The 2019 Road Trip: The Rest Day

Here are a few pictures taken at our cabin in Victor early in the morning after the two days of visiting Grand Teton National Park.This is the living room of the house before sunrise.This picture is taken closer to sunrise.I actually walked out into the cold to take the picture below. You can see the setting moon.Commercial aircraft carrying consignments of human souls zipped across the morning sky, this one headed to some place northwest of where we were.This was a leisurely morning.  The decision to stay put in the cabin for the day came only after everybody had woken up.  Nobody, it seems, felt a strong desired to spend another day at the Grand Teton National Park.  It did take some driving over the mountain pass to get to the place, and we had been doing this crossing regularly.  It also took some time to get to the park.  Maybe it was getting to be too much.  We also looked into local hikes closer to Victor but ended up deciding not to go out on any.  We were going to relax.

This was the day for board games and catching up on reading.I got somewhat restless after a little while of sitting around in the cabin and decided to go for a drive on my own.  I went into the main part of town and took a few pictures there.  It looked like a typical western town.I proceeded towards Driggs, the next big town on the main road.  It was just a few miles away.  We had stayed there the first night of the trip.

I saw a sign for Darby Canyon Road just outside of Driggs.  I made an unplanned turn onto this road on the  spur of the moment.  I had no idea what lay in store for me.

The road led to some hills in the distance.  I was headed east.   In a mile or two the paved road turned to dirt, and shortly after that it came to a T-junction.  There was a field in front of me, and an abandoned house on the road going left.The road to the right made a 90 degree turn to the left just beyond the field, and continued east.  I decided to go in that direction.  I ended up heading into Darby Canyon.  I had not planned any of this.  So, I did not know where the road was going to lead me.  But I kept driving.  I arrived at a trail head.  The trail itself did not look well maintained at that point. It was not very tempting.The canyon stretched out in front of me.  I had no idea how far the road went into the canyon.It was tempting to investigate further, but, in the end, I did not drive too far down the Canyon . All of this was unplanned, and I had not budgeted time for “adventures”.   I turned back towards the main road to Driggs.

On the way back to the road, I took a picture of this massive irrigation device in a field.  We saw many instances of such equipment in the field in the huge farms that we drove by during this trip.   I am not sure exactly how this mobile sprinkler system works, since there appears to be the need for a water source at one end, and it looks like the whole system can move without being anchored at any location.Only later did I find out that I had actually crossed from Idaho into Wyoming when driving into Darby canyon.  In fact, a short stretch of the road that I had driven along before turning into the canyon ran along the border.

Driggs was a short distance away once I reached the main road.   It is a small town.  There did not seem to be any significant tourist related activities, but I did  see signs for a national forest and an outdoor store.  There is a winter sports area close by called the Grand Targhee Resort.From the establishments on the main street, I gathered that there was a Buddhist presence in town.  I picked up lunch for the folks in Victor from this small establishment which had prayer scrolls hung up all around on the inside. This was a hole in the wall.  I was served by two kids, one of them Asian, perhaps Thai.  There was no place to sit inside, and I took one of the last two bags of potato chips.  There was one apple left.  (This place does not even have its own website.)I headed back to Victor after picking up lunch.

My eyes were drawn to something by the wayside on the way back.  I stopped for a quick look.  I had seen the signs earlier, but I had not stopped.  This time I turned off the main road.  It looked like a joke, but suspect that it is, or perhaps was, real.  I would be surprised if the drive-in theater is still functional.  There is a website for the theater that looks real, but it looks old and the links do not work.  Old Murphy looked like something out of a Disney movie.  The spud could not have been real, but I did not confirm.It was a very short stop.

I was able to take a picture of the front of the cabin we were staying at when I returned to Victor.  It felt bigger inside than it looked like from outside.Lunch was a little delayed due to my unplanned detour.  The rest of the afternoon passed by quickly.  I  made sure I got a group picture before we left for Jackson Hole Airport to drop off the folks headed for Massachusetts.The drive to the airport was uneventful.    We could have driven through the park to the airport and made another attempt to see the moose, but we had left the park pass in the cabin.  This was the last crossing of Teton Pass for some of us.

I took this picture of the cowboy on the bucking horse at the entrance to the airport.  This is a symbol of the State of Wyoming.The three of us drove back to Victor.  It was going to be our last night there.  We had dinner at a small Thai restaurant called Chiang Mai Thai Kitchen, a surprising find in a place like Victor.  (Perhaps the existence of the restaurant was connected with the presence of Buddhists in the general area.)  The food was good, but the dishes were different from what one is used to seeing in more mainstream Thai restaurants in the US.  We enjoyed the food with some local beer.

And that was it for the day.  I did take pictures of the moon again – for the last time in Victor.  It was obvious that the moon was waning.Next in this series of blogs here.