Grand Targhee, What a Trip!

We took a weekend trip to visit our newlywed friends, and former neighbors, Neil and Mary in their new home in Driggs, Idaho. Joe's former co-worker at ASC, Neil has been working at Grand Targhee resort just across the border in Wyoming for a couple months now and is loving his new position. Mary has left as the Marketing Manager at the Park City Chamber and is currently doing contract work and enjoying the outdoors of her beautiful new surroundings.

The trip started out fine. We left Park City a little late and knew we'd be making the 5-hour drive in the dark. What we didn't count on was a fundamental oversight, that could have been easily avoided if we had simply remembered our trusty atlas. Upon exiting route 20 in Rexburg, we innocently took a left (west) instead of a right and proceeded to drive in the wrong direction. The road predictably narrowed, street-signs and marks of human involvement lessened, while low-lying layers of fog engulfed the car like sheets of wax paper blowing in the wind. We found ourselves driving at half-speed. The fog then yielded to happy sightings of fluffy bunnies on the road-side. At first we saw one or two alarmed little bunnies as we drew their attention from road-side bunny business. Then the frequency increased exponentially. Bunnies everywhere! Again we drove at a tortoise's pace, while making eye contact with each of the thousands of bunnies and evaluating their will to live. Some would dive towards the car in a last-ditch suicide attempt. We successfully dodged dozens bunnies before finally decapitating one determined hare. After that ordeal, we were able to maneuver around the rest of the population and escape bunny-ville without further casualties. Then came the deer. Pronghorns. And entire heard crossing route 33 in the dark. We of course waited for the last stragglers to pass and considered ourselves lucky once again.

At this point it occurred to us that we had seen nary a headlight in about an hour or so. We also noticed the mile-markers were counting down almost to zero and we weren't sure what that meant. Most disturbingly, we hadn't seen a single sign for Driggs and thought we might actually be lost. Could it be? We stopped at the end of route 33 as it met route 26 and called Mary who had been waiting up for us and had started to worry. As she tried to locate us on her map she confirmed the worst of truths, that we had been driving for the better part of two hours in the wrong direction. In fact, as we sheepishly made our u-turn, we immediately happened upon a sign saying 79 miles to Rexburg, our original point of digression. And worse still, we had to pass again through bunny-ville.

After arriving in Driggs at 2:30 Saturday Morning, we found the rest of our weekend to be a stress-free alpine delight. Mary and Neil treated us to some of the best hospitality in the west. The skiing was outstanding. The area was gorgeous. And the resort is very cool. We're very happy for our friends having this new, fresh start and we wish them the best of luck. But we hope they steer clear of the bunny patch.