay and we needed gas, so we had to push through, heading toward the south exit of the park.

There is a juncture at which you have to decide if you’re going to Dubois or Jackson.  I used to live in Dubois and have wanted to go back and visit that place more than any other for a long time, but I’ve never been to Jackson Hole and have wanted to go there for quite some time as well. It was either or.

At the junction where you have to take 287 or 191 I decided on 191 to Jackson because it was 34 miles vs. 62 to Dubois, we were tired, needed gas, and could reach out the window and touch a deer standing in the pitch-black road on at least one occasion by that point.  Then I felt regret that I wouldn’t see a place from my youth, pulled a U and headed to Dubois.  After a few miles the road quality went down, construction was being done, and we had to slow down to about 35 mph.  Then pavement ran out and the road was dirt – didn’t know for how long or how bad.  We hit a huge hole in the road and bottomed out.  I knew that was it.  I turned around again and we were set on Jackson Hole.

It was then I realized that this leg of the trip wasn’t so much a return, but a new experience.  I had a life here in my youth that was of its own time and that has its own place, and always will within me.  Now, it’s my turn to build my life as a man and a father, in many ways differently than what I knew as a child, and in that regard I am the genesis of something new, sometimes making it up as I go, and on this night we were going to head toward the new, rather than revisit the old.

On the road, seeing so many places, I always feel very clearly that I am not of this or that place – that I am foreign.

In Jackson Hole, once you get away from the tourist center, I felt familiar.  I could spend significant time in this area….but this time it was just the night and following day.  Our friends are getting married in Nice, CA, north of San Fran, on Saturday and we’re determined to make it.

Salt Lake City is in our near future……