We ended the scenic float day with a dinner in town and then Truck and I were the only ones who were remotely interested in the night sky.
A few weeks before I asked G if he wanted to do a tour at night and my kids are not fans of tours and he said no. So I thought about it.
But honestly, going for 3-4 hours and being trapped didn’t sound fun to me either. But I really wanted to see the stars. Just not enough to organize and book a tour!
So in Glacier, Truck and I would get up in the morning and report at our night time wakings if we saw stars or not. Oddly enough, Glacier had the new moon and was highest up in the north but we couldn’t see stars.
I DID hear a report or northern lights three days before we got there though. Argh. So cool.
Yellowstone was maybe a few stars but the three nights were SO busy.
So once we got into our slower period of Teton Village, we were actually seeing stars when we would wake up to pee in the middle of the night, haha.
So one night I had said I was interested and Truck was REALLY interested… anyway. There was a slow day and it was fairly clear but a storm was rolling in the next few days. But the tour was sold out.
AND, the observatory on Snow King was closed on Monday and Tuesdays. gah. So we couldn’t do that option.
SO we agreed that we would drive out to an open space and just see what we see. We differed on which way to go but he agreed with my idea and said let’s try it and we set out after 10pm. Sun set at 9:08pm and it was still relatively light but we started anyway.
Basically driving THROUGH the empty Grant Teton station on the side of our Village and driving in…
SO FREAKY. We did see a car in front of us so we felt a little better and we probably saw 12-15 cars drive out, I wonder what they were doing?
The road was so small.
I realized I forgot the bear spray.
But I didn’t plan on leaving the car really…
We drove for 20m and finally came out of the trees/forest and into an open space. It was a road closure / open space and had a bunch of orange cones but hey, it worked!
I found my electric hand heaters in my jacket pocket! I found them about 30 minutes into cold hands. haha but I found them!
Truck is full of stories and vulnerable things. I got a little worried he would ask me about some things that I didn’t want to talk about but I directed the conversation fairly well.
I enjoy being with Truck, he’s very wise, and we are both readers.
His father – decased now – was a journalist and also was a night sky enthusiast and actually MADE his own telescope in the 1940’s by grinding up glass. Very cool story.
I was fairly amused by my night sky iPhone camera.
The selfie option didn’t work but you can see my outline! And the orange cones.
The clouds rolled in, even after being completely clear all day. The mostly covered the moon and we got patches of clear sky here and there.
Our app listed out all the constellations and some of the more brighter stars I admired were:
- Altair
- Vega
- Deneb
- Ursa Major and Minor, of course
- Arcturus
- A crap ton of satellites or space stations or things that were moving in an arc every 5-8 minutes across the sky
- One shooting star, or space junk, across the sky for a hot second!
Plus, a lot more… “is that moving or can I not see anything?”
My eyes are bad. Truck’s eyes are worse!
It’s crazy that this is the moon. It honestly seems like the sun!
If you didn’t notice the stars between the clouds!
We had an enjoyable time and got home around midnight.
The next morning we were up and heading out to Phelps Lake! Basically the same drive I took the night before so I got to amuse everyone with my “this is the 2nd bridge!” and “this is where I pulled over because the car coming at us was going fast!”.
They loved it. /sarcasm
This was… well it wasn’t a bummer because things all work out the way they need to but JJ and Gregg were in their car and the four of us were in ours.
Sam wanted to leave at 8:30am and we knew this hike was not as popular but the parking lot was also ONLY 30 cars. We got there around 9am and we were the 7th car in line to wait for an open spot. It PROBABLY would be an hour wait considering people probably got there in the last hour and were doing a few miles around the lake.
Immediately Sam and J were like “WE DON’T WANT TO WAIT”. Sigh.
So a lot of discussion. G wanted to do the hike. Sam was actually MORE excited initially about cliff jumping than G was but did not want to wait.
When we started discussing the possibility of the CARS not waiting but some people doing the hike and being picked up later, it went back and forth.
First, G and I were just going to do it. Then, when Sam got excited about bike riding with JJ, Justin is not a bike riding fan and then I was like, okay, you come with us and Sam can drive our car home. Then, J tried to convince Sam to go with us and have JJ and Gregg drive the cars home (and I was a little horrified, I would have gone with my Mom to not leave her alone) but at that point, Sam really wanted to bike ride and have a more relaxing day.
Anyway, it went back and forth so much but ultimately, the three of us set out!
Such a fun hike! All four of our big hikes were so different and I don’t know which one was my favorite.
This one was just so nice because hardly any people were ON the trail.
What was really freaky though was we were chatting with everyone that went past and heard there was a bear cub at the lake.
(Where was the Mama?)
SO we got to this lookout point, and I took the picture of a cute couple from Connecticut – late 20’s early 30’s, very friendly. They took our photo. We talked about cliff jumping…
They set out and we were a bit slower and then we heard YELLS (screams?) of “BEAR” coming from the other direction of the lookout/overlook from the side we were not going to. Clearly they were making a lot of noise to discourage the bear from coming their way… but it was very repetitive screaming.
I think they found the Mama bear? We never did find out.
But after our bear encounter at Jenny Lake, we were good to not go exploring!
