Chuck Wagon Cookouts

Jackson Hole [1] is home to several chuck-wagon affairs offering all-you-can-eat barbecue cookouts and Western musical performances in the summer. Each has its own advantages, but reservations are highly recommended at all of these.

Run by the Thomas family since 1973, Bar-T-Five (790 Cache Creek Rd., 307/733-5386 or 800/772-5386, www.bart5.com [2], $43 adults, $36 ages 5-12, free for kids under five) is one of the best chuck-wagon feeds. Horse-drawn Conestoga-style wagons depart just east of Snow King, carrying visitors along Cache Creek past costumed mountain men, cowboys, and Indians. At the in-the-trees cookout site (chicken, roast beef, salad, rolls, corn, beans, dessert, and lemonade), cowboys serenade your meal, tell stories, and crack corny jokes that aren’t entirely politically correct. It’s great fun for families and busloads of Japanese tourists. It’s open mid-May-September, with departures Monday-Saturday at 5 and 6:30 p.m. (closed Sun.).

Along the Teton Village Road near Teton Pines, the Bar J Chuckwagon (307/733-3370 or 800/905-2275, www.barjchuckwagon.com [3]) does a land-office business throughout the summer, with seating for over 700 people in a cavernous building, including busloads of gray-haired Gray Liners. In existence since 1977, Bar J is famous for its first-rate musicians who fiddle (one is a two-time national fiddle champion), sing, yodel, and regale the audience with cornball jokes and dollops of cowboy poetry. Before the show everyone queues up for heaping servings of barbecued beef, roast chicken, pork rib, or rib-eye steak served with baked potatoes, beans, biscuits, applesauce, spice cake, and lemonade (but no alcohol). Amazingly, Bar J manages to feed the entire crowd in a half-hour. The picnic-table seating is cramped, but after dinner you’re treated to 90 minutes of rollicking entertainment. The cost is $20-30 for adults (depending on your meal), $10 for kids under eight, or free for tots. Bar J is open late May-September, with dinner at 7 p.m.; many folks arrive an hour or so earlier to get front-row seats for the show. It’s a good idea to make reservations at least one week ahead. The Bar J does not offer wagon or horseback rides.

In beautiful Buffalo Valley, 45 miles northeast of Jackson, Castagno Outfitters Covered Wagon Cookouts (307/543-2407 or 877/559-3585, www.castagnooutfitters.com [4]) start with a 30-minute ride in covered wagons. The wagons stop at an isolated aspen grove, where guests enjoy a dinner of steak, barbecued beans, baked potato, corn bread, watermelon, and dessert. Dinners cost $35 adults, $30 kids, and run mid-June-late August; closed Sunday. Call the day before for reservations.