July 23, Day 37: Grand Teton National Park to Tremonton, Utah

Another early morning day headed out hiking and wanting to make sure we got a good parking spot. In this busy, busy park getting a parking spot is no easy matter. We’ve noticed that later in the day sometimes people are parking a mile or more away from the activity that they want to be at. We really prefer to save our hiking for the actual hiking trails and not walking down roads.

The arrival near String Lake took us to Dick's favorite view of the Tetons, the Cathedral Group.  He has a large version of this perspective on his office wall, just above his desk.

Today’s hike was going along String Lake to Leigh Lake, and back. Especially String Lake is popular with Paddleboarders and Kayakers. Our last two days had a lot of elevation gain in hills, and this route was mostly flat, going along these beautiful lakes that are right at the base of some of the most beautiful mountains in the Tetons. The walk started a little chilly, with the temperature reading about 55°. It was a delightful walk with almost no wind for a big part of it, so the reflections of the mountains and the trees in the lakes were fabulous.

One of the things that we so enjoy is the friendliness of people who are out on hikes. Especially those who go further than just a few hundred yards from the parking lot. We had several really delightful conversations with families who had small children along, seniors who spent several months each summer in the Teton area, and just random hikers who had cheerful things to talk about. One family was happy to share and show photos of their close encounter with a bear and her cub. Luckily, the bear was far enough away and they didn’t get too close to the club. So it was more of an exciting story, rather than something that was too scary.

We also had a great conversation with one of four fathers who were taking their eight sons on a camping trip. They had canoed and kayaked over to this so rather remote campsite. We had a very delightful conversation which ended with them fixing us a cup of hot cocoa to take down the path.

We walked about 4 miles and then knew it was time to turn around. We found a private spot along the side of Leigh Lake and ate our snack in solitude. We were so struck again that even in a park that is so busy that they are having traffic jams, once you get not very far off the parking lots, there are so many fewer people. We were so glad that we were able to enjoy some private quiet time in such a beautiful place.

Coming back, we started feeling the pain in our legs. Both of us were really glad when we were finally at the parking lot where our car was. Maybe we overestimated a little bit walking 8 miles today.

We wanted to get one more fabulous view of the mountains and so drove aways up to Signal Mountain. On a clear day, you could see all of the Tetons and surrounding mountain ranges so well. However, we found there is smoke from the West Coast fires in the air here. We’re grateful the fires are not in this direct area, but you can see the haze of the smoke the further away you get away from the mountains. In fact as you got further away the less distinct the mountains are. So it was a little disappointing that it wasn’t a great view from the top.

However, we did have our cooler with us and put together a great picnic lunch sitting in our car. We were too tired to even try to walk and find a picnic table.

We drove back to our campsite ready for another afternoon nap and then to start thinking about packing up our things because tomorrow we were scheduled to leave the Tetons.

However  when we got back to our campsite we were confused. We drove to our site our tent and screened in porch were missing. We thought maybe we made a mistake, so we drove out and came back in again, still missing. We then went up and talked to the young woman whose tent was now in our campsite. She explained when she arrived she saw there was some people’s things already in the campsite.  Then the camp host came and packed up all of our things and carried them away leaving a note for us. The note informed us that we were supposed to have checked out at 11 o’clock this morning and they have taken all of our stuff.  We should go to the entrance and get our things back. Our recollection was that we were checking out the next day on Saturday. However, when Patti pulled out a reservation form, sure enough it had us checking out today at 11. We really messed up!

So we had to go humbly and confessed we had made an error. The staff was really nice, but unfortunately the campground was entirely full. There was no empty spot for us to go. So we had to go and quickly reclaim our belongings which had been carefully packed up and locked away in a storage shed. They had treated our belongings very nicely which we appreciated. However, we need to do very quickly in the next half hour pack things altogether including putting our tents in bags and rolling up sleeping bags and putting food and clothes in the back of the car as quickly as we could do it. This was not really what we had in mind for getting ready to leave.

Our lovely former neighbors offered to allow us to put our tent up in their site, but we decided it was time to start heading south towards home. We were able to pull into a McDonald’s parking lot where we tried to hook into the free Wi-Fi which didn’t work. We finally were able to get our laptop hooked into our personal hotspot for the phone and found a hotel room about 3 1/2 hours south in Utah for the night.

We knew we had thousand miles more to drive to get home. The plan was to do 600 of them tomorrow, but instead we would do 200 of them on Friday night. And then 400 miles tomorrow. Luckily the drive was gorgeous driving through beautiful river valleys and with pine covered mountains on either side. We both decided there was no sense in getting too upset about making an error. It just becomes part of your adventure. And if you can’t follow with some things with flexibility, you probably shouldn’t head out on a grand adventure.

So, headed down the road, working on the blog and really reflecting on our wonderful time that we had at the Tetons. We actually were ready to leave. But it wouldn’t bet been nice to of done it in a little more orderly manner.

We were glad we were able to snag a semi-affordable room in a Motel 6 in Utah. Ready to sleep in a real bed and take a shower tonight. Sometimes the things you don’t remember you should be grateful for you get reminded of it again.