From a young age, I have been conditioned by TV to associate sights like this

with beer commercials.

Which is all the more confusing to me because nobody I vacationed with in the Grand Tetons likes beer.

I do not know if there are any Less Grand Tetons, or Average Tetons, or Tiny Tetons Which Are More Sensitive and Less Affected by Gravity. These particular Grand Tetons have towered above the Snake River for, oh, a few million years, and they show no signs of going anywhere soon. They're just there, and that's about all you can say about them without sounding like a textbook. They are too steep for anyone but an expert to climb. But it's what happens around them that makes Grand Teton National Park worth several days of paid vacation.

grand teton national park is a giant Christmas tree lot with a lake in the middle, and a 14,000-foot wall o' rocks looming over it all. On the ground, lodge-pole pines grow too thick to penetrate, except where they've been harvested to build ... lodges out of pine poles.

Our first stop on the way in was the Jackson Hole Airport. (Few who live there like to call it "Jackson Hole," whether out of Victorian prudery or for the same reason they wouldn't say "Jackson Dump," if that were the official name.) JAC feels like a cross between Burbank, Midland-Odessa, and any Third World airport, mainly because of its one-storey terminal and absence of jetways. You step off the plane onto a Bluth staircase with mountains as your panoramic backdrop. If I had a starlet on my arm, I'd expect flashbulbs to pop.

Avis cut me a whopper of a deal on a minivan, with my choice of a Toyota, Chrysler, Ford, or Chevy Uplander. Since we would be heading up toward the land of our destination, I chose the Chevrolet. Smooth vehicle it turned out to be, except for a rubber steering wheel that made my palms itch. Squinx liked the three rows of seats and, naturally, chose the farthest one from her chauffeur.

Within minutes of leaving the airport we spotted a coyote. He looked like most coyotes, which is to say, hungry. He trotted alongside us, oblivious, for a few seconds, then descended into the sagebrush on coyote-related business, maybe to retch up a meal for the young'uns. Squinx said nothing in reply to my suggestion how that would be useful next time Dad and Mom go out to dinner without her.

squeeky's parents had already parked and leveled their self-propelled emergency-escape house at Colter Bay, an upstart feature of GTNP, a mere 50 years old and owing exclusively to a dam on the Snake River. The in-laws graciously rented us a cabin just down the hill and supplied us with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All we had to do was surrender the grandkids.

Almost immediately, I encountered Grand Teton mosquitoes, a breed unto themselves. Big enough to show up on Boise radar, they have no tact. Over the years I have swatted many and been stung by none. You can hear them coming, and they kamikaze straight into you, landing with all the subtlety of a student helicopter pilot. Then they cling and clamber like hungry puppies, groping for a capillary from which to suckle. I guess they hope you're so distracted by the Teton scenery that you don't notice their clumsiness. If so, they have some evolving to do.

Their existence, however, puts the lie to an old Texas saw about how we need a cold winter to freeze off the previous summer's mosquito larvae. The Tetons get upwards of six feet of snow each winter. Once it melts, the mosquitoes just shake off the moisture and resume their hunt. They do not suffer from a freeze. Ergo, the summertime Texas mosquito crop must have nothing to do with the previous winter.

cabins at colter bay come in single-family or duplex variety. We stayed in one of the latter, and the Slam Family checked in next door about 11 p.m. I lay awake trying to imagine why it took eight trips to the minivan—battering cabin and car doors both ways—but came up short. Then, best I could tell from the clatter, the whole bunch raced into the closet to hurriedly assemble large fishing rods, each wearing someone else's eyeglasses.

The next night I got to meet them about 8:30, just as we were trying to get the kids to sleep, when the unmistakable sounds of a party penetrated the wall. As I approached the door I got a glimpse of the action through a window: About a dozen teens and young adults arranged in the uncomfortable way people sit and stand in a hotel room not designed for parties, where even sitting upright on a bed feels strange alongside a) someone you are not intimate with, or b) someone you are intimate with, but at the moment happen to be in a room with lots of other people. No drinks or smokes in evidence, though, so perhaps this was a young Christian group and I could appeal to their better nature.

My knocking prompted a loud "Nobody's home!" Ha, ha. Then the alpha male, about 18, opened the door and stood to one side. He had that slightly contemptuous expression common to the Gen Eleven products of institutional schools, and reminded me instantly of that pop tune refrain, "So why don't you kill me?"

I put on my best aw-shucks grin, let them all know I was on the other side of the thin wall behind them, and asked if they planned to wrap things up soon.

Gen Eleven: "No."

So I was not dealing with Christians.

