Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Too many miles, not enough sleep...

We've had a few late nights and early starts and a day of no connectivity but we're back online now. We made it to Red Lodge today after a fantastic drive over the Chief Joseph Highway and Beartooth Pass. The Chief Joseph Highway was as good as ever and we stopped to take a bunch of pics along the way. Still my favorite driving road anywhere. This was the first time I've been able to go all the way across the Beartooth Pass, every other time I've been out here the pass has been closed due to snow. It's a much tighter and twistier road than the Chief Joseph but the views are amazing. Lots of high alpine lakes and views that go on forever. We also found the Beartooth Falls again but this time discovered a trail head that went to the top of the falls. The hike wasn't very long but the payoff was huge, a spectacular view with the water dropping over 100ft down, yes, there were dangling foot shots.
We're off to dinner in a bit, hope to have some pictures up later.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Hillclimbs, sunsets and moonrises

This morning we left Meridian at 7:30 and headed for Driggs, ID. The Northwest Hillclimb Association was running their event in the Tetons this weekend and we were off to spectate on our way to Jackson Hole. We got into Driggs around 1:30 and after a quick stop at the hotel headed in search of the hillclimb route. The main cross street in town heads up to the Alta ski resort which is where the event was taking place. After running up some pretty good twisties we finally found the starting line with a bunch of local traffic waiting to go up. We got in line and just a few minutes later we were up at the resort. We caught the next shuttle down to turn 7 and found a spot on the hill overlooking the corner for pics. We got to see a bunch of run groups come up although we missed some of the more interesting hardware that had run earlier in the day (GT3 and RS4). On our way back from the races we stopped at an overlook and got our first real pics of the Tetons. Tomorrow we'll swap to the other side
Driggs is not exactly a large town so finding a place to eat on a Sunday night can be tricky. Google knows all though and we found the Warbirds Cafe at the local airport and it seemed to have some interesting cuisine for what we thought would be a typical airport cafe. The Cafe turned out to be one of the best restaurants we've dined at in awhile... fried artichokes for an appetizer and Danielle had a buffalo burger and I had pan seared pork tenderloin. Everything, including the fresh made lemonade, was fantastic.
We made it back to the hotel and enjoyed a great sunset from our room and just as we thought we were done taking pictures we saw the moon rising over the Tetons so we had to get some pics of that too :)
Tomorrow we head over Jackson Pass for a full day in the Tetons. Russ should catch up with us sometime tomorrow afternoon too. We're hoping for clear skies and some star trail and moon shots tomorrow night.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Finally another road trip and a new post

We set out today on a week long adventure to test the new coilovers on the grey car. Today we made it as far as Meridian, ID, our normal first stop when heading to the playground around Yellowstone. We were supposed to meet up with Russ but his car wasn't cooperating so hopefully he'll join us in Jackson Hole. We made our way over to the Ram for dinner tonight, fantastic food as usual. Tomorrow we set off for Driggs to watch one of the Northwest Hillclimb Association's events. After that we head to the other side of the Tetons for a night in Moose and then up to Yellowstone, Cody and Red Lodge. We hope to have more pictures and posts along the way :)