After a great morning on Jenny Lake, Clyde and I rambled around Grand Teton National Park. On our way out, we passed park signage commemorating the work of the men — boys, really — who provided a great deal of the labor that laid the foundation for what the park is today. I took the historic black-and-white photo, sharpened the details, and colorized it. It’s hard to imagine these guys chopping their way through the wilderness to build the trails people still wander today.
By the time we left the lake behind, shafts of sunlight had punctured the overcast sky, and that encouraged us to stop at more and more of the little turnouts along our route. One of those stops was Oxbow Bend, where a crescent-shaped section of river meanders through the landscape. We also spent a little time at the Snake River Overlook, where Ansel Adams took several famous photos. As a guy who takes the occasional photo, it’s kind of humbling to stand where Adams’s tripod stood and snap pics with all the ease afforded by modern cameras.
Another impulse stop took us to the Chapel of the Sacred Heart. We were the only people there today, except for a cadre of whispering high school girls who were debating the ridiculous question, “Are Catholics Christians?” (Half were for, half were against.) 🙄 After they left, though, we had the chapel to ourselves: cool, quiet, serene.
After all that hiking around (and the effort of parking a Chevy Suburban over and over again — how do people live with vehicles this size?), we kept our early evening reservations at the Snake River Grill. Whoo boy, after last night’s debacle at Figs, dinner at Snake River Grill was elevated all the more. Mark this one down as one of “The Great Meals” — the ones you remember vividly for years afterward.
We started with banh mi crumpets. Have you eaten crumpets? Well, to describe these crudely: imagine the best possible cross between a fluffy biscuit and a piping-hot croissant … and then deep-fry that sucker, serving the resulting crispy pillow of carbs alongside a creamy aioli, pickled veggies, and strips of perfectly prepared pork belly. We couldn’t eat them all, because we wanted to save room for the grilled branzino (Clyde sucked every morsel of meat out of that poor fish’s “collar”) and roasted beets with huckleberry compote. We don’t usually order dessert … but we just couldn’t pass up splitting the charred cinnamon cheesecake, which arrived looking like a miniature snowy mountain, dusted with white chocolate masa and topped with a hibiscus-orange sorbet.
This feast cost us almost exactly twenty bucks more than last night’s “chicken on a stick” at Figs.
Live and learn.
Off to bed now — we have a safari first thing in the morning!
