We decided to take a day off during our Grand Teton photo tour - Slept in, had breakfast instead of granola bars, and did a little
wildflower shooting on the outwash plain. Then Chuck and I made the fateful
decision to off-road on the badly-named River Road. It should have been called
the sagebrush-engulfed, cliff-clinging, two-track, endless, dust ball trek
through hell. Chuck, who has
no fear of heights or of being lost, enjoyed driving along knife-edge cliffs, in the
literal middle of nowhere, looking down into watery death in the Snake River.
It started mildly enough,
with a light-hearted drive down a rough track onto the upper river plain. We
stopped at a little parking area, looking down over the Snake and a little bit
of a ranch, pretty and isolated.
Some rafters in the river:
A panorama of the Tetons, just before we became lost forever. Note the Citadel in the far right side of the photo - giant SUV, you could've bowled in the back.
We decided to follow the
track farther north – it was on the GPS, so we weren’t going to get lost. Hah!
Hours of driving, sometimes on the crumbling edge of the enormous cliff
dropping down to the Snake, with the passenger side wheels riding half on air.
No landmarks, no idea of how long before we reached pavement, much less
civilization and with only granola bars and 4 bottles of water to sustain us.
Endless,
sunbaked miles of sagebrush hell. Craven coward that I am, I actually got out
of the truck and walked in couple of spots that were entirely too close to a
crashing plummet ending with the Citadel crumpled and us crushed at the bottom of the river.
Chuck, my best beloved, had the decency not to start laughing until the track
veered away from the river. But laugh he did, the rat.
When we finally got back
to pavement, we were about a mile and a half from where we started and ten minutes
from refreshing beverages at Signal Lodge.
I would have sucked
at being a pioneer…
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