Where’s Nico?

This week, I’m going with the last song on the last album the Talking Heads ever recorded – “Cool Water” from their swan song, Naked. “But Ken – why ‘Cool Water’?” you may be asking. Well… as David Byrne observed in the Heads hit “Once in a Lifetime”, “there is water at the bottom of the ocean” (one of the least insightful lyrics I’ve ever heard), and we nearly had a chance to prove that statement out.

Before I get to where Nico is or even how the trip is going, I wanted to go back to something that Kristen and I noticed before we took off on this big adventure with Nico that I thought was worth mentioning this week.

This spring, when Kristen was talking to people about our upcoming trip, they would tell her, “That sounds amazing! Have a great time!” On the other hand, when I told people about the trip, they would say, “That sounds amazing! Have a great time! Be safe…“

It kind of changed the way I realized people viewed me. I always figured people looked at me and thought I was a modern day Clark Gable.

But it turns out I was wrong… they were thinking of a different Clark G. – Clark Griswold.

Did you ever notice how in basically every Vacation movie, every other scene involves someone saying some version of “You sure about this, Clark?” That was kind of the 80’s version of finishing your well wishes with “Be safe…”. Well, let me reveal where Nico is and tell you a bit about my latest of many, many Clark Griswold moments. At this moment, Nico is in…

Bridger-Teton National Forest!

Yup, we’ve left the desert behind and are up on the Wyoming/Idaho border letting Nico’s inner mountain dog shine through. We found a beautiful lake to boondock at – Palisades Reservoir. As we set up camp, here was our front yard:

The campsite was pretty idyllic for the first couple days. There were a few other campers, but they had all set up a bit farther back from the lake so we had the area to ourselves. It didn’t really occur to me to wonder why the other campers had chosen to set up a bit farther back.

Then we came home from a hike and noticed our thirty foot wide front yard had shrunk to about ten feet.

A rational man would have seen this warning from nature and moved his trailer to higher ground. Clark Griswold is not a rational man. I decided it sounded like a good idea to sleep on it for the night and worry about it tomorrow. This was our view from our front door in the morning (notice we had our outdoor rug folded in half to keep it dry):

Every once in a while, you make a stupid decision, but end up escaping any consequences. That was how this played out. We got very lucky – we moved to higher ground less than a football field away. By the evening, the water had risen well past where we had previously been parked. And we spent the next day trying to figure out why in the heck we didn’t move when we noticed the reservoir growing towards us the afternoon before.

I did feel sorry for the other campers who had already staked out higher ground – our trailer had to be the best entertainment they’ve seen in a while, and they must have been disappointed that we were able to drive out of the area instead of getting pulled out by a tugboat.

Side note: Kristen did ask me to mention that it had occurred to her to research the water level of the reservoir when we first arrived and it was already at the highest level on record, so she didn’t expect that it would come out much further. That had not occurred to me to check.

Anyway, enough about me almost sinking our trailer at the bottom of a reservoir! Let me tell you a bit about the area we are in. This area is a meeting point for a series of national forests – not only is there Bridger-Teton, there’s also Targhee, Caribou, and Cache National Forests in the immediate area, and we are just on the other side of the Tetons from Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

We are also just a couple miles from the Snake River. To people my age, that river may sound familiar for a particular reason: Evel Knievel!

For those who are too young to know, Evel Knievel was world famous because he’d jump things with his motorcycle. This was pre-TikTok, so these stunts would actually be televised live! He started with jumping school buses and things like that, but in the early 70’s he decided to jump Snake River Canyon. Basically every kid I knew had either an Evel Knievel lunch box or, and I had this little pride and joy myself, the Evel Knievel motorcycle jump doll!

Anyway, to my six year old mind, the Snake River must be like a hundred miles across. In reality, at least where we were near it, it was maybe about forty feet. In no way does this diminish my Evel Knievel fanboy ways, but well… it’s not what I expected.

Well look at me – I’m way off topic once again!

Back to this week in Nico… There are some gorgeous hikes around here, and Nico absolutely loves scampering up the rocks. Even though I’m writing this on the last day of May, most the trails we have done still have some snow cover – Nico’s done a great job of scampering over that too. We saw osprey and herons and plenty of other large birds, six snakes (all on the same trail, along Palisades Creek), mule deer, elk, and some scat and prints that we presume were from mountain lions and bears. We unfortunately missed seeing a moose by about fifteen minutes according to other hikers around Palisades Lake. We saw tons of beautiful wildflowers, and as I mentioned, no shortage of snow. We even got hailed on a couple of times as we hiked the Swift Creek trail. I’ve already gone on pretty long here, but I’d love to share some pics from those adventures:

Anyway, despite my Griswoldness, it was another in a long line of wonderful weeks. Looking forward to the next adventures!

– Ken 5/31/2024