Chapter 13: Two Words: La-va!
You don’t go to the Super 8 for luxury. You go there to save a buck or two, and I knew that going in. But as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. So when you pay for cheap accommodations, you get cheap accommodations. The Holiday Inn Express cinnamon rolls were fresh, big, warm and gooey. Super 8 had cinnamon rolls, too. They were individually shrink-wrapped with suggested times to warm them in the microwave.
Thankfully, microwaving processed food is within my skill set, so we didn’t go hungry that morning.
We met up with our friends again and set off on about a 90-minute drive west through the Snake River Plain to
Craters of the Moon National Monument.
Craters of the Moon was designated a National Monument in 1924 in order to protect its unique volcanic landscape. You know, from all of those famous Idaho volcanoes.
It’s a weird experience to enter the park. We’d been driving through flat farmland—I mean Delaware flat. No distinguishing features of any kind. Then, all of a sudden, you’re surrounded by lava fields. These lava flows were formed between 15,000 and 2,000 years ago as part of the Great Rift volcanic zone—basically a weak, thin spot in the earth’s crust. Repeated lava flows breached this part of the surface, thus creating the landscape we have today.
As it turned out, late June was the perfect time to visit. We’d arrived during peak wildflower season. It was such an otherworldly sight to see these tiny bursts of color popping out all over such a barren landscape. I’ve love to take credit for planning the timing just so, but sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.
Our first stop gave us the opportunity to climb a tall volcanic crater and get a view of the landscape, and since there’s nothing we like better than long, difficult climbs, we decided to take it on. But first, I got waylaid by the paparazzi. It’s just one of those things you have to deal with from time to time when you’re young, dashingly good-looking, and charming. No matter how far away from civilization you get, it seems like they always find you. So it’s best to just give a few moments of your time, satisfy the legions of fans out there, and then move on with your day.
Ok, I know from experience none of you are buying that story. And really, the most photogenic person there was Baby Drew. This reporter was doing a series on things to see in Idaho and asking for some people to give some quotes on camera, so I obliged him. I even found the story online later, and I think
I managed to come off sounding reasonably intelligent.
Ok, would you believe halfway intelligent?
How about fully capable of stringing several words together?
Moving on, we started our climb. My friends and family were clearly amazed at my public relations skills.
I can hear them now: “Wow, Baby Drew, you were great!” “Drew, you did so well! What a cutie!”
Several minutes later, we were all gasping for breath once again, but we’d managed to reach the top. There, with the Idaho plains stretched before us, we decided it was finally time to declare this place Pride Rock.
We wandered for a bit, and Drew found a little crevice to play in that seemed to be built just for him.
Soon we were back in the van and heading to the main draw of the park: the chance to hike through lava tubes.
This was not our first encounter with a lava tube, as you might recall from our visit to Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii a couple of years ago. And if you don’t, shame on you! I expect you to have my Trip Reports memorized by now. Anyway, lava tubes are formed by underground lava flows that eventually run dry. Once the lava is gone, the channel it carved through the rock cools, hardens, and forms an underground tunnel. These are discovered over time as weather, plate tectonics, and the effects of time cause pieces to collapse here and there. Then idiots like me who ignore the word “collapse” in that previous sentence get the bright idea to hike through them.
So we did. And it was really cool.
And yes, we put sunscreen in Drew’s hair again.
I knew I should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
I’m not sure what the point of this was, other than Julie wanted to play with the camera.
We found a picnic area nearby and got back on the peanut butter-and-jelly wagon for lunch. Everyone pretended to be happy about it.
Once lunch was over, we said goodbye to our friends and thanked them for being gracious hosts as we visited their home state. They thanked us for leaving and told us not to let the door hit us on the way out.
I mean, they told us they couldn’t wait to travel east and let us return the favor! Yeah, that was it.
Before we left, though, my friend gave me one more piece of advice. We were headed into Wyoming, right through the dangerous and notorious Teton Pass. There was only one thing we could do to ward off danger and make the journey safely.
