Tenting in the Tetons: Day 3

The Middle of the Middle of Nowhere

We woke up bright and early (well, early anyway) to hit the road to Grand Teton National Park. We picked up Interstate 15 in Montana and headed south. I have never seen so little traffic on an interstate. Adrian realized he was nearly out of gas, so I started studying the map in the new atlas for places to stop. You’d figure most exits would have gas, but no such luck in the middle of Montana. Eventually we found an exit with the little gas tank symbol on the exit sign. That seemed simple enough, but we could see zero signs for gas. We head in the direction that looked more civilized (but just barely). We found the place; it was marked with a sign that said “fuel”. It was a bar that apparently sold gas. There were two pumps and they were the oldest pumps I’ve ever seen. Any older and you would have had to physically pump the gas. The only sign of life at the place was a very friendly dog. Adrian went inside and did indeed find someone. We bought a few gallons, just enough to get to the next gas station to find some higher octane fuel (Adrian’s car is particular apparently). Unfortunately, we barely made it to the next place with gas, and it was nearly as shady as the first. The tank of gas wasn’t even buried underground. Somewhere in Idaho, we finally found some acceptable gas and filled an entire tank.

The Tetons Don’t Look That Much Like Breasts to Me

Finally, the drive brought us close enough to the park where we could see the Tetons. The trees had already started changing to their fall colors, giving mountain backdrop a beautiful foreground of color. We arrived at the park early in the afternoon. Our first stop was at the newly opened Moose Visitor Center. Adrian and I really enjoyed the building design. It was nicely detailed and took advantage of some amazing views. The park ranger suggested we hike Cascade Canyon. We noted this and went to find ourselves a campsite.

We found a campsite at Jenny Lake and set up for night number three. Adrian made us sandwiches while I set up the tent. After lunch we headed out pretty quickly to catch a boat across the lake. The ranger suggested we take it to save some hiking time. It only ran until four and by then it was 3:30 or so. I really enjoyed the hike because there were so many places that were worth stopping at. It was a short hike to “Hidden Falls” which was a much prettier waterfall than our pictures of it suggest. The next stop on the trail was “Inspiration Point” which overlooked Jenny Lake. Once we got back into the canyon, the fall colors were everywhere. The trail followed a creek most of the way up, so there was always something to look at. We found a pretty sweet dam. Adrian was scared of the beavers, so he broke out the bear spray just in case he got attacked. Soon after we found a cave, which I determined was a prime location for a bear den. Seriously, it was right by water and the trail brought a steady supply of hikers for the bears to eat. What more could you look for in a home? The rest of the trail just offered spectacular views of the side of the mountain covered in reds, oranges, yellows, and greens.

On the way back, we found this tower of rocks that someone had stacked just off the trail. Since I’m about seven-years-old at heart, I really wanted to knock it down. However, I figured someone had put in all this effort to build the thing, so maybe I should leave it. Perhaps some family had been building the thing, stone by stone every time they visited the park. I mentioned to Adrian how much I was itching to knock it down. Since he’s only five at heart, he lacked my reservations about knocking it down. Twelve pictures later, the tower was destroyed.

We hiked back to the car, and headed back to camp. We unloaded all the food and cooking supplies and I made Adrian “camping casserole.” I’ve never actually cooked camping casserole while camping, so that was exciting. Since we lacked firewood and it was freezing, we headed to bed soon after dinner. Being “bear aware” we made sure that everything that could possibly attract a bear was packed safely in the car.

Since we went to bed so early, we woke up at a decent time and packed up camp. We stopped at a few view points on the way out of the park, but nothing was as nice as the hike. We did see a bull elk along the road and got a nice picture of his rack. About 10 miles after leaving Grand Teton, you enter Yellowstone. Our pass to Grand Teton covered our entrance fee to Yellowstone as well, so we were ready to start exploring our second national park.