With the snow-capped Tetons in the background, Jane and John pause to accept a fellow traveler’s offer to capture the moment.
John Grindrod/The Lima News
For my lady Jane and me, travel, both here and abroad, has helped to bond us together for these past 23 years. So, it was after a pretty rough last 18 months for me that Jane and I both thought the best way to celebrate what I hope is my good health following some cancer scares was to take a national-parks road trip.
Over the years, Jane and I have so enjoyed our 15 or so visits to various national parks. The three I thought we could do in seven days were two in Wyoming — Grand Teton and Yellowstone — and one in Montana, Glacier, in a 4,200-mile whirlwind of a week-long road trip. Loading up the cooler with our favorite provisions and tossing our duffels in the back of my Equinox, we left Lima behind on June 14.
To be honest, when I planned my driving route that would take me through eight states by trip’s end, with four of those days covering 600 or more miles, it seemed more easily done than it turned out to be.
Our first 628 miles got us to Albert Lea, Minnesota, a distance I’d covered back in 2020 when Jane and I broke out of the pandemic box to see both South and North Dakota. Day 2 got us another 653 miles to Gillette, Wyoming, getting there in time to attend Saturday’s 5 p.m. mass conducted by a priest who, following his end-of-mass processional, grabbed his cowboy hat off a shelf in the vestibule before heading outside to press the flesh with the congregants as they filed out, a scene which amused both Lady Jane and me greatly.
By reaching Gillette, that made it an easier drive of just under 370 miles to begin our exploration of our first park, Grand Teton, a place where even in mid-June the snow-capped majestic range never is out of sight.
Grand Teton for both of us turned out to be the most visually arresting of the three parks, we agreed by trip’s end, although just by a slim margin. I think it was the majesty of The Jenny Lake Scenic Drive that nudged our park experience into the top slot. It was an awe-inspiring drive along the eastern shoreline of the lake named for the Shoshone Indian wife of Richard “Beaver Dick” Leigh, a trapper and guide who in the 19th century worked the area that would become a national park in 1929.
A stop at the Jenny Lake Overlook, the most popular of the park’s destinations, provided a view across the deep blue waters to Cascade Canyon, which cuts through the heart of the snow-capped Teton Range as a U-shaped space. Glaciers acting almost like belt sanders created the “U” out of what in the Pleistocene Era was a rock-ribbed V-shape. The lake fed by snowmelt and remnant glaciers reflected the snow-capped Tetons in the glasslike surface that day.
From the tranquility of Jenny Lake to the thundering waters of the Jackson Lake Dam and Snake River provided us a wonderful contrast. The fly fishermen in their waders whipping their poles back and forth questing for cutthroat trout reminded me of a scene out of the movie “A River Runs through It.”
The Signal Mountain Summit was also special, providing its panoramic view of the Teton Range. The summit is located off a narrow winding road that climbs almost a thousand feet. There are actually two overlooks that provide panoramic valley views.
An unexpected treat was later finding a small church in the park, the Chapel of the Sacred Heart, located off Jackson Lake’s Catholic Bay. Built in 1937, the Catholic church constructed of logs (including the interior supports and even the pulpit) was dedicated to the victims of 9/11 shortly after that tragic event that both grieved and galvanized a nation. It really was the perfect place for some prayer and reflection. The church holds regular Sunday services in the summer.
Following a full day of the grandest of exploration, including some hiking, it was time to make the drive to Cody, partially through Yellowstone, America’s oldest national park, for our two-day layover in the town named for America’s most famous western showman, Buffalo Bill Cody, to explore the park that received it national-park designation in 1872.
Please join me next week for my look at Yellowstone, from the massive Yellowstone Lake to the scores of white-bark pine, many felled by strong winds, and on to the eruption of Old Faithful.
John Grindrod is a regular columnist for The Lima News, a freelance writer and editor and the author of two books. Reach him at [email protected].