We needed to try square ice cream.
It’s a lonely drive from Idaho to Wyoming, but along the way there’s a crossroads that barely qualifies as a town. And in this “town”, the
Rainey Creek convenience store has been serving “square” ice cream for decades. They use a special ice cream scoop that gives the scoop a square shape.
I’m happy to report that this makes absolutely no difference in the taste of ice cream whatsoever. Which is good, because ice cream wasn’t broken and didn’t need to be fixed. But it was worthy of a stop because: a) it broke up the drive, b) now we can say we ate “square” ice cream, and c) it was ice cream.
Onwards and upwards, and we soon were entering the Teton mountain range and destroying our gas mileage as we climbed. Remember those 98.0 mpg readings we got when descending Pikes Peak? Now we were at 5.0 mpg. Still, we pushed on through like the explorers of old, only with a gas-powered engine, climate-controlled surroundings, a portable DVD player, and Cheetos. But otherwise exactly like the pioneers. And we entered the next state on our agenda. No, pkondz, not confusion.
Jackson Hole is the name given to the valley that lies between the Teton and Gros Ventre mountain ranges in northwestern Wyoming, named for a beaver trapper, David Jackson, who was the first white man to spend an entire winter here. The town of Jackson is the central commerce area and has grown considerably as the tourist’s base of operations for visiting the various attractions in the area.
Needless to say, that means summer is high tourist season and all of the hotel rates are insanely expensive. I would have loved to stay in the Hampton Inn, for example, but they were asking for $300/night. I love Hampton Inns, but they’re not worth $300/night.
So, it was Priceline to the rescue again as I got a room at the Super 8 of Jackson. However, I was a little leery as to what we’d be getting, since we’d already survived one not-so-Super 8 experience. We arrived at the front desk around 4:30 p.m. This time I knew what to expect, so when I checked in I asked if we had been assigned a room with one or two beds.
“This room only has one bed,” the clerk answered. I was proud of myself, having saved myself a trip to the desk to ask for a new room. So I asked if she could move us to a room with two beds instead.
“I’m sorry, I just sold the last available room,” she said.
Crap.
Maybe I should have paid for the Hampton Inn. Hey kids, not only do you get a crappy hotel for the night, but you get to sleep on the floor!
And yes, I could certainly have slept on the floor instead. But I don’t know that I would have been able to walk the next morning. The kids are young, resilient, and will recover. I’m old and frail and have to drive the van 8 hours a day. And by the way, this family is not a democracy.
Well, we moved our luggage into the room and confirmed our fears. On the plus side, there was a good deal of floor space available. Here ends the plus side.
On the downside, we were in a Super 8.
We needed something to cheer us up. Thankfully, we had a fancy dinner to look forward to.
Julie and I were close to celebrating our 17th anniversary. Our actual anniversary date wouldn’t be for another couple of days, when we were in Yellowstone. But when I was looking for a way to do something special to celebrate, it became apparent that the dining options in Yellowstone were extremely limited. Even the “fancy” restaurants in the lodges didn’t get great reviews. So we did some research and asked around, and settled on having our fancy special anniversary celebration dinner a couple of nights early while we were in Jackson.
We have high standards for our anniversary celebrations. A couple of years ago I had treated Julie to a meal followed by a view of a sunset on a beach in Maui. Thankfully, there was no shortage of fine dining options in Jackson. There were steakhouses, seafood restaurants, Italian places, all with white linens and top-of-the-line service ready to give us the meal of our lives.
So I ignored them all and made a reservation for a dinner served on a tin plate in the company of 800 other people.
Friends of ours had recommended the
Bar J Chuckwagon dinner and show. This event runs nightly during the summer months and has been in operation for decades. It’s basically a family ranch that has made their money through raising cattle and turned the dinner/show into a lucrative side business (that may now be the main business).
