Yesterday's drive was across the "high desert". This looked quite similar to driving in the Pilbara. The main vegetation looked like salt bush and the grass even resembled spinifex. As we drew closer to the mountaibs we paassed through two small communities that were each built around the banks of a river. Suddenly there were lush green valleys of irrigated crops and huge areas of hay either cut and to be baled or already in massive stacks. Winter is coming but there wasn't a tractor baling anywhere because these farmers seem to respect the Sabboth. Besides the weather was so perfect nothing was going to damage the cut hay if it was left for a day.
We stopped fot a break in a camping spot beside a river once we were in the mountains just to reaqaint ourseves with trees and water. It was a beautiful spot and seemed quite remote from the town as we were still about 20 miles out but we found a sign informing that the camping fees were $15/day so there must be some system for collecting fees.
Jackson is the main town to access the Grand Tetons Nnational Park and Yellowstone and thrives on tourism. We wemt for a walk "downrown" and found replica bears in rubber rafts, hanging off verandah posts, carved from wood and then a stuffed moose. The moose is a very large animal and you definately would't want to cross it. Our motel is dedicated to the bison with a wallpaper photograph which leaves you in no doubt that the Native American Indians were very brave to hunt these one ton animals.
Dinner was a bit of a dilemma because of the choices available. We resolved it eventually by the old fashioned method of walking the street peering at menus displayed outside the restaurants. Eventually we settled on a "barbeque" restaurant having consulted Google to ensure that it had a good rating. For the Aussies reading this BBQ in the US means smoked meat not charcoal grill. We haven't freqented this style of restaurant before because there have always been other options that we are more familiar with. This particular restaurant promoted their salad bar and that decided it for me. We had a delicious meal and despite asking the waiter to arrange a small serve of my smoked brisket I couldn't eat it all and fairly waddled back to the motel. We couldn"t share our meal on this occasion as we had different preferences. Bob wanted to try the smoked ribs and he thoroughly enjoyed them.
Tonight we will be sleepng in West Yellowstone. There was a lot of smoke in the atmophere as we drove up yerterday which we had been forewarned about. It didn't seem so bad up here probably because the vista is more confined by the mountains. There have been large bushfires in Canada which may have made the news at home. We haven't snagged many useful news programmes on our occassional use of the TV so this came from fellow tourists. We do know about the floods in Texas and are wondering how our Goldwing Association President is faring since he is in Houston for a Conference. More tomorrow.
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