Today we left Jackson Hole and travelled to Grand Targhee. It is only an hour's drive, but for John it means driving over the Teton Pass again. This can be a challenging drive, with steep grades, challenging weather and lots of snow, winds and ice. However, today the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the road was clear, so it was a lovely day for a drive. Of course clear skies meant the weather was cold! When we were shopping in Jackson this morning it was -20 degrees fahrenheit (-29 celsius). Many of the locals drive to various places along the Teton Pass to ski, they park, hike and ski the hills. We saw a couple of people hiking back up the road with their skis, lots of cars parked and lots of ski tracks through the hills. Some places we passed though, were pristine; snow covered, no tracks and green pines - beautiful. We arrived in Targhee and could see the Grand Tetons (three mountain peaks) as we were driving up the road. Last time we were here it was to foggy to see them. Hoping that tomorrow it is clear and we will be able to get a great view from the top of the mountain. Grand Targhee is much quieter and smaller than many of the other places we have visited. There are only a small number of places to stay on the mountain, lodging options are limited and really only one place to eat. But it is very peaceful and beautiful and we are looking forward to our four days here. We basically have a hotel room, with no fridge, but we can open the window and use the snow outside to store icepacks or collect ice for our esky and ice bucket. We have some plastic bowls we scrounged from a previous hotel and cereal for breakfast, but will have to buy all other meals. When we arrived our room was like a sauna, when we finally found the heating control we turned it right down but have had to have the window open to keep the room cool enough even though it is something like -10 degrees outside.
Even on a sunny clear day the Teton pass is still not to be messed with - locals have 4WD and/or snow tyres - our Californian rental has neither and we found today that the wiper washer water is frozen!! We put some of the cold temp stuff in (that is standard around these parts) but it has not yet started working - we may need to pour hot water over the lines and storage tank to get it working - or wait for a day when it is above zero. Mountain looked great today as we arrived - we were here 2 years ago but it was cloudy the whole time and we didn't see any of it. Shopping was successful - new pair of tracky dacks - Casey and Marnie have drilled into me to NEVER buy the ones with elastic around the ankles - so many shops and all had elastic until today!!! Did get out of Jackson without one shoe shop stop - told you there were none in town!
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