Grand! Grand! Grand!

Part II

Stories on the Road

The Trip – Day 17

Rexburg, Idaho – Dubois, Wyoming

The Grand Tetons National Park

195 miles 

One of the main purposes in taking this road trip was to see and experience things we hadn't seen and experienced before. As we traveled across the country, we came to realize we were surrounded by people who are also out to see and experience things they have not seen and experienced before. Yes, there are moments and places where one can be alone in a national park, but those moments can be rare, those places few. At the Grand Canyon and Yosemite, the midday crowds could be intense, with a disappointingly large number of people oblivious to the fact they were sharing shuttles and viewing areas and hiking trails with other people. Many visitors to the parks are selfie-obsessed, with cameras and smart phones aggressively competing for the best vantage points to document one's presence at any given place at any given time (says one half of the couple that generated over 4,000 pictures on this trip...). Still, the quickest and easiest way to positively interact with a person is to offer to take their picture or ask them to take yours. Sharing picnic tables, especially shady ones, is another way to enter into other people's lives. Everyone has a story, and we were surrounded by people willing to share theirs at the right moment. During our visit to the Grand Tetons, we had the opportunity to interface with several of those stories.

 * * *

Chapel of the Transfiguration

We were on the grounds of the Chapel of the Transfiguration near the Menor's Ferry village and were about to enter the open chapel when a woman, a little younger than a POACA, approached us. Could we not go into the chapel just yet? Her daughter was inside, and unbeknownst to the daughter, her boyfriend had just run back to the car to get the engagement ring he was about to propose to her with. Could we wait outside just for a short while? The woman explained to us that her daughter had been coming to the park since she was a small child, that the chapel was her favorite place in the park. Her fiance was aware of this and wanted to ask her to marry him in that special place. A few other visitors approached, and the woman asked the same of them, if they would wait a few minutes. We all sort of nonchalantly milled around the grounds, pretending to look at posted historic information about the chapel. The boyfriend returned, entered the chapel, and after a short time, exited with a tearfully happy fiancee. Of course, all of us who had been asked to wait had by this time lined the walkway in front of the chapel and applauded the newly engaged couple. When we finally entered the chapel, and saw what made it so special, it already had new meaning for us, having given us the opportunity to, in a small way, be part of a couple's significant moment.

Interior view, chapel stained glass

Looking out the window, behind the altar of the Chapel of the Transfiguration

   * * *

Summer in the west is travel time for motorcyclists, and the national parks are a popular destination for them. We passed many bikers on the roads around the parks (...actually, they passed us...) and we had the opportunity to eat with some of them at the Grand Tetons. Looking for a place to have our backpack lunch before our afternoon hike, we had been lucky enough to find a recently vacated large shaded picnic table in a busy picnic area. A woman, a fellow POACA, carrying a motorcycle helmet, asked if she and her traveling companions could share our table. Of course, we said. She was soon joined by her husband and another couple, helmets in tow, and we had a pleasant lunch together. They were from Kansas, had trailered their motorcycles to South Dakota, and were now touring the Rockies. They had spent the previous night in Yellowstone and were headed to Colorado. They asked about our trip, and my husband shared pictures of some of our adventures, they, in turn, showing us some of their photos. Having been at Yellowstone soon after someone had disappeared into one of the boiling hot springs, they started talking about all the ways one could meet one's demise in the various national parks. This made for a somewhat morbid, but interesting conversation until we parted company, we to do our lake hike, they to continue their ride toward Colorado. Later in the day, when we stopped on the shore of Jackson Lake to take some pictures, we were approached by another biker, who offered to take a picture of both of us.
Would we then take a picture of him and his son? He proudly pointed to a twenty-something guy on a cell phone. He and his son were doing a midwest father-son motorcycle trip together, both biking from the same area of the midwest we had driven from. He told us his son had left a pregnant wife at home with a toddler, and so spent a lot of time on the phone when he could get a signal. After the phone call ended, the two of them posed for a father and son road trip shot and then we all continued on our way.

Photo taken by midwest motorcyclist.  (Jackson Lake in the background)

  * * *

Mt. Moran

The Grand Tetons were also the site of another Oneonta encounter which segued into a poignant story.  We had pulled into an overlook near Mt. Moran and noticed an older (than us) gentleman wearing an Oneonta State wrestling jacket. I told him I knew where that town was, my husband and I had met there, we had graduated from there. His face lit up and he told us he was himself from Pennsylvania, but his nephew was the wrestling coach at Oneonta, and he loved the area, had spent some time there sharing his own wrestling and coaching experience with his nephew. He was friendly and chatty, telling us he was visiting the park with family, commenting on the beautiful view and the glaciers on the mountains. His demeanor subdued slightly as he told us he had always wanted to climb Mt. Moran, the peak in front of us. He shared with us that his brother, a pilot, had died in a plane crash on that mountain years before, that the plane and the remains of all who died in the crash were still up there. He would have liked to honor his brother by climbing the mountain to the crash site, but knew he was too old to do it now. He said the park service doesn't give out information about the crash site because they don't want people hiking up there and disturbing the wreckage of the plane. At this point in his story, a family member called to him from a car, and he said his goodbyes and left. Google was able to finish the story the man in the Oneonta jacket started.* In November, 1950, a New Tribes Mission plane with 21 people on board crashed into Mt. Moran during a snowstorm. There were three pilots on board, one being the brother of the man we had spoken to that day.  Because of the way the plane was wedged into a crevice on the mountain, there was no attempt to salvage the plane or the victims. There was a memorial service on the mountain several months later at the crash site, and today the park service asks that hikers avoid that area in respect for those who are entombed there.

We're all stories, in the end.― Steven Moffat

* For pictures and more details, read: http://www.aircraftwrecks.com/pages/dc3.htm

Next:

Close Encounters of the Monumental Kind

The Trip – Day 18

Dubois, Wyoming – Gillette, Wyoming

393 miles

and

The Trip – Day 19

Gillette, Wyoming – Rapid City, South Dakota

Devils Tower, Mt. Rushmore

170 miles