Jackson Hole & Lake Tahoe
February 18th thru
March 6th, 2006
For our big snowboarding trip this year we wanted to go to two places: Jackson Hole, WY, and Squaw Valley, CA. We'd driven to Jackson Hole in the past, and it was fun, so we decided to drive the whole trip. 7 nights in Jackson Hole, 8 nights in Squaw Valley. In order to break up the drive a bit, and to do some sight seeing in northern Nevada (yes, you read that right) we decided to spend one night in Elko, NV, between Jackson and Squaw.
We made a video montage of the entire trip: BigTrip2006.wmv (13.1mb)
Helen made a video of images from Belmont Mill: BelmontMill.wmv (7.2mb)
Click on the links below for pictures, videos, and details of our time at each area.
Driving from Seattle to Jackson Hole (2/18)
Jackson Hole (2/19 - 2/23)
Grand Targhee (2/24)
Driving from Jackson Hole to Elko (2/25)
Elko Snobowl (2/25)
Cool stuff in Nevada (Belmont Mill, "Rally Cross", Petroglyphs) (2/26)
Driving from Elko to Squaw Valley (2/26)
Squaw Valley (2/26 - 3/5)
Kirkwood (2/28)
Alpine Meadows (3/4)
Why Drive?
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Why drive 2,500 miles to go snowboarding across the West? Why not?! It's way better than flying. You can take as much stuff as you can fit in your car, including multiple boards, tons of camera equipment, two laptops, tons of good food, a whole kit of tuning tools, and even a feather comforter. There are way fewer hassles than flying, and there are fewer rubber gloves involved. The scenery is beautiful. And, well, it makes a pretty circle on the map.
We used Streets & Trips 2005 to plan the trip, and using all the defaults it's surprisingly accurate. We did within 10mph of the speed limit the entire way, and we hit all of the milestones Streets & Trips specified within 15min. Stats for the trip:
| Seattle to Jackson Hole | 867 miles, 13 hours |
| Jackson Hole to Elko | 415 miles, 7 hours |
| Elko to Squaw Valley (with mill trip) | 483 miles, 9.5 hours |
| Squaw Valley to Seattle | 815 miles, 12 hours |
Stats from the trip
| Project total miles | 2578 |
| Actual total miles | 3130 |
| Total gas | $345.08 |
| Average cost of gas | $2.41/gal |
| Max cost of gas | $2.699/gal at the Shell in Truckee, CA |
| Min cost of gas | $2.169/gal at the Costco in Issaquah, WA |
| Average MPG | 23.48 |
| Max MPG | 26.71 from Truckee, down I80, and up part of I5 |
| Min MPG | 19.05 from Issaquah out to northern Idaho |