SIDETRACKED!

A journey is a great metaphor for life. Sometimes you follow the map and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes life keeps to the plans you make and sometimes – well sometimes you get sidetracked. I’m finding that I get sidetracked in Yellowstone a lot.

My life is not exactly a well-designed and executed plan but rather a messy soap opera in which I star as the main character.  My week began just peachy. My friend Suzie and her two Adorables came for a visit. I’m sort of the Adorables’ Auntie being as Suzie doesn’t have a sister. Helga and Sid (not their real names – they are just littlies and their adoption is not yet finalized) but particularly Sid spent some time identifying scat which he got scarily good at for a 6-year-old. Probably because I sent him a book on scat called “Who Pooped in the Park”. There was an abundance of research material for him in the Park. Pretty much every step we took was applied to researching the sticky brown stuff clinging to our feet.

After they left, I made a plan to get my chores done so I could spend the weekend hiking at least one more high-elevation trail to get ready for my Grand Teton 5-day backpack.  I’m writing this in an inexpensive Idaho Falls Idaho motel that seems alright despite its very low price and relatively low ratings on Trip Advisor. You see, I got sidetracked.

On Wednesday I got a text from my bank. “If you purchased $1000 of computer equipment from a store in Johannesburg South Africa, press 1. If not, press 2.” Since I had not been drinking the night before and I clearly remembered being in the Park, I pressed 2. Immediately, another text announced “A representative of (my bank) will be calling you within the next twenty minutes. An attempt to use your card for a fraudulent purchase has occurred.” I’d say so since I’m pretty sure I have not yet mastered being in two places at once.

The next two days really did convince me that my bank has probably one of the best credit and consumer fraud departments in the world of banking. Someone had been able to gather enough information about me to pass through their first level of security and actually transfer money from my savings to my checking account apparently intending to set it up for a nice little spending spree. And then they went shopping.  The first transaction, however, did not meet the scrutiny applied by my bank. Freeze. They'd let money in but no money out.

After many discussions with various bank personnel, I decided to ‘restrict’ my accounts which meant nothing could happen in those accounts until I appear at the nearest bank branch with two pieces of ID. We also decided that while I was taking the trouble to do that I might as well close the suspected accounts and open brand new ones.

Ok, here’s the sidetracked part. Remember the weekend hiking plans? My nearest branch is over 100 miles away in Idaho Falls, Idaho. So hiking stepped aside for a ROAD TRIP! Road Trips are my second favorite pastime so whenever I am faced with situations that require me to drive many miles, I am absolutely driven (pun intended) to make it a Road Trip (Road Trips in our family are always capitalized).

Haas Road Trip Rule #1 - never go over the same road twice if you can find another way – no matter how treacherous. I’ve been to and through Idaho Falls many times over the last several years because it is on the way to Missoula where my son attended college. I have exercised Rule #1 on more than one occasion so the only new road I could find went west from Jackson over Teton Pass. Hmmmm….Pass. I like the sound of that.

Jackson is not exactly easy to get to from Mammoth. Mapquest says it is 3 hours 18 minutes but acknowledges it could take longer (“depending on traffic”). If you figure in RVs, bear and bison backups and those special photos you just have to stop and take even though you have at least a hundred from that exact same spot but not exactly with that same light it will take longer, I guarantee. So I left Mammoth before 4:30pm and didn’t get to Jackson until nearly 9.

The sun was setting over the Tetons. Superb sunset but driving through the Caribou-Targhee National Forest is a little spooky at dusk.  In the first place, I was keenly aware that at any time a smaller version of Bigfoot could come running across the road in front of my truck. In the second place, have you ever been in a heavily forested place with really steep sides resulting in 10% grades that makes you feel you are in a very verdant cow chute? Plus I could see and smell campfire smoke but couldn’t see any campers. (Cue in song from Deliverance.)

The road up to the Pass winds up and up and up past Mount Glory as roads to Passes usually do. Then it winds even further back down. Jackson is at a higher elevation than Victor, the ranching town on the other side of the Pass that tries to compete for tourists. After leaving Victor, which is cute in an always the bridesmaid kind of way, you have the opportunity to really get spooky going up and over another forested pass past Rocky Peak and Stouts Mountain, on a road that is not nearly as well developed (as in the signs for campgrounds look like signs Chuckie might have made to lure you in) as the way more traveled Teton Pass road. Ok, I agree that’s extreme. I like my delightful, day lit forests please when I am driving all by myself through unfamiliar territory. (You ask, “Why don’t you take the safe, more heavily traveled way around?” I say “Gosh that never occurred to me.”)

The road over the second range of mountains does not encourage one to think that very many people use the road. It is not well-maintained. No problem, really. YiHa likes untamed roads. But I keep thinking how the chance of cell service is zilch and I may have to make acquaintance with those people who undoubtedly are down there starting those campfires. Good thing I believe in the essential goodness of people – and good locks on my truck.

To be fair, every time you get out of the forest, the terrain opens out into those incredibly beautiful Idaho valleys with productive fields and ranchland stretching over hills that have all the promise of a pregnant woman’s belly. Stunning. I think. I’m pretty sure. It was pretty dark by then.

So sidetracked as I am, I intend to make a weekend of it. (Here, I’ll help you - the subject of this post is getting sidetracked.)  I will meet with my new banker (interesting to have a ‘home bank’ in Idaho, a state I have never lived in) in the morning. The bank is right across from an honest to goodness air-conditioned Mall with a Dillards AND a Macys. Helga (remember the Adorables?) told me that I have holes in the butt of hiking trousers I brought with me to Yellowstone thinking they could double as work trousers. Yeah, well, you try scooting down rocky bits on the trails without making holes in YOUR pants. I need some new pants I can wear to work without giving my coworkers heart attacks. How convenient the bank is right across from a real mall where I just might be able to also get some real coffee instead of Nescafe (I’m not kidding – that’s what they serve in the Employee Dining Room.)

Then on to more roads never taken. I’ve decided, time allowing, I’ll visit Ennis – just because I kind of like its name. Ennis is in Montana sort of on the way to Bozeman where I’m supposed to meet up with my nephew and niece mid-afternoon. It’s on a road I’ve never taken so it meets Road Trip Rule #1.  Thank god my nephew likes his microbrews. I’ll be ready for one by then and Boze has some really good microbreweries.

The long and the short of it? Getting sidetracked doesn’t have to mean getting stopped.  It just means your plans have to change so you might as well make the best of it. And really, don’t the writers of soaps always try to throw a curve ball into every episode?