I really want to love Wyoming. It is so spectacularly beautiful. It's filled with cowboys. And the Grand Teton Ranges are breathtaking.
And I really wanted to love the town of Pinedale, our first proper Wyoming town which we stopped at for an early lunch. It had all the right ingredients:
the best welcome sign ever
an abundance of cowboy themed stores
my kind of museum (unfortunately no time to go inside)
and a promising looking roadside joint.
Handy road food tip #2: the number of pick up trucks outside the only restaurant in town does not guarantee the food will be good.
Not only was the food disappointing but we had to eat it while watching a giant screen TV (thankfully on mute) showing some footage of a huge tom turkey strutting about doing his stuff, obviously trying to impress a nearby female. Great, we're going to eat while watching turkey sex, I thought. But no, we cut to a shot of a 10 year old girl, dressed to the nines in camouflage gear, lowering her shotgun. "No way," I said to Dan, and we both watched slack-jawed as, yes, she proceeded to pop that turkey. Not between the eyes - it flapped about on the ground as she and her extended family (all dressed in matching camouflage gear) rushed up and stood about watching as Dad dispatched it (I don't know how as I'd closed my eyes by that point) and then the next frame was Dad being interviewed as he proudly stood by his little girl who was holding up a very dead turkey, and everyone applauded. It was all too Sarah Palin for me.
This was obviously no biggie to everyone else except the wimpy ex-New Yorkers in the joint. Turns out it was the Sportsman Channel whose biggest advertiser is the Ammo Superstore. After the turkey First Blood we got the Fly Rod Chronicles where you see guys standing in a river casting for fish - again, fascinating to everyone except us, apparently.
In desperation, while we were still waiting to be served by the waitress who was sporting a surprisingly complicated up-do (much like "Kiss My Grits!" Flo from Alice, only our gal was way larger and mean as a pole cat) I turned to the local paper. Front page headline touted that Wyoming had joined nine others states in a federal suit claiming gay marriage was not a fundamental right. Wyoming was where Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered because he was gay.
Dan also reminded me that Wyoming is Dick Cheney's home state. Okay, so maybe Wyoming is a nice place to just visit, although by the time we'd finished our lunch (heuvos rancheros - when will I ever learn?) that Welcome sign was starting to seem just a teeny bit threatening, as in, 'If you need any more civilization get your pansy asses the hell back to DC you pussies.'
Handy road food tip #3: the more "decor" (yes, antlers count in Wyoming) there is on the outside, the worse the food will be on the inside.
So we hit the road again and didn't stop until we got to Jackson Hole, where DC pussies are obviously tolerated because they bring in so much money. But some people still haven't recovered from the sight of Fed. chairman Ben Bernanke wandering around town in a plaid flannel shirt during last month's economic summit. Wonder if he posed under the famous antler arch?
Right outside Jackson loom the magnificent Grand Tetons. I still can't get over the fact that these mountains just seem to pop straight up - no rolling foothills leading up to them, no mini-mountains, no foreplay whatsoever (I still haven't recovered from Arches it would seem.) They're just there - boom!
The smoke from a controlled burn somewhere in the park cut down on the visibility but I think it added something extra.
But you can't get away from the huntin' and shootin' and fishin' that is Wyoming. At this scenic overlook
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