Idaho to North Dakota

Holden and I started our drive at 5:30am and had finally stopped about 2.5 hours away, in a small town with tumbleweeds and single coffee shop, staffed by a bored looking teenager who was scrolling TikTok when we walked in. We were the only car in the entire town and most of the buildings were boarded up. It was beautiful early morning light that comes in the summer, promising a hot bluebird day.

We walked back to the car and I went to look for my charger, only realizing then that I had forgotten my backpack in Idaho.

By that point we were already so far in and with so far to go we decided to bail on the backpack and just keep moving. We had coffee and were driving 90mph through Idaho on a small, two lane highway.

We stopped in Idaho Falls about an hour and a half later. Idaho Falls is a tiny college town situated between nowhere and more nowhere, but it’s incredibly charming with a small vibrant downtown. We stopped at Great Harvest for breakfast sandwiches where the teenager behind the counter also offered us thick slices of warm banana bread with a slab of butter on top to go alongside our sandwiches. We of course both said yes. It seemed like everyone in town had stopped there for coffee and a pastry.

Pulling out of that town we started driving deeper into the dry plains of Idaho, an arid desert plateau that we learned houses a number of missile silos and is the home to the US’ first atomic powered town (now defunct).

It’s beautiful. I had this instinct of how expansive the west was, and having driven from Des Moines to Colorado (through the awful stretch that is Nebraska) I’ve seen miles of plains, but this was different. It’s slightly mountainous and feels uninhabited, like you’re the only person for miles (Holden and I often were). We passed in and out of Idaho quickly that morning as the sun rose. Holden slept for the first few hours while I drove past miles of fields with the mountains sloping gently upward on the horizon. We padded out of Idaho by early afternoon.

Wyoming

We had targeted Jackson hole as our first stop in Wyoming. Holden and I were both excited. It sits just outside of Yellowstone National Park, and the jagged Teton Mountains sit imposingly over the town. When we pulled into town we were underwhelmed. Jackson Hole seems to have undergone the shift from old school mountain town into a mountain themed strip mall, with all of the inauthentic t-shirt souvenir stores and obligatory mountain art stores along the mains trip. We spent maybe 20 minutes in town before deciding to continue moving.

Driving out of Jackson Hole was beautiful, the airport sits up against the mountains and watching the airplanes take off silhouetted by the mountains was extremely cool. When we were driving out it looked like all of the really nice houses sit well outside of town, close to the base of the Tetons. We kept driving into the edge of Yellowstone National Park. Of course, coming out of Jackson Hole, there was traffic.

We continued on highway 26 towards Dubois, Wyoming, where I had the worst chili I’ve ever had, in a town that felt hollowed out. We got a gritty cup of jet black coffee at a donut shop (and a donut of course) before pushing through. By this point, we had been driving for maybe 8 hours (since 5:00am) and both Holden and I were getting bored. Two more pushes! First to Casper then to Mount Rushmore if we could make it before the sun set. We played hours and hours of music trivia, where someone holds the phone down with their finger over the start/pause button and we randomly shuffle a music trivia playlist on Spotify. The first person to buzz in (by slamming their hand on the dashboard) gets to call it in. I have to admit, Holden dominated at this game, it wasn’t even close.

As the terrain became dustier and more arid through southern Wyoming we played hours and hours of music trivia, interspersed with trying to listen to East of Eden, the Steinbeck novel, on audiobook. It wasn’t that good for either of us and we mostly ended up shooting the shit.