RoadTrip: Road to the Tetons

I had been telling Megan about The Tetons since way back when.  We both love the mountains but she had never seen the Tetons.  My family used to head out west every summer for a vacation and more times than not we ended up in Western Wyoming.  I kept telling Megan that the Tetons are the mountains you draw when you are a little kid.  Sharp, jagged mountains, with pointy peaks covered in snow.  The Tetons are stunning mountains.  So I built them up a little bit.

We were still in Yosemite which is only about 900 miles away from Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons.  We didn't want to get in at 10 p.m. so we left pretty early, even for Travis family standards and I can tell you first hand they are a bunch of early travels often leaving places at 0-Dark-Hundred, a.k.a. the butt crack of dawn.  Well on this morning Megan and I woke up at the freightening early hour of 3 a.m.  We did a quick camp pack which included my rather impressive feat of packing the sleeping bags, sleeping pads and tent without a light as Megan carried the stuff to pack up the car.


Early Morning Drive out of Yosemite

There isn't much to talk about for most of the day, we were on the road by 3:30 and I drove the first shift until the sun came up which by that time we had already put on some serious miles.  We did get to have some epic views of some mountains with just the first light of dawn peaking over the horizon as well as a beautiful dawn at Mono Lake near the border of California and Nevada.  Followed by many more hours of driving before finally stopping for lunch in Twin Falls, ID at The Coffee Shop & Lunchbox Deli, which we found using Urbanspoon.  We devoured out healthy sandwiches and smoothies as we had only been eating snacks and small stuff while driving.



Dawn at Mono Lake, CA

We continued our drive towards Jackson Hole and also found a campsite near town but that also seemed to be nestled near the mountains, The Jackson Hole Campground.  We were only planning on staying one night near Jackson before spending another night or two in Grand Tetons National Park.  We reached the campsite just before 6 p.m. MST covering 885 miles in just over 13 hours.  Connected to the campsite was what they described as "Glamping" or glamorous camping.  They had amazing looking half cabin/half tent structures that were very warm and inviting; always looking to stay someplace interesting we asked about the Glamping tents and scoughed at the exorbitant price of $350 per night and that included the discounted rate because they weren't full for the night and we were asking at 6 p.m.

Hanging out in Jackson

We were going to relax and have a nice dinner in town so after setting up camp at our $42/night campsite and showering we drove in to Jackson Hole.  Not wanting to spend any extra time in the car we threw the jeep into the first parking space we saw and did our restaurant search on foot.  We wandered around a few shops and stores looking at all the mountain souvenirs and outdoor gear.  We found ourselves drawn to the Million Dollar Saloon and decided to sit at a table in the bar and have some beers, burger, fries and French onion soup.  I had been by the Million Dollar Saloon as a kid with my family but we couldn't ever go because they have a strict 21 and over policy, so this was my chance.

Glad to have made it Jackson Hole and happy to have a delicious meal in our bellies we headed back towards camp.  It was going to be chilly with lows in the upper 30s. We hunkered down in our tent with all of our blankets, including the famous Aunt Bev hand-made jean quilt that feels like it weighs 275 pounds when it is laying over you.  We put on the Die Hard DVD on Megan's computer and watched that as the temperatures dropped.  We watched almost the whole movie until the battery died with 5 minutes to go, Yippie Kay Yay ...

Unfortunately, from our campsite and from Jackson you can't really get the views of the Tetons I had promised Megan so she was going to have to wait another day to see the most mountainy mountain I have ever seen.

RoadTrip: Miles and Lodging

As I have discussed, I like being organized.  I had printed off a bunch of calendars to keep notes on as we progressed on our trip.  I didn't want to forget anything and two of the things that would definitely be forgotten were the miles driven per day and how much money we spent each night for lodging.

The miles were an approximation because we couldn't remember to check the odometer every morning but we knew about how far we drove based off of the routes we took.

All together, we ended up driving over 8,000 miles.  We averaged around 235 miles per day, which sounds like a lot but the average was skewed but a few of the long days. 

The longest day we had was our last day when we drove 1400 miles from Yellowstone to my parents house in Chicago.  We had 1 day when we drove just under 900 miles and our first 2 days were 535 miles and then 635 miles.  That totals close to 44% of the miles in just 4 days.

We had only 1 day when we didn't get in a car, in Las Vegas.  We had 13 days where we drove less than 100 miles.  We had a 8 day stretch when we drove 375, 370, 225, 230, 220, 130, 195, and 270 miles but that didn't slow us down from doing and seeing amazing things each of those days as most of the time we split up the driving with stops and we weren't afraid to get started on our days early.

As for lodging each night we split our stays with 19 nights in a tent, 8 in a hotel, 6 with friends, and 1 in a tipi (teepee).  We spent a total of $1,154 for 33 nights, which averages just under $35 per night.  Our cheapest night (not including friends' houses, thanks friends!) was $6 at a campsite in Colorado.  We also stayed a few $10 sites and most campsites costs between $20 and $35 per night.

We were bargain hunters when it came to hotels and we stayed for $54, $49, and $56 in Colorado and New Mexico.  We scored a room at the Flamingo in Las Vegas for $43 a night for two nights, it helped that we were there mid-week.  In LA, I saw a groupon type deal online for $99 for a oceanview room, that included breakfast and bike rentals. We stayed for $54 at a hotel outside of Yosemite that we ended up being there for under 6 hours as we checked in at 11 and left before 5 a.m. but we were glad to not have to stay long as it wasn't the nicest place.  But you get that sometimes with a hotel room that cheap.

Our last hotel stay was the only one that we didn't shop around at because I wanted to take Megan to a place where my family went to 6 or 7 times when I was a kid, Togwotee Mountain Lodge.  We rented a cabin for a night and it cost $250 but it is a special place for me so that was fine by me to splurge.