Country Mouse and Shadow's Travels: Wide Open Spaces

October 5th
By listening to the park owner's advice we rose with no frozen parts. After some research, we found that most places around Jackson, WY and Yellowstone had closed for the season. We lucked up on one still opened in West Yellowstone and decided to stay two nights there to weather the low temperatures. It was a relaxing 90 mile drive to the national park with beauitful views by a river that followed us. It had been 5 years or so since we had visited. We had came to ski Big Sky and take a snowmobile tour of the park. The town had grown quiet a bit and is more touristy than we remembered. The Old Stage Coach Inn had a new paint job and the awesome Wolf Pack Brewery had been replaced with a pub. The Grizzly RV park was huge, clean, and friendly.
October 6th-7th
With an over night low of 5 degrees we awoke to a frozen water pump, frozen water tank, and frozen water hose. We were smart to dump the black water before going to bed. If not we would have had a frozen "shitter" (line (National Lampoon Christmas Vacation quote). This trip seems to be full of funny quotes from that movie. We took the Toad (our car) and Judy (our dog) on a tour of Yellowstone park.
The next morning we braved the cold temperatures and headed out on our back roads journey home. Through Island Park's fly fishing mecca and back in the heart of Idaho's potato country. Next spot was a place that I dream of living, Driggs. It's located on the back side of the Grand Tetons and has the best and hiking around. Every time I'm there I think about getting a pair of cowboy boats, stetson hat, and a miniature donkey to round up a herd of sheep.
Beulah screamed going up the 10 percent grade to Teton Pass and smoked coming down the other side...literally. We stopped halfway down to cool the brakes off. Passing Jackson, we stopped for lunch by a sulfur creek and herded some sheep off the road. Between here and Rock Springs, WY this afternoon was filled with the most wildlife we have seen in one place. 2 dead porcupines, wild sheep and farm sheep, herds of antelopes, and one moose walking a farmer's fence row. The terrain flattened and sprouted miles of empty sage brush land with massive cattle ranches. We passed both the Oregon and Pony Express trail along the way. With temperatures only in the 30s tonight, we are back free living in the Walmart parking lot. Rock Springs is another old wild west town once with a massive coal industry that is now oil and natural gas. There are 2,500 descendants of Spanish horses that run wild outside of town that we would love to see.