Sunday, June 29, 2014 Tetons

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Scott and Attie woke up in the tent while mom and Audra woke up on the van.  We had to rush but made some oatmeal for the drive.  We made it to Jenny Lake in time for the ranger hike to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point.  We took a boat ride across the lake to the hiking trail.  At the dock a grey fox ran across the trail...it was a good start to the hike.  We climbed up the trail to see the lower falls and climbed some more to see the hidden falls.  The falls were awesome!  We then climbed some more to inspiration point.  We saw ground squirrels and marmots but we didn't see the black bear people warned us about.  The ranger talked to us about how the mountains formed and how the park became protected.

Once at the top we could go our own way.  We hiked back down from inspiration point and then hiked the whole way back to the Jenny Lake ranger station.  It was 3 miles but felt like forever even though it was beautiful hiking between the lake and the mountains.  After our hike, we went into Jackson to have lunch at Genevive's.  The food was really good and we could sit on the patio.

After lunch we looked for a place to ride horses.  We ended up going to Teton Village (where the Jackson Hole ski lodge is located).  We did a 2 hour horseback ride in the hills and around a prairie.  Audra looked forward to this for a long time and was quite happy...although silent during the ride.  The horses sure liked to stop and eat grass, but this was good practice for us to guide the horses.  Once we got off the horses our knees were a bit sore.  I guess we weren't used to horseback riding.

On the way back to Summit campground we stopped to pick up steaks at the Dornan store (a popular and nice place...and reasonable prices).  We went back to our campground and checked out the picnic area on the lake, but it was full.  We cooked back at our own site.  The charcoal took a while so we added twigs until we could get a good fire going.  The steaks liked the additional help and tasted great.  We then went to check out the sunset again, but it wasn't as cloudy this night.  It was still beautiful though.  It was then time to get some sleep for the next day.