Inn calls Snake River and Grand Tetons neighbors

August 16, 2009|Rave, Julie Hatfield, Globe Correspondent

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo. - You’ll feel like Goldilocks, walking through the woods into the Bentwood Inn:

The sweet library is almost too small, with just one chair in its tiny alcove. The Great Room is too big; three stories high with a massive river rock fireplace. Imposing, for a B&B that from the outside looks like a private home.

The five guest rooms, however, are just right, with big cozy feather beds, private decks, and jetted tubs. Breakfasts are gourmet with such local offerings as elk sausage with your French toast.

Made from some of the logs felled in the great Yellowstone National Park fire of 1988, this is the most upscale “cabin’’ you’ve ever seen, with a sophisticated decor that includes English antique furniture, good Western art, and Zapotec weavings.

The Bentwood lies between downtown Jackson and the ski runs of Teton Village. It’s just a fly-cast from the Snake River and a mile or so from the entrance to Grand Teton National Park, with all the attendant wildlife. If you want to see the antelopes and bison up close, Wildlife Expeditions of the Teton Science Schools will pick you up at the inn and take you on a full day’s safari.

Be sure to stay for a Tuesday or Friday night, when innkeepers Jenny and Peter Tignor show off their magical kitchen skills with their “Bentwood Bistro’’ dinners, followed by an ecologically enlightening slide lecture from the science schools.