I felt the back of my neck heat up as it does just before I say something sharp and regrettable, but I channelled it, salesman-style, into a rational reply.

"Okay. I'll talk to the management then," and I turned to leave. A female voice piped up from behind Eleven.

"We'll hold it down!" she pleaded, but I kept walking. I had hewn a division among them with the girls on the correct side, and even if it didn't shut them up, my next move would be to let the authorities take over.

Blessedly, they piped down immediately. I think I heard the sound of scattered retaliation about 11:30, but I was too far gone to care.

I do have one sleep-related suggestion for Colter Bay's management, and for motel operators all over the country: Please segregate your parking lot into People Who Can't Exit Their Car Without Settting Off Their Alarm, and People Who Can. Make the former park underground. Thank you.

the goal of every gtnp visitor seems to be to walk up to large, wild animals and feed them by hand. At least that's what I get from all the official messages to the contrary.

"Bear aware" is the trope these days, and signs everywher warn not to offer or leave food or garbage out anywhere in the park. I hear the same message every time I visit, but I guess there are always enough first-timers to make it worth repeating. Also, some among the visitors seem to believe that if they can see live animals, they should touch them, too. Such is the long-term impression left with us by petting zoos. So a couple of guests get mauled each year.

What might be more useful is a billboard at the entrance, like those "workplace accident" count-up signs, that reads, "_ bears euthanized due to visitor stupidity."

Why not? I've been talked-down-to worse at other government facilities.

previously unbeknownst to me, all summer long there is a steady stream of foreigners crossing the U.S. in rented RVs. They fly in to a U.S. coastal city and sign a weeks-long arrangement to return the vehicle on the opposite coast, stopping wherever they like along the way. The Tetons get their share, based on a quick survey of the RV parking area. (Private owners rarely stencil toll-free numbers on their motorhomes.)

Not many of the foreigners cook onboard, by my observation, which is understandable given the logistics of supplying a mobile kitchen. At the Colter Bay restaurant I'm always mildly amused watching them puzzle over the buffet breakfast. It's not that bacon is new to them; it's what we've made of it that seems to befuddle.

Culture shock works both ways, however. Waiting outside the visitor center, I watched a French family of four stop to stretch their legs and have a look around. One of the girls had the kind of cinematic face that took me back to college watching one of those interminable '80s Euro films where the actors seem to do little other than practice looking pensively away from each other. I gauged her about 13, but with a Brooke Shields face that unnerves males of any age. She sat on a bench, opened her purse, and lit a cigarette.

* * *

I continue to entertain the belief that I can pick out a non-American by dress and manner, without ever hearing him speak.

It's an especially challenging science because Americans come in the same ethnicities and colors as the rest of the world. But you don't have to wear lederhosen to stand out as a Bavarian; nor does a Japanese woman need hair sticks and a kimono to suggest she's been on U.S. soil less than a week.

One common trait among foreigners is their appearance of mild perplexity. I probably show it myself when traveling overseas. People maintain a cognitive half-step back from the strange world they're encountering every minute, where the colors, signs, and arrangements differ from what they've always known. They move at a slightly slower pace through the motions of paying a tab, using the washroom, even opening a door—especially where it's complicated by our ADA measures.

Also, the features of foreign nationals usually appear sharper to me. The Swedes definitely look Swedish: nowhere along the family tree did an Irishman's genes taint that blond hair. Past that level of analysis, however, I can't distinguish an Icelander from a Norwegian, nor do I care to. It's the challenge of discerning who's new to the landscape that entertains me.

Occasionally, when I meet someone working here who's obviously fresh off the boat, I offer a welcome. I like that we're a melting pot, and I want them to know that. I always get a bright smile in return. It must be constantly disorienting for them, getting used to a new country and people. The new person has a choice of courageously embracing the new, or retreating to the familiar. I want to encourage the embracing.

in my informal study of the overnight parking camp, I found that no two RVs are alike. The latest invention is the trailer that sidles up next to the utility hookups, then explodes in all directions, adding multiple new living spaces with walk-in closets, and probably a basement and drawing room. I wonder if the pressure changes in there while it's happening. Wildlife in nearby trees seems to have learned to get out of the way when one of these pulls into a parking spot.

Status plays a big part in such displays. The masculine gurgle of an F350 Power Stroke diesel turns everyone's head as a fifth-wheel-equipped crew-cab rumbles into camp and detaches from the living space behind it. Others go Greyhound, but way upscale. This chrome-plated monstrosity spend Wednesday night next to us

and they never hooked up their sewer pipe. I guess they just don't poo.

my in-laws have visited the tetons at least once a summer for nearly 30 years. They get around just fine on foot, but as everyone has learned, if you want to spot animals, the most creatures-per-hour ratio is found wandering the park's roadways in your own car.

