Birthday Club goes to Jackson Hole

To celebrate my 80th birthday

my sisters and cousin

planned a trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Verla was the instigator and driver.

Our first stop was at LaBeaus in Garden City for their famous raspberry shake,
except Carol & Verda chose pineapple.

We are not cutting corners.

$4.50 each, unless you have nuts.

Bear Lake

Temple in Afton, Wyoming

Downtown. 

World's Largest Elkhorn Arch

This is it!

The Big Birthday Dinner.

We didn't ask.

They just brought it.

Maybe I told her I was turning 80.

"If you're going to get old, you might as well get as old as you can get."

Wallace Stegner

But we didn't ask for a free dessert

or a discount on the bill.

"Our high school mascot was the buffalo," we tell the hostess

who offered to take our picture.

"That was a long time ago," someone said.

"I can tell," she bemused.

Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight

Come out tonight come out tonight
Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight
And we'll dance by the light of the moon.

 “Going to the mountains is going home.”

Ansel Adams

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. We need wilderness preserved - as much of it as still left, and as many kinds - because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there - important, that is, simply as an idea. Wallace Stegner

"National Parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American,

absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst." 

Wallace Stegner

The brook would lose its song if we removed the rocks

Wallace Stegner

 “Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit,

and as vital to our lives as water and good bread.” 

Edward Abbey

“I never saw a discontented tree.” John Muir

 “In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks.” John Muir

“Few places in this world are more dangerous than home.

Fear not, therefore, to try the mountain passes.

They will kill care, save you from deadly apathy, set you free,

and call forth every faculty into vigorous, enthusiastic action.” John Muir

Jenny's Lake
Here we chatted with a fellow who lives right in Washington DC.
Viewing the peace and tranquility,
we asked him if he came out here to get out of the political mess.
He quoted a friend about the debate
with a drunken uncle.
He actually was here for a convention in Idaho Falls.

There was a picture of Jenny's Lake and the Tetons
in the Valley Cafe all the years I worked there.
I could tell tourists where it was
but I had never been there.

We tried to pull faces

but there wasn't much change.

It is love and friendship,

the sanctity and celebration of our relationships,

that not only support a good life, but create one.

Through friendships, we spark and inspire one another's ambitions.

Wallace Stegner

But what pleasure it is to know that there is back county for them to retreat to, that nobody is going to push roads through that wilderness, that no RVs or trail bikes or tote goats will roar through those forests and stink up that clean air. The best thing we have learned from nearly five hundred years of contact with the American wilderness is restraint, the willingness to hold our hand: to visit such places for our souls' good, but leave no tracks.--Wallace Stegner

As we approached Jenny's Lake on the trail,

a car drove right to the lake.

"How'd you do that?"

"You just take the boat ramp exit," they explained.

Verla and I decided to start walking down the road

while Carol & Verda walked back to get the car

and pick us up.

The road went on and on,

so we stopped and figuratively hugged a tree.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

Not daring to leave for fear of missing them,

we didn't try to go back the short distance to the parking lot.

They couldn't find the boat ramp road

so they went back to the parking lot

and Verda backtracked to find us.

And that was our exciting adventure of the day.

Shadows.

“We need wilderness whether or not we ever set foot in it. We need a refuge even though we may never need to go there…. We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.” Edward Abbey 

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed. . .We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more

than drive to its edge and look in. - Wallace Stegner

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.” John Muir

Water is the true wealth in a dry land.

Wallace Stegner

Today, we must realize that nature is revealed in the simplest meadow, wood lot, marsh,

stream, or tidepool, as well as in the remote grandeur of our parks and wilderness areas. -Ansel Adams

I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one.

Let our souls be mountains. Let our spirits be stars. Let our hearts be worlds.

Ansel Adams

“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.” John Muir

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free from noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope.--Wallace Stegner

I had never seen this sign in a restroom before.

Verda said its because some cultures were ruining the toilets.

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” John Muir

After a magnificent view, this little boy told Carol

that he would rather throw rocks into the lake.

His parents took the time to hike down to the water's edge

so he could throw rocks.

Let us leave a splendid legacy for our children. . .

let us turn to them and say, this you inherit;

guard it well, for it is far more precious than money. . .

and once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.

Ansel Adams

I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one.

Let our souls be mountains. Let our spirits be stars. Let our hearts be worlds.

Ansel Adams

I believe the world is incomprehensible beautiful -

an endless prospect of magic and wonder.

Ansel Adams

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.” Edward Abbey

Verla's essentials to travel home:  Purse, Coke, and Snacks -
(leave the garbage can for the maids so they'll have something to do).

What is a resource worth? Anything it costs. If we never hike it or step into its shade, if we only drive by occasionally and see the textures of green mountainside change under wind and sun, or the fog move soft feathers down the gulches, or the last sunset on the continent redden the sky beyond the ridege, we have our money's worth. We have been too efficient at destruction; we have left our souls too little space to breathe in. Every green natural place we save saves a fragment of our sanity and gives us a little more hope that we have a future.--Wallace Stegner

“There is a love of wild nature in everybody,

an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no,

and however covered by cares and duties”

John Muir

“The world is big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”

John Muir

Verda Johnson Salter

Verla Esplin Galloway

Carol Esplin Muprhy

Jeanette Esplin Hugh

October 10-12, 2016