2,814

2,814--the number of miles Mark and I drove on our first extended road trip since retirement. On Monday, May 21, we took off on a trip we have wanted to take for the longest time--to see his brother, Pete, and sister-in-law, Jane, who live in the southeast corner of Idaho, in the small town of Driggs, about 40 miles from Jackson, Wyoming, and then on to Yellowstone, a place we haven't been to since our honeymoon 45 years ago!

While we had GPS of course, I enjoyed following along the old-fashioned way, with a road atlas.

We went over Donner Summit.

And on toward our first night in Elko, Nevada.

The next morning, the scenery was mostly like this, and we had some rain along the way.

 In Burley, we went past the hotel where Mark stayed years ago when he was selling fertilizer equipment--a blast from the past!

 The scenery started changing as we got closer to the Tetons.

Late afternoon, we arrived in Driggs. Pete works for the city, running a lot of heavy equipment. A water pipe had burst right before we arrived, and he was busy fixing it.

So Jane showed us a little of the local scenery.

Pete and Jane live in a beautiful area about two miles outside of town. They live in a charming, but very small, log cabin, so we stayed in the home of a friend, who comes from the Bay Area and is mostly in Driggs during the summertime. It was a gorgeous place to stay and we had it all to ourselves the whole time.

This was the view from our driveway.

Around dinnertime, we headed to Pete and Jane's for dinner.

The view down their road. I know--it must be tough looking at this every day, but hey, someone has to do it I suppose!

We had the most delicious dinner of salmon and morel mushrooms--which Jane collects herself.

I had kind of a hard time getting pictures of Pete and Jane, but I was able to capture them in a couple of pictures. You can probably guess from these pictures that we didn't have any fun at all.

Also, I never thought I would become (somewhat) friendly with a pit bull. Louise growled at us every single time we knocked on the door, but once we were inside she was pretty friendly.

The next day we took a ride to Jackson, which is about 40 miles away, accessible through a pass that is nearly 11,000 feet in elevation.

This is at the drive-in outside of  Driggs--we are in Idaho, after all!

It was a gray and drizzly day--my favorite kind.

We had lunch at the Mangy Moose in Teton Village.

Then we headed into Jackson Hole. Of course we had to have our picture taken at the iconic elk antler arches at Jackson Town Square.

We went into the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, where the bar stools are saddles.

We even did a little bit of quilt photography.

This was what the sky looked like when we got back home. I never ever got tired of the beautiful cloud formations.

We ended our day having pizza in Driggs.