Tetons

It was the Monday before the 4^th of July, and we headed into Teton National Park looking for a campsite. Since we got there just after lunch, we secured one of the 3 remaining sites that day in the Signal Mountain campground, and subsequently watched about 20 cars, trucks, and RVs circle the campground first naively hopeful, and then with the crestfallen look of someone slowly realizing the music had stopped, and they were left standing in a big game of musical campgrounds.

We waited out the midday heat in the shade reading our books (I took a cue from the local animals and took a nap) and in the afternoon headed over to Two Oceans Lake for a short (6-mi) hike. We didn’t see much wildlife, but Becca heard some rustling in the bushes pretty close by at the end of the hike, which after talking to some people at the trailhead was a mama grizzly with a couple of her cubs. We were pretty relieved to have missed each other.

After the hike, we went back to camp, made dinner, and sat by the shore of Jackson Lake and got some good pictures of the mountains.
Early Tuesday morning we drove down to the Jenny Lake trailhead, and started off towards Lake Solitude. It turns out the name wasn’t entirely appropriate when we got there, but it was definitely nice. 18 miles, a few blisters, 4 tired legs, and several bug bites later, we returned. We headed back to the campground, to the lake to cool/wash off, made some dinner, and went to bed well before the sun was down.

On Independence Day, we rented a warped plastic canoe for the outrageous price of $13.50/hr, and floated around on the lake for a little while. I once again proved to myself exactly how well sunscreen works when I missed a big spot on my stomach and ended up with a rather unattractive and uncomfortable red splotch that I’ve been wearing around for the past few days. Afterwards, we went swimming, read our books some more, made some dinner. Our fireworks display was au natural, and one of the better ones I’ve ever seen. Judge for yourself.