Alta, Wyoming - the other side of the Tetons!

I hesitated to write anything after Ben's & Sierra's epic adventure but thought I'd tell everyone about our trip thus far.

We are currently renting a vacation home in Alta, Wyoming, on the other side of the Tetons. You might ask yourself 'Why?' and it would be a good question. Basically we are waiting for Becca, who is doing the U-16 Regional ski camp in Jackson. Rachel and I could not afford to stay for a week in Jackson so we found a lovely spot right over the top of the pass. As soon as Becca is finished we will drive to Banff, Alberta and bicycle tour the Icefields Parkway to Jasper! 

This is the view from our back porch!

The view from our back porch in Alta, Wyoming.

Our plan was to find a place with internet so Rachel could finish the grades for her class and I could work on getting her class ready for the fall semester. This was a lovely plan but we soon found that the internet at the rental was basically broken! Everything we have to do needs internet! Rachel is doing online office hours and my class is actually an online class so....Internet had to be found.

The closest internet we could find was actually in Driggs, 6 miles down the road. We are without a car, Becca has Clifford at the U-16 camp, but we have both our road bikes and our touring bikes so we hopped on the bikes, put our computers in the touring trailers and headed for Driggs on Sunday afternoon, Rachel had office hours at 4pm. It turns out that all the places with internet were closed for the night but we found someone at the Community/Art Museam/Senior Center/City Offices and asked where we might find a place to get online. She said Driggs has free city internet! Yay! We sat outside the building, on the grass for 2 hours and were able to work before riding back to our house and watching a lovely sunset on The Grand!

The next morning we had a fantastic ride from our house to up Grand Targhee Ski Resort. I mean UP! To give you an idea of the grade it was 9 miles and took us 1:15! The downhill was great fun and the entire ride was wonderful and beautiful with very little traffic.

The view on the bike ride!

Rachel had two office hours today so after breakfast we once again rode down to Driggs for internet. Behind the Multipurpose building with free internet we found a lovely picnic table and immediately commandeered it. It was wonderful and perfect but soon the sun and the 87F heat began to work it's way up the table and we started getting nervous, what to do....

Our lovely picnic table!

We were about to go in search of somewhere in air conditioning AND internet when an older man from the senior center told us that together we had more computing power than Neil Armstrong on the Moon Landing and that we should come inside because of holes in the ozone in this area and besides lunch was about to be served in the Senior Center. It's difficult to resist such charm, as well as air conditioning, power, internet and lunch, so we joined a lovely group in the Senior Center for wonderful and interesting conversation, minestrone soup, homemade bread and salad. After which we settled down to work until they didn't kick us out. After 2 hours of working the woman in charge said she was locking us in and we could stay as long as we wanted, just make sure the doors are closed when we leave! Seriously rocking people here!

We worked until 5 and then had a lovely dinner of some of the best Thai ever and then came back to our trusty picnic table for Rachel's 7:30-8:30 office hours. After they are finished we'll ride our 6 miles back to the house and sleep to be ready for more adventures tomorrow!!!