Road Trip!

Yes, the whole vacation has been one long road trip, but today we enjoyed some of those road trip moments that are most unexpected and memorable. First, two mountain goats bid us farewell as we drove out of Jackson Hole. This was very kind of them, as they were the only animals I had wanted to encounter that I had not yet seen.

About an hour outside of Jackson Hole, we stopped for lunch in Star Valley. At the Yankee Doodle: Red, White and Brew diner. Where freedom fries were served and even the parking spots were painted red, white, and blue. And I had "adult American cheese." And there were replicas of the Statue of Liberty all over the diner. Our waitress was fabulous, and it may have been my favorite meal of the trip. Dana and I looked at each other, as the kids played with the r,w,& b star-shaped salt and pepper shakers, and said, "now, this is a road trip." I could just imagine John McCain and Barack Obama stopping in to shake some hands and kiss some babies.


The next hour and a half, the kids added background vocals and chair dancing to our "grown-up" music, so Talking Head's "Burning Down the House" got the "burnin, burnin, burnin down my house" embellishment, and so on. The sheer joy that was taking place in the back seat was contagious, so the least scenic of our drives so far wound up being one of my favorites. That, and the fact that we crossed the Wyoming border three times! I had to say good-bye to my now beloved Wyoming three times, but I got to be welcomed back twice, so that was delightful :-)


We arrived at Park City, Utah in the late afternoon. What a great town. We could just picture the Entourage boys hanging off the balcony in the Sundance episode of our favorite HBO show. It's a charming and completely manageable place, with a long and hilly main street filled with eclectic shops and fine restaurants and a free trolly that does an endless loop if you want to take a break from climbing the hills. We'll stay here for about half the day tomorrow before heading into Moab. We haven't seen Sundance himself yet, but we haven't given up hope.