We were free to explore today. We chose to go north up US-89 to the town of Alpine. The road there passes through rolling pasture with big mountains running on both the east and west sides of the road. It is awful pretty country and there does not seem to be anyplace that isn’t covered with some sort of vegetation. Everything, except the flowers, rivers and buildings, is green.
Just north of Alpine, we turned northwest on US-26 and into Idaho. 26 skirts the northern edge of Palisades Reservoir which is a beautiful and striking lake liberally used by boaters and fisherpersons. The road starts to climb and we continued up it until we turned notheast on ID-31 toward Victor, ID. 31 starts climbing fairly steeply right away and is very twisty. Near the summit and the town of Victor, the road gets even steeper (10%+) before arriving at nice brake check and overlook where you can see down the steep mountains into Jackson Hole. From Victor, we turned on ID-22 for a few miles before crossing back into Wyoming where the road is designated WY-390 and leads to Jackson, WY.
From the summit, the road starts a long 10% downgrade that runs to more than 5 miles. Anybody who loses their brakes here will be getting to the bottom soonest but without the benefit of the road. There are many low-speed corners on the way down but the scenery is great for passengers. Peg kept the velocity pretty low on the downhill portion because she is not comfortable with squiggly roads and abrupt edges plunging to unseen bottoms. There are ample turnouts alongside the road to allow slowpokes like us to allow the insane to pass.
Down in the valley floor, we pulled into the town of Jackson, WY. Peggy and I had been in the town of Jackson in 1979, during our honeymoon trip across the U.S. It was quite small with quaint, touristy stuff like wagon rides downtown, architectural similarity between downtown buildings and nice decorative arches spanning the streets and made from the horns of animals that certainly won’t be needing them anymore.
It has changed, based on our passage through a bit of town today. There are many fancy European SUVs, considerable numbers of traffic signals, more roads, more people and more commerce. We did only see a bit of town as we skirted it on WY-390 and turned south once again on US-89. If I get more info during our travels into Jackson over the next week or so, I will amend my widely-ignored opinions.
Once back on US-89, we dropped down toward Hoback alongside the Snake River. It cascades down through a spectacular canyon where there are a few places to pull off the side of the road. Many rafters and kayak aficionados seem to enjoy this stretch of river because we spotted quite a few folks being carried downstream through this fabulous, rock-lined river canyon. We even found some…uhhh….river surfers, I guess. These folks were equipped with short surfboards and some paddle boards. They jump off some rocks at the edge of the river and quickly paddle out into the stream passing through a rapids section. They have found a continuously-operating standing wave which they can carve around on until they foul up and get swept downstream. About 100 yards downstream, the water flattens out into a nice lagoon which untalented or failed surfers used to get back out of the river. It was pretty cool. We had lunch here although it was about 6:00 PM.
We continued south on 89 until we emerged from the glorious canyon near Alpine. Dead south from there for about 20 miles and we were back in Thayne and back to our RV park. The wi-fi here is terrible. Phone doesn’t work most of the time, either.
The drive today was filled with terrific scenery. The Tetons are visible from a few short sections. The view from the overlook up by Victor is amazing. We spotted some big hawks along the way. The roads are lined with gorgeous scenery. The rivers are beautiful. There may not be a lot of things to do near Thayne but the scenery in this part of the world is breathtaking.
You can see some photos from today if you click here