Vacation, Part 3

Day 6

We were not in a big hurry to get up on Saturday morning—everything outside our tent was still wet.  Luckily, we had put up our dining canopy before the storm so our table was dry.  There were still clouds, but the air was much clearer—the winds had blown away the smoke.  I pulled out the eggs and bread to make French toast for breakfast.  We were planning to hike and needed some fuel.

We managed to leave our campsite around 10:00 a.m. and drove up Signal Mountain to the top.  Since the haze was gone, we figured it would be a good day for this.  We enjoyed a great view of Jackson Lake and Mount Moran.  Clouds still hung over the peaks, remnants of the previous day’s storm.

Next we drove to south Jenny Lake, found a parking spot, and walked over to the shuttle boat.  For $7 each we got a quick ride across the lake to the trailhead for Hidden Falls.  This has got to be the most popular trial in the park.  The shuttles go back and forth continuously.  There are traffic jams walking up the trail plus there are all ages, from infants in baby packs to elderly with canes.  The hike was about a half-mile up with lovely views of Cascade Creek along the trail.  Of course, everybody had their photo taken in front of the waterfall.  To be honest, we were a bit disappointed.  Hidden Falls is pretty, but nothing special—we have seen many falls like it in the past.  From the falls we hiked up about .4 miles to Inspiration Point.  This part of the trail was much steeper and rocky; I was glad to be wearing my boots.  I was amazed that there were teenagers trying to walk up the trail in flip flops!  At Inspiration Point we had a great view of Jenny Lake—and of course everybody was taking pictures of each other.

Although the lake was lovely, we were not able to see the peaks from where we were.  We had heard that Cascade Canyon is beautiful and fairly level so we decided to hike a bit further.  We probably hiked about a mile more.  There were certainly a lot less people at this point in the trail.  Finally we reached the place where the canyon opens up and we could see Teewinot Mountain and other nearby peaks—absolutely beautiful.  We determined that this was the place to turn around since we still needed to not only walk back down the trail, but also walk around the lake to the parking lot because we had decided not to take the shuttle back.  Now I had assumed that this would all be downhill or level.  Much to my dismay, the trail around the lake had its share of ups and downs.  At this point my not-yet-recovered body was saying “No!  No more ups!”  However, I trudged on.  It was way past lunch time and my body could tell.  I made it back to the Visitor Center and store totally exhausted.  I sat while Bob went in and bought us ice cream bars.  This gave me enough energy to make it back to the car.  We ate a late lunch at the String Lake picnic area, and then it was back to camp for some rest and a dutch oven dinner.

Day 7

We awoke on our last real day of vacation to clear, blue skies.  I knew it wouldn’t last so I took some photos.  We walked down to the Signal Mountain Marina later in the morning and rented a 2-person kayak for 1 hour—that 1 hour was plenty since we were supposed to stay in sight of the marina.  After some struggle to keep our craft going straight ahead, we realized that it tended to turn left which made us wonder if it was warped—it certainly made paddling challenging.  We had a great view of Mount Moran and the water was fairly still.  This was a fun little outing.

In the afternoon we drove over to Colter Bay.  We walked the little 1-mile loop from the Visitor Center.  The sky was getting quite smoky again so our view of the Tetons was obscured.  We hopped back into the car, and then stopped at the gift shop so I could purchase a souvenir T-shirt.  And we just had to buy ice cream cones.  After all, we were on vacation!  Next, we stopped at Cattlemen’s Crossing, a marshy area on the Snake River with an interesting history.  On our last night we enjoyed a campfire, s’mores, grazing deer, and a ranger program at the amphitheater.

Day 8

The sky was hazy and we could smell smoke when we arose.  This was the worst that we had seen so we were glad to be headed home.  After breakfast we packed up our gear and loaded it into the car.  Why is it that things never fit back into the car as well as they did when leaving home?  Instead of going back through Jackson, we went to Teton Village, over Teton Pass, and then into Idaho.  To our dismay, the smoke continued.  Rest stops provided breaks plus a lunch spot.  The smoke stayed with us the entire time.  We arrived home shortly after 7:00 p.m. to very happy dogs.  Our Grand Teton vacation was truly a great escape from everyday life for a while.