Mountains, Marlboro men win over bikinis and beaches

FOR MONTHS, I pored over the Yellowstone guidebooks plastered with pictures of stately gray elk, pristine lakes and lasso- swinging cowboys. But the closer the departure date crept, the more my misgivings grew.

Nightmares about being killed by bears kept me up at night -- a worry that inflated after reading an article about a boy who died when a cub dragged him out of his tent in Utah. I feared a deadly asthma attack and anxiously read the warnings on the National Park Service Web site: "Remember, there is no 9-1-1 in the backcountry."

Before the trip, I left many voicemail messages for friends that ended like this: "I can't believe I'm going to Wyoming for vacation." (Parts of the park are in Idaho and Montana, too -- equally wilderness-laden).

I initially suggested a trip to a tropical paradise, but swim-up bars and sunburns failed to win over my boyfriend. We also nixed an urban getaway to New York (too muggy in July).

Finally, I capitulated to my boyfriend's desire for a nature vacation: mountains and Marlboro men won over bikinis and beaches.

Part of the allure was the idea of a road trip. Neither my foreign boyfriend nor I had ever taken an extended excursion by car in this vast nation. As a child, he might have clambered into the family Peugeot for a jaunt to Spain. I vaguely recall something about Disneyland and sleeping bags in the back of my family's bronze Chevy Malibu wagon, circa 1979.

But even if those trips exist outside my failing memory, they were a long time ago. My boyfriend and I wanted to go on our own, as a couple, to bond and do what Americans do best: drive.

The question was, would I or my relationship survive the 900 miles and Grizzly bears?

Where to spend the first night on the road is one of the biggest decisions for Bay Area road-trippers headed to Yellowstone and the Grand Teton, the mountainous national park to the south of Yellowstone. Elko and Winnemucca in Nevada off I-80 are a convenient eight-hour drive from the Bay Area, but we avoided staying there on the advice of a friend who described them as "prisons and desert."

Instead, we hunkered down in Twin Falls, Idaho, home to the excellent Beacon Burger & Brew. Although it looks like a college bar, the strip steak dinner wowed us, and owners Kathy and Dave told us all about the crazy basejumpers that fly to Twin Falls so they can jump off the local bridge.

Our first night near the park, we rested up at the Yellowstone Suites B & B in Gardiner, Mont., near the north entrance. I took a soak in the tub in a top-floor suite outfitted with wicker furniture and plush towels.

In the morning, we munched eggy biscuits and gravy, granola and fruit salad as we sat on the patio, from where we could see softly sloping ridges of Electra Peak.

All in all, an auspicious beginning to our journey to the park.

We packed our Subaru with sunscreen and moisture-wicking shorts. Through the Roosevelt Arch we passed into the park. And though I had spent months staring at pictures in pamphlets and combing Web sites, nothing quite prepared me for the grandeur of the land itself.

Everywhere we drove, clouds of sulphurous steam broke through the earth. Grunting bison roamed the sage-colored valleys, mowing down grass with their brown woolly maws. The rocky ochre terrain, carved by glaciers melted long ago, glowed like cooling embers.

I suddenly realized why the founders of this natural reserve named the park Yellowstone.Clouds hung in the humid air as we pulled into the gravel lot at Bunsen Peak. Our hike of choice: Osprey Falls, a 150-foot-tall ribbon of water that pounds into a natural grotto.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten my hiking boots. I strapped on my Asics running shoes as a paltry substitute, but they were no match for nature. I fell at least twice, tearing skin off my hand. Climbing back up the rocky trail, I dragged my knee across the jagged knob on a log, shredding the skin. Clutching a walking stick for dear life on a steep trail, I hit my toe on a boulder and nearly careened down into the canyon.

This was, of course, a warm-up for a three-day sojourn into the mountains.

"I'm not sure we should go backpacking," my boyfriend said.

I was somewhat crushed. After all, I had trained for weeks, running stairs, doing lunges with extra weight. I blew several hundred dollars on a new backpack. Yet, as I reviewed the itinerary - - 19 miles in a place called Death Canyon -- I acquiesced.

We returned to our dusty tent at the Flagg Ranch Resort and downed a can of beef stew. From the phone booth outside the campground laundry room, I called to book a room at the Snake River Lodge and Spa, an upscale resort.

We arrived dusty and bedraggled, our hair stiff from sweat and our skin thick with sunscreen. Turning off the main drag at Moose Junction, we spied the lodge.

The log roof jutted majestically into the sky. Out front sat a giant parking lot and the Saddlehorn Activity Center, a dirt field where horses milled about during the day.