Where Was I oh yea on way to Tetons and Yellowstone and Books

I can’t think about those people who showed up at 4:15 Friday 7/21 at Gros Ventre in the Tetons and found that in the first time in 20 years there was no space (not at any campground in the Tetons or Yellowstone). There were two big rigs. Some people like Pat and I travel 1000s of miles, but Stefani was smart and said let’s get there early from the Falls since they don’t let you make reservations for most of the campgrounds in Yellowstone and the Tetons. We got there at 10 am. All campgrounds were filled by 3pm. Only once since we started camping under the stars in 1974  at Indian Springs in Georgia then in our sleeping bags did we not find a place to camp.  We either had reservations or were lucky like at Falls in the Bighorns and Gros Ventre, along side the Snake River in the Tetons about 15 minutes from Jackson.

Best part of this campground at Gros Ventre was we were within range of the first FARMER's Market in Jackson since we left LI and it also had a great bike path.

Below photo Pat off his diet eating a blueberry fritter at the Farmer's Market listening to some great Blue Grass Music.  We bought free range organic beef, chicken, elk salami (which was recommended on the diet because it is lean, lean) fresh organic vegetables and fruits and home grown oyster mushrooms.  We both are suppose to be doing this diet for a month...it lasted a week with more and more modifications added each week.  Pat has been totally supportive of me doing it but not so much him doing it with me...he called it "the Nazi" diet.  Too many restrictions (what honey isn't a  natural sugar you can use? You can't eat beans on phase 2?and no, nos ( I can't have milk on my cereal, what my cereal can't be wheat base?  NO diet cola?) .  He says we will do Weight Watchers at Olele Point, we will see.  See the elk antler...they grow them like finger nails, loose them each year and re-grow them the following year. The biggest rack gets the most mates. 

Pat totally satisfied after eating his fritter, claiming he now has much brain power again as Einstein even though I cut his hair short.  And says he almost could look like Einstein's taller brother.

Jackson was fun because of the sculptures around the town and art galleries, easy to walk. Houses cost quite a bit here, in the millions. Pat's favorite is the 7 bedroom, 8 baths, 40 acres, your own trout stream and quest house all for only 18 million 900,000...oh and never lived in.  but a 2 bedroom 2 bath cabin on less than an acre will cost almost 2 million.  Olele Point 2 bedroom 2 bath with an airbnb questhouse/ the RV will come in at most $350,000.

The second book I am reading is a best seller, a series of essays about every state called State by State, A Panoramic Portrait of America  2009 from 50 writers who either were born there or migrated there or spent a lot of time in the state …really stories about their childhood experiences, characters they met with historical facts and stats mixed in. 

I have read Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and I have to say they are all both touching and bitter sweet.  In almost every essay there is something about the displacement and horrid ways the Native Americans were treated, how progress in the form of fracking, oil drilling, pesticide use and big box stores isn’t really progress because it takes away from the beauty of the land and waters.  (Reason for big box stores is obvious to me, though, when its Sunday out here when no RV Supply or Automotive dealers are open and your battery dies where are you going to find a battery? Meijer’s in Michigan; when you run out of fruit where are you going to find the best and freshest selection? Well, in a huge grocery store like Smith’s off I-90 vs. a little Western Family store on a back road in Wyoming and that also includes what you buy for the best price? I paid double in a Western Family Store in Wyoming for a box of blueberries, same brand, as I did at Smith’s, but maybe it cost them that much more to get it to the smaller town? Who knows? Also there are very few "organics" in the smaller stores.)

The best story so far come from Michigan by Mohammed Naseehu Ali, a Muslim from Ghana who was sent to art school to Michigan in 1988 and about the all white Christian family who took him in on holidays.  They became his second family and his children think of them as their USA family.  He was the only black skinned individual as well as Muslim in a town of 1000 people. Infact, no black person had ever lived in the town before him.  His story is all about the generosity of the Michigan people and the acceptance of his religious beliefs, especially stopping to pray 5 times a day.  He said he stayed in Michigan for 3 years and it made him what he is. When this book was published he was living in NYC and the snows he says there are scant and dirty compared to the snowfalls in Michigan. 

 The second best story I read came from Louise Erdrich from North Dakota. She was half or 4th Turtle Mountain Chippewa and ? She talks about the heart “shattering” “spectacular” “inescapable” sky  and billboards which offer the advice “SMILE”, “THINK” “SAY THANK YOU” and when you see them you do Smile and think because I pointed them out to Pat and he smiled and then said thank you.  Her funniest lines to me were what she did as a kid, because I did the same thing in Florida as a kid and that was bike behind a mosquito fogger which as you can guess if you never did this as a kid spews out insecticide to kill mosquitoes. She said she only did it once but some of her friends waited each night to follow it to get the high from breathing in malathion, some got addicted and are now “survivalists or raging fundamentalists”. I have to admit I must have biked behind it at least two or three times because I remember getting really sick before quitting. And I am not a raging anything except every once in awhile and for a short period.  Maybe the fogger trucks explain it. More on the Tetons and Yellowstone in next blogg.  Too tired now.