Day 3 - Details

On day 3 our destination was Signal Lodge in the Grand Teton National Park. We woke up on Wednesday feeling more relaxed at the start of day because we knew our day would involve less miles than the previous to days of driving. Nicole had breakfast in the lobby while I took a shower, since I’m not a big breakfast type of gal I filled up my coffee mug and we went to downtown Idaho Falls for our first detour. We had noticed a camera shop (Ritz Owned) that had 4 days left of business so we stopped by to see what deals we could find. There wasn’t too much selection, but Nicole made out by getting a small camera case that was originally $15 for $3.
We stopped at the Idaho Falls Museum, which was swarming with school kids, to pick up postcards. We would have loved to see the Titanic exhibit (as seen on Ghost Hunters), but the kids would have made it less enjoyable. We then made our way to the post office for postage and to drop of the postcards. That area of Idaho Falls has so many one-ways that I made a few wrongs turns, which wasn’t a bad thing in the end. We found the Midget Market, for all your midget needs and a guy really, really struggling to mow his front lawn (he had a nice mullet too).
After all that we were finally on the road and eventually Wyoming came around and we drove through beautiful rolling hillsides that reminded Nicole of “Little House on the Prairie”. Later we reached a really long stretch of traffic due to roadwork, it sucked mostly because of the fact that my car is manual. It was at this point to that Nicole and I had to make a note of mentioning that there are many women in road construction. Everywhere on the 15 we have been slowed by construction and every time we see loads of women working those roads as heavy machinery drivers and traffic directors.
We decided to stop finally when we reached Jackson Hole, Nicole said I’d know it when we saw it and she was right. As I made the turn towards The Teton National Park there was a giant arch made of Antlers, it was beautiful. We stopped and ate at Backcountry Provisions Deli, I ordered the Angler with smoked salmon, sprouts, cucumber, tomato, and cheese. Nicole would like to forget about her sandwich so we will move on. It was really windy in Jackson Hole but we wanted to check out some of the shops. At about 2:30 the wind completely stopped and the day finally warmed up. We wanted to fill up our cooler with snacks to help with the cost of staying at a lodge, so found a local grocery store in Jackson Hole. We picked up sandwich meats and bread, cheeses, yogurt, nuts, trail mix, all stuff that could probably make us bear magnets.
We left for Grand Teton and were blown away when we made a turn in the pass that revealed the Grand Teton Mountain Range. They were so strikingly beautiful words really can’t describe them. When we made it to Signal Lodge we were told that we were being moved into the Lakeside Rooms, oh me oh my! When we got in to one and saw our view and the stove and the fridge and out living room and our little porch with chairs we both were literally screaming. Then we quickly pushed our plans forward called hotels and booked at Signal Lodge for an extra night. You see why we couldn’t post this yesterday? We were so exhausted because it doesn’t even end here.
We later got bundled up and walked down to the lakeshore and took some pictures of the mountains and the perfectly calm waters reflecting like a mirror. We were so lucky! Then we finally had dinner at the Dead Man’s Bar, I had ridiculously hot chicken quesadillas that I couldn’t finish and Nicole had the Bison Vegetable Soup with a piece of cornbread. We enjoyed a really damn good Cadillac margarita and then after stopping at the lobby to post the pictures from Day 3 we crashed.