The doors open at 5:30 and dinner is served at 7:00 p.m., but the line starts sooner and seat assignments are first-come, first-served. You can line up anytime outside and wait for the doors to open. We didn’t get there until about 5:15 or so, but while there were several dozen people ahead of us in line it didn’t seem that bad. We ended up getting assigned table 6, meaning we were 6 rows from the stage. Not bad at all.
The family that runs the ranch does everything—they take your tickets and dinner order, cook your meals, run the shops, serve the dinner, and put on the show. They’re nothing if not hard workers.
With an hour and a half to kill, we mostly wandered the grounds. Julie took the boys on a carriage ride.
They got an up close look at the Vomiting Bear statue.
Meanwhile, Sarah and I mostly just hung around and periodically checked on the progress of our dinner.
Your choices include bbq beef, chicken, a combo of both, ribs or if you want to pay a little extra, steak. Given that this was our fancy anniversary meal, I went with the steak. Julie got the combo of beef and chicken. She and many others were the recipient of some stinkeye from one of the performers, as he wondered several times why you’d visit a cattle ranch just to order chicken for dinner.
Anyway, once you paid for your meal you were assigned a ticket.
At 7:00 p.m., they rang the dinner bell and gave instructions. We had over 800 people in the building and the family proudly announced that they’d have everyone served and seated within 20 minutes. We learned where to line up, where to grab our fancy tin plates, and most importantly to make sure we grabbed the nicely-wrapped up silverware which conveniently fit right in your back pocket (or, as they made sure to mention, the back pocket of the person in front of you).
Then we went through the line and were served a baked potato, beans, applesauce, cornbread, and a piece of spice cake for dessert. They even instructed us to make sure we spun the plate to hold it under the applesauce because the other portions would get too hot to handle once served. After receiving those portions we would split up depending on the meat we ordered and trade our tickets for the main course. Last station was the lemonade/coffee station where your drink would be waiting.
They were true to their word and everyone was served within 20 minutes.
Here’s Sarah’s plate. Both ladies reported that the BBQ beef was exceptional.
And my steak. Also fantastic. Everything tasted great.
After an hour for dinner or so, the show began. It consisted of 5 musicians, four of them also singing, as they played cowboy songs into the night. I’ve been to many concerts in my life and I don’t know if I can name many that I enjoyed more than this one. I can’t say I’m a big country/western music fan, although it doesn’t make me run screaming from the room either. But I could have listened to these guys all night. Their skill was jaw-dropping. They said their fiddler was 7-time Wyoming Fiddlin’ champion and 2-time National Champion.
This guy played four different instruments on the same song: flattop guitar, steel guitar, regular guitar, and banjo. I couldn’t believe how fast his hands were as he picked out the tunes.
The singing was excellent—really tight harmonies. One of the singers had a voice low enough to plumb the depths of the Marianas Trench. And for the piece that really put it over the top? Corny jokes. All. Night. Long.
One man arranged for the band to give his wife an anniversary gift. They asked her why marriage was like a pool of hot water. She had no idea.
Because after you’ve been in it for a while, you get used to it, and you realize it ain’t so hot anymore.
At one point, one of the band members dressed up as Granny and proceeded to regale us with the mythical story of Rindercella. Granny has a problem mixing up her consonants, but proceeded for a good 10-15 minutes to tell us the riveting story. The moral? Don’t slop your drippers, of course!
Ok, so maybe you had to be there. All I know is, the food was great, the music was great, and we laughed a lot. I would be hard-pressed to name a time when our money was better spent. We had a fine evening, everyone loved it, and I am proud to award the Bar J Chuckwagon a Drooling Homer Award for Excellence in Unpretentious Dining.
And then we ruined all that goodwill by making the kids sleep on the floor of a Super 8. It builds character, kids. It builds character.
Coming Up Next: Northwestern Wyoming is one of my favorite places I’ve ever visited. Starting with the next chapter, you’ll see why.
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