Unfortunately they do this at 45 mph with me in the back seat straining to make out every passing brown spot. I suspect, however, they are not actually looking for animals, but for the traffic jams that form every time someone else spots one.

First, someone sees a moose or bear doing whatever it needs to be doing within eyeshot of the highway. The motorist stops, gets out, and starts taking pictures.

Next, others begin parking along both sides of the road. A crowd forms, and inevitably the front starts edging closer and closer to the animal who, for his part, begins to look as if he'd rather be somewhere else. Or eat somebody.

Then a park ranger shows up. Between trying to keep gawkers from offering Funyuns to the beast, and preventing others from leaping out of their vehicles into traffic screaming "A beah, a beah! Get my pitcha with the beah!" and still others from stopping their car dead on a blind curve, rangers have more stupidity to manage than the bouncers at a teen metal concert.

Here is what we saw amid the madness.

A solitary male moose wading.

And a herd of elk crossing a stream just before sunset.

I was the first to spot that group, staring out the back window of the van as we drove. Squinx clambered up into her grandfather's lap to see. I could've watched them all cross until dark.

if you really want the up-close-and-personal experience with wildlife, you must take a late evening or crack o' dawn hike. Unfortunately the grandparents don't rise early enough for us to ditch the minors, and bedtime demands we retire together by 8:30. Nonetheless, in my morning coffee runs down to the restaurant, I usually passed a deer. We'd nod at each other, then resume our foraging.

But daytime hikes are more popular. Little Roo is the right size for backpacking—literally. We believed that Squinx, at age five, could manage a light hike, and we were correct. She scaled a half-mile to Hidden Falls without protest, even venturing out onto a rock overhanging the fast-flowing water once I'd showed her it wasn't dangerous.

It's images like the one below that flash me forward to when she's a teen, and stop my heart.

Rittenhouse, meanwhile, was leery that this slope of rocks might give way at any moment.

we also had birthdays to celebrate: two, to be exact, Squinx and Little Roo.

Until I began unpackaging children's toys, I had no idea so many Chinese workers were left-handed. They twist the ties the wrong way. You've heard of the "unboxing" fetish videos? More like horror movies, or those nightmares where you're running from a monster through yards of oatmeal.

After freeing Barbie from her paperboard-and-cellophane prison, it was with some consternation that I realized she has graduated to hussy. Here's how she dresses to make food at her "diner."

Unless I'm mistaken, that's what they wear at those "gentlemen's clubs" that proffer a "free" lunch.

the day i chose to buy dinner, the bottom fell out. Because rain stops everyone from cooking outdoors, the campground's restaurant filled up early. A 30-minute wait and no bar.

It was among such crowds that I pioneered a technique for taking notes without a) scribbling in a notebook, or b) speaking into my MP3 recorder, which attracts uncomfortable stares and silent speculation as to whether the authorities should be summoned to deal with this weirdo talking into a matchbox.

Now I just hold the MP3 over the keypad of my clamshell phone. They're about the same size, and talking on a phone in public arouses absolutely no suspicion. In fact, if I were plotting some sort of criminal act, I could even do so in the lobby of a detectives' convention with a cell phone clamped to my face, and no one would recall what I looked like.

on attempting our return to dallas on standby, we were gratified when God aligned the stars and Brand X Airways gave us seats together on the day's only nonstop. (Alternative route: to Chicago O'Hare for a two-hour layover, redeemed only by the likelihood we'd fly the second leg on a ginormous 777.) While we killed an hour at JAC, Vice President Cheney's helicopter brigade entertained us, flying seemingly random patterns from a pad just off the runway over to the passenger terminal, then back again. Near the pad, a line of conspicuously inconspicuous Chrysler minivans with very dark windows fooled no one: secret service may as well have been painted on a billboard next to them, with a flashing arrow.

What the Marines were trying to accomplish with their aerial ballet, I was unable to guess. By the time our flight began boarding, however, they had departed with no sign of the Veep. Possibly he'd needed to run from his ranch down to the hardware store, or something, then found what he needed out in the garage.

Upon arrival, we felt that familiar freshness of mind that helps one overlook trivia like traffic jams, afternoon heat, and an unmowed lawn. I tried to keep some perspective, but I can't help thinking someday we've got to escape the suburbs and go live where there's some land and some water.

Until then, moments like this will just have to do.

Intentionally presented in Cinemascope closing-credits squeeze, because this is how the story ends.

How was your summer vacation?

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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