I groaned when my alarm went off far too early at the Laramie Hampton Inn. Far from a restful night, I had been unable to sleep from pre-proposal nerves for a large chunk of the night. There was a half hour spent in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the tub and waiting to vomit before I finally settled my stomach down. There was the constant tossing and turning while Elizabeth slept like a blissfully unaware rock beside me. And there was the tab on my phone opened to a google query: “what knee do you go down on to propose?”
No wonder, then, if I felt and looked a little like hell when I woke up far too early on August 13. The pre-trip stress and coordination had kept this part on the backburner, but now that everything was falling into place, I had to admit it to myself: I had proposal jitters. Even if I hadn’t admitted it to myself, the fact that I only had half a waffle for breakfast from the Laramie Hampton Inn told the whole story.
I stepped outside to calm myself down. There was a brilliant sunrise coming in off of the Laramie Range.
I paced the parking lot, and felt for the ring box which was conveniently tucked inside my puffy vest (side note: it felt good to wear a puffy vest on August 13 after a summer of Norman heat. It wasn’t *cold* in Laramie, but it wasn’t hot!). Suddenly, I realized that I had not at all practiced what I was going to say. That seemed bad? So I did the only logical thing a person could do: I walked over behind the dumpster for some privacy, and I pulled the box out of my vest pocket, and I practiced. After the second or third time, I realized that this was just like preparing for a speech back in high school or college – I was going to pass the test, I just felt nervous about looking stupid along the way!
Back inside, Pam and Elizabeth were ready to go. The schedule was tight if we wanted to make it to Inspiration Point by 4:00, but incredibly, the 2 of them were *ahead* of the itinerary that called for us to be out of Laramie before 8:00. I had conveniently located a coffee shop just down the road from our Hampton Inn – even more convenient for me, it was Coal Creek Coffee, the same shop I had visited while hungover as shit back in February 2020. We stopped for gas quickly at a Sinclair, and mindful of our photographer Janelle’s instructions to me to send a picture of what we were wearing so she’d know what to look for when we got to Inspiration Point, I snapped a shot:
You will NEVER see Elizabeth that happy at 7:04 a.m. again as long as you live.
Soon we were on I-80, making good time at 80+ mph across the broad Laramie Valley toward the wide expanse of the Medicine Bow Mountains. Elizabeth drove for a pretty short amount of time before I had to go to the bathroom, which is an “easier said than done” kind of thing in the middle of the Wyoming hinterlands. Fortunately, we found a rest stop along I-80 where I could put my contacts in and go to the bathroom. It was a truly beautiful morning in the mountains, especially here on the north side of the Wind River Range. It was almost enough to make me forget about the massive knot in my stomach. Almost. That whole “knot in my stomach” thing came flying back as I waited for Elizabeth and Pam while looking at the rest stop’s informational board showing all the state parks in Wyoming.
After getting around Elk Mountain, I-80 descended into deserty, rocky, mountainy terrain. I really wanted to see more of it, but one does have to try to keep an eye on the road. I honestly could go on and on about the different terrain types of southern and central Wyoming, but this post would be 3,000 words if I did. I’m very glad that I have timelapses from this stretch. That’s a place I’d like to visit again.
We got off of the interstate for good in Rawlins onto 287. This stretch went through some of the most open desert I’ve ever seen; truly, it was incredible to drive. We crossed back and forth across the continental divide several times before moving into the Sweetwater River Valley. Another wave of nerves hit me around here, and we pulled off at the conveniently located Sweetwater Station rest stop along 287. I went inside the cute, rustic, historically located rest stop along the old wagon route and took a pee. Janelle had texted me to make sure we knew how to find each other when we were at Inspiration Point, so I replied. Then I washed my hands, and then I had to pee again. And again. And finally, with a true “cross country race coming up that day” pit in my gut, I headed back out to the car, where this time Elizabeth and Pam were waiting for me.
You can understand from this frame of mind that I was annoyed when I couldn’t get navigation to pull up and Elizabeth yelled at me for not having the route memorized. There’s always a little bit of bickering when two people navigate to a final destination, but I couldn’t help but note with bemusement that this bickering was occurring on what at least one of us knew was our engagement day.
Elizabeth drove a long way to our lunch stop in Dubois. During this stretch, the mountain-y desert slowly gave way to the prominent peaks of the Wind River Mountains and the Wind River canyon itself. We drove through little towns and past hillside ranches. The sounds of the latter years of the Nolan and Elizabeth playlist guided us along our way through the naturally service-deficient part of the state. Pam was unusually quiet in the backseat – obviously, she knew what was happening and evidently, she was feeling the moment as much as me.
Once we got to Dubois, my carefully crafted driving itinerary started to break down for the first time all trip. I had planned on us stopping at the Village Cafe in town to get lunch, but obviously our schedule had been reshuffled so many times in the last few days that we had switched lunch towns and switched back. When we got into Dubois, though, it was clear that the Village Cafe was packed. So, in fact, was a lot of the town. Apparently being the nearest town to the east entrance of Grand Teton National Park entitles you to heavy traffic during peak season, even if you’re still an hour from Moran Junction. We turned around on the main street of the charming little town and tried to find parking so we could plot our next move. Upon pulling into a parking area, we found a not-too-crowded looking restaurant with outdoor dining available – the Lone Burrito. A charming little creek (Google Maps tells me it is Horse Creek, 1/10 name) bubbled right through the backyard of the premises, where picnic tables were set up for patrons. The Lone Burrito was one of the more hidden-gem-type meals we had in the entire trip. My burrito was both tasty and massive, which are both qualities one looks for in a burrito.
Still, I struggled to enjoy the burrito through my nerves. My pique was furthered by the lady in front of me in line for the lone bathroom inside the restaurant. She had kids with her, and waited for what must have been at least five minutes before she bothered to knock on the bathroom door. It was naturally empty. My eyes rolled into the back of my head. When it was my turn, I went to the bathroom, pulled the ring out of my vest pocket to practice getting on a knee and opening the ring box, went through the words in my mind, went to the bathroom again, washed my hands, and rejoined Elizabeth and Pam. Elizabeth noted later that I was quite subdued through the latter half of lunch, picking at my burrito and staring out toward the creek instead of engaging in conversation.
Fortunately, this was the most nervous I ever reached. The last part of the drive to Grand Teton was too dang geographically exciting for me to stay mopey. I drove northwest out of Dubois on US-26 with the Wind River Mountains looming snowy on our left and the scenic Wind River valley laid out before us. The river valley narrowed further and further as we headed uphill until finally we were up in the Owl Creek Range. I put a lot of work into Elizabeth’s Subaru pushing up through the pass 26 passed through, then put a lot of work into Elizabeth’s brakes on the other side. We kept commenting to try and figure out where the Tetons were. Was it the big, stony peak in front of us? What about the ridgeline in the distance? The ever-persistent smoke made this a difficult guessing game. I kept my eyes strained to the west. Wait – was that it? A faint smudge in the distance. A few minutes passed by, and faint and hazy in the not-as-far-as-you-would-wish distance, it became unmistakable: those were the Tetons. Elizabeth was excited times ten; I was unimpressed. If this was the view we had? Bleh. This whole trip could be marred by that kind of smoke. Perhaps it was pre-proposal nerves (it definitely was), but I was going to need some convincing. We drove westward into a big, comparatively broad valley. There were still mountains close by to our north, but before I’d realized it, we were in Jackson Hole. I continued to press on, wanting to make it to our rendezvous point, and unwittingly blew right past a sign that read “Grand Teton National Park”. We were here.
