Moose Creek Ranch..Victor,Idaho

Beautiful Moose Creek Ranch

It's June 9th, 2012, and we pulled out of Island Park for the slide down the backside of The Tetons towards the Jackson (Hole), Wyoming area. We drove past The Harriman State Park and beautiful Upper and Lower Mesa Falls, and then rolled further south until we came to the village of Driggs, Idaho. The first thing we noticed in Driggs was the number of cool looking restaurants and shops on the main drag. For a place with an official population of around 1700 it didn't make sense at first glance. As we continued on about ten minutes down the road, we came into Victor, another small village of about 1900 people, again with a bunch of neat looking eating places, shops, and even a little movie theater. Just past town, and a turn to the left, we followed a gravel road about a mile off the highway and came to what was going to end up our new home for over a month, The Moose Creek Ranch http://www.moosecreekranch.com/ . This sprawling property, tucked into it's own valley, where the Moose Creek runs right through...and we mean RUNS, feels about as far off the map as one might care to be, yet is only a few miles into town. There is a large lodge house surrounded by small buildings with individual apartment-like rooms which include kitchens. There are several larger houses, too, for family gatherings, big tents for "camping" right on the creek (they all have bedding with fine linens and wood fireplaces), a dressed up barn for weddings and events, lots of horses and a stable, and three ideal parking spots for RV's. Up the road is the Moose Creek Trail head, an area wide destination for hiking and horse back riding. We could not pick up any TV, so when we did want to see something we used our Roku Players (not very often) to keep up with the outside world. This place is really a little slice of heaven, one of those few places we've been so far that we were reluctant to leave. 

From the left Mary Ann,Marty,Craig,& Linda @
The Knotty Pine in Victor

In fact, our new RV buddies, Craig and Linda and their dogperson, ZUNI (we are Uncle Marty and Aunt Mary Ann to this amazingly smart animal), who we got to know during our extended summer stay last year in Santa Fe, had been hearing such positive reviews from us about this place, they decided to head on over ( a short 1500+ mile drive from their home in Michigan!!!). They spent a week with us and were not disappointed either. 

Together, we visited The Grand Targhee Ski Resort http://www.grandtarghee.com/, drove over the pass the 18 miles to Jackson Hole, hit as many eateries and breweries as possible, and just relaxed at the lodge. There are so many good eating places, we didn't have time to cover them ourselves in over a month! One reason was our constant return trips to The Brakeman http://www.brakemangrill.com/ for their amazing burgers (see picture below for a look at three of owner, Joe's, works of hamburger art!). Mary Ann (who hardly ever eats any fried food at all) couldn't keep her hands off the fries either. They were as close to perfect as fries get, but after all, where would you expect to get great potatoes....but in Idaho. Any food critic who doesn't include this place in their top 10 burger list in the U.S. is ignorant of it or has no taste buds!

In fact, while hanging out at Wildlife Brewing for a pizza and a beer http://wildlifebrewing.com/, another couple we met from the Houston area, David and Karen, asked about food in Victor. We sent them to The Brakeman, and they wrote about it in their blog http://wecouldlivehere.blog.com/ . Other mentionable places we hit in the area are Pendl's Bakery https://www.pendlspastries.com/index.php, Forage http://www.forageandlounge.com/forage.lounge/home.html, and Teton Thai http://tetonthai.com/driggs_home.html ...all in Driggs. We also bought grass fed Idaho beef directly from the source at TWR Ranch there. In Victor, besides The Brakeman, there's The Knotty Pine for BBQ http://knottypinesupperclub.com/Knotty_Pine_Supper_Club/Music.html, Scratch for a great home brined corned beef Reuben, and don't miss the old fashioned soda fountain in The Emporium for a real cherry phosphate with vanilla ice cream. A combination bike shop/coffee bar called Fitzgeralds/ The Nine Bar http://shop.fitzgeraldsbicycles.com/about/the-nine-bar-pg138.htm was our go-to place for the best pour over coffee from a porcelain dripper (healthy!) and amazing organic home baked pop tarts and other goodies. While staying at Moose Creek Ranch, we got to know our hosts and the owners, John and Susan, pretty well. We shared a meal out at Forage and had them over for a movie and just enjoyed a few evenings together under the cool Idaho sky. A few times, after sunset, we all had to go put on extra layers of clothing to stay warm! In July. Nice...They are great people, and we'll try staying in touch with them. We think we'll return here sometime for more cool summer stays. We did drive in to Jackson Hole several times for shopping and to hang out in The Square. There are lots of restaurants and we did try a few, but by comparison, and to our surprise, we kept wanting to try places over the pass in our area of Victor and Driggs. They seemed much less touristy to us than most of the Jackson Hole places. In fact, we got confirmation on this from other locals we spoke to, the longer we stayed in the area. The main reason for the drive over the pass was to visit Grand Teton National Park. This and The Grand Canyon are at the top of our personal national park favorites so far. There is panoramic beauty everywhere here. Not only are the three main iconic peaks fabulous, but the lakes and other hiking venues we visited in the three times there are world class. There is so much to write about in Northeast Idaho and Western Wyoming, the hikes, the food, the natural beauty, the people we met, we could almost go on forever, After almost five weeks in the valley at Moose Creek, we knew it was finally time to move on, so after a farewell evening under the stars with Susan and John, we planned our next move. This time, we'd head for the high mountains of Montana...