Hiking in the Tetons

Friday, June 8, 2018

For the first time in a long time we slept until 8 AM and took our time leaving the hotel.  Turns out that was a minor mistake.  Our friends Eileen and Jim had told us about a delicious breakfast at Jenny Lake Lodge, but what we didn’t know and hadn’t bothered to check, was that breakfast stopped being served at 10 AM.  We arrived at 10:30 AM.  We ended up taking in an absolutely gorgeous overlook of Jenny Lake and the mountains and took a short hike until lunch was served at 11:30.

Jenny Lodge was nothing like I had expected.  While it’s visitors tend to be the well-heeled, it is a very understated place in the woods.  The staff was extremely friendly, so I imagine the overall service at the place is outstanding.  It would be a wonderful place to stay and relax for several days.

The entire Jackson Hole area is paradise for those that love outdoor sports.  It is much better suited for those activities than Yellowstone.  In fact, Yellowstone reminded us of an amusement park with special “rides” you had to see or your visit would be incomplete. It was a fascinating place, and we loved being there, but we never felt we were in the wilderness.  Grand Teton National Park is exactly the opposite, and we decided to spend the afternoon hiking.

The trail we took was inside the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve.  In 1927, John D. Rockefeller began to purchase ranches in the area with the goal of donating the land to the National Park Service.  Through his efforts he donated 33,000 acres to the park in 1949.  The family retained 3,100 acres around Phelps Lake as a family retreat, but by 2001 L. S. Rockefeller donated the balance of their property to become part of Grand Teton National Park.  The Rockefeller’s still own a ranch located not too far from the Park.

Our hike was only about 3-1/2 miles, but it took us 3 hours.  That wasn’t due to the difficulty of the hike, but because of the photos we kept taking of the beauty all around us.  Most of the path on our way to Phelps Lake followed Lake Creek which was wildly cascading over rocks.  The path was rocky, and wound through pine woods and sagebrush meadows, but except for some uphill stretches wasn’t very difficult to navigate.  The reward was seeing the pristine Lake and the snowcapped mountains.

Our next activity was much more mundane.  Our car was so dirty it looks like it had been driven for 3,680 miles – which it was.  We needed a car wash badly, and fortunately we found one that was still open.  We then headed to a place called Sidewinders American Grill for dinner.  The restaurant had been featured on Diners and Divers for its onion soup and chicken pot pie.  Now neither of these are dishes one would ordinarily order in June, but we ordered one of each.  They were both delicious.

After dinner we took a short walk through Jackson.  I probably mentioned it before, but it is a quite charming place and definitely has a western flare.  Stores and restaurants line the streets, but most were closed.  Quite a number of them had clever, mostly animal oriented, signage.  Then it was time to head back and start working on our blog. Tomorrow we head to Salt Lake City

Correction:  We incorrectly identified a small animal in an earlier blog as a prairie dog.  It turns out that there are no prairie dogs in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.  The little critter was an Uinta ground squirrel.