September 21
We woke up this morning to clear sunny skies and frost on the windows. It got cold last night! We hit the road heading west toward Grand Tetons National Park. The mountains were standing there, glorious, with a large swath of fog across the valley below.
The autumn colors seemed to pop in the brilliance of the sun’s gaze, and the contrast with the fog made us appreciate that today was the last full day of summer.
It turned out we had to drive straight into and through that fog before crossing the Grand Teton pass (8431 ft). By the time we were in the thick of it, we came to the same place we saw the large herd of buffalo yesterday. Today, they were shrouded in fog, with their Teton backdrop being completely obscured.
By the time we got to Jackson Hole it was like pea soup. We had a quick breakfast and headed further through the fog toward the pass. It’s such a steep climb that we were above the fog quickly and before we knew it we were in Idaho.
We drove west through Idaho most of the day, along the Snake River as it literally twisted left and right along the highway all the way to Boise.
Much of the terrain away from the river was flat, brown and nondescript, aside from some interesting rock formations here and there.
Along the way we came upon the Oregon Trail Museum where we made a quick stop. We also passed the Potato Museum but had used up all our spare time by then, so we had to put that on our list for next time.
From Boise we turned north following the Payette River, where the environment changed dramatically yet again. We climbed up the forest-lined mountain highway for almost a hundred miles. The Payette kept us mesmerized with its thunderous rapids the whole way to the town of McCall, where it flows out of Payette Lake.
We will pick up our journey homeward in the morning.
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