Emily Paul got the day off work Saturday to protest the war in Iraq and Vice President Dick Cheney with about 250 other people.

Paul and all the employees at Shades Cafe donned anti-war signs and marched the 1.4 miles from the Stilson Ranch parking lot to the south entrance of Teton Pines, where Cheney owns a home.

Cheney gave a speech at the opening of the new visitor center at Grand Teton National Park earlier in the day.

“Baristas for peace,” Paul’s sign read.

Lisa Miller, who owns Shades, rarely closes her shop, especially in the heart of the busy summer season.

“It’s crazy and we had to turn people away,” Miller said. “But sometimes there are more important things than making money.”

Rich and Florence Naguoka spent their last day of vacation from San Francisco marching among valley residents and other visitors.

The crowd gathered at 1 p.m. at the feet of a giant statue of Cheney holding a fishing rod in one hand and a spurting oil derrick in the other with a black hole where a heart should have been.

Speakers included Wyoming state Rep. Pete Jorgensen, author Alexandra Fuller, lawyer Kent Spence and soldier Nick Rowley.

They accused the administration of lying, lamented a lack of representation, and criticized funding a war they said the United States has no business fighting.

“Trying to create peace by declaring war,” Fuller said, “is kind of like trying to create a happy marriage by shooting your spouse.”

Several local singers also led the crowd in anti-war songs.

Dick Barker sang about the first name for the conflict in Iraq, which the government changed, he said.

“Operation Iraqi Liberation,” Barker sang. “Tell me, what does that spell?”

“O-I-L,” the crowd responded.

Wearing his father’s Air Force fatigues from the Vietnam War, Jim Stanford, one of the event organizers and master of ceremonies, addressed the crowd at the Stilson Ranch lot, which provides free parking for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort and which was overflowing with cars Saturday.

“If it wasn’t 80 degrees here, you’d think it was a powder day,” he said to the crowd.

“Today we have struck a blow against apathy, a terrible problem,” Stanford said. “That’s how we got here in the first place.”

With that, the crowd wheeled its giant effigy of Cheney, which towered over a tiny George W. Bush head wearing red devil horns and a blindfold over its eyes.

The line of protesters, ranging in age from elementary-school kids to great-grandparents, snaked up the bike path along Highway 309, eliciting honks and cheers from passing cars.

Once the group congregated around the Pines entrance, they toppled the effigy, pulling it off its pedestal.