I did have a full on convo with G to make sure he understood what we were I was going to do because he was mad at me the last time for “making such a loud noise” when the bear was walking away. I was like, we were CHEERING! And we are SUPPOSED to make loud noises! (But not when they are walking away? haha – Anyway, it was a discussion.)
I had the bear spray and I knew the CT Couple was in front of us with one, and I brought up the rear with mine.
We heard from ANOTHER group that – past the cliff rock in the other directions – they saw another bear and a moose.
Okay, so we are in nature, and it’s their home!
Such a pretty lake though.
Ahhh, like glass! We saw a bunch of cutthroat trout swimming everywhere.
We arrived at the cliff, it had been about a 2 mile walk.
There were about 20 people there. A few had jumped. One gal lost her watch and was diving for it. haha
A very young couple was at the top and the girl was doing the girl thing, “I want to jump, I don’t want to do it, I’m scared, should I do it? Why don’t you do it first? Wait, but DON’T DO IT without me because if you aren’t here with me, I really won’t do it.”
Girl, I will push you myself. Sheesh.
Also, notice I was not the one jumping. haha
J had the good picture taking spot. Our scenic guide had told us the day before that there was a spot that if you took it at a certain place, it would look like they were jumping through the different mountains.
We were not in the right spot here!
But still cool! G did pause for a few minutes before getting up the courage to do it. But once he did, he yelled out really loud – ONE TWO THING and just went!
G jumped twice and then we headed back the way we came.
I really would have liked to go the full way around the lake but half way to the cliff, G started asking us about some GI issues he was having – and it was like, oh what made you think of that right now?
Well, he has to go poop now. So yeah…
We headed back. Darn GI issues.
We were hoping that the restrooms at the outlook were open but I had remembered some girls running back (who told us about the bear cub) to the restroom.
J still wanted to see it, so he went on – and took the bear spray for me – haha. He was a little upset at the end saying it was pretty freaky to walk through the forest alone. Well, yep!
I headed back with G as fast as possible so he could hit the bathroom! We made good time. It was only another mile. And I wasn’t going to let HIM walk alone.
So pretty though.
I had texted JJ for our pickup time but while I was getting ALL my texts the whole way around the lake (shocker after no service anywhere else), that text did not go through. haha
Oh well, G was in the bathroom for a bit and I found these lovely chairs at the visitors center and actually – for the first time on the trip it felt like – read a few pages of my book.
So peaceful here.
I also ate a ton of trail mix.
I was eating the whole time really. I mean, I did have all my protein stuff, and then crackers, but trail mix… so addicting.
I can do 5-7 miles on a hike but I have to have a LOT of food and water with me. If you feed me the whole time, I will basically do anything.
Especially M&Ms!
Trail mix… yum. I need to ban it from the house when I get back but it’s not bugging me right now!
Ahh, I also had a good conversation with just G and I in that last mile about college and his girlfriend and other things. So that was lovely.
JJ picked us up and we heard about their biking adventure too! I’m so glad they had a good time. Gregg ended up going straight back to the house and fell asleep, haha.
So glad Sam had fun.
I typed up my last recap and then rested a bit, and we planned to leave a few hours later to go shopping and go to our show!!
Okay, this cracked me up. One of Sam’s favorite romance authors put out a casting call for her favorite book and Sam needed to send in two photos. We ran all around the deck and she kept having me test out photo spots. I kept making terrible faces and then she would laugh and show me. So in this one, I smiled (because I didn’t want her to save a horrible photo of me – she has posted them before!) and she was like “OMG, you ate this up.” Teenager slang. But she actually sent this to me and i liked it.
I asked her if she saved the awful ones and she was like, no way, I have no space on my phone. haha
Well good.
Her photos turned out cute, I need to get them from her.
We finished the photoshoot and headed into Jackson to do some shopping. G had seen the Jackson Playhouse 3 days ago and begged to change our reservations and go to the show.
Sounds good to us!
There was a little annoyance about having the “dinner” before the show. Yes, it’s not fantastic food but I had to navigate complaints 3x about if we were going or not and I finally just kept putting my foot down.
We had the first discussion about it 3 days ago and G really wanted to go and be serenaded during dinner. So I just signed us all up, and committed to bringing my food for myself. I made everyone aware!
But then they looked at the menu the day of.
Oh, I’m sorry, are you forced to have fun and be entertained and maybe not eat at the greatest place for one night? Argh.
I just said, call and ask if you can get refunded for whoever doesn’t want to go, or go eat snacks beforehand. But G and I are going, and everyone else can do what they want.
Everyone ended up going.
I wish I didn’t let these things bother me so much. Ha.
I made myself happy with a cute bracelet. < The middle one with the blue, black, white and gold. > Makes me think of our trip!
Plus the 4 shirts, cute bag, and other things I’ve purchased, haha.
Totally got a Cowboy Coffee too. Had to stay up!
Everyone ended up having a LOVELY time. They enjoyed the food – enough, anyway. And we saw a pre-show and G really loved it SO much.
J was entertained by putting Gregg in funny spots.
Well, and G!
Mah babbbiiesssss
The show was great!! What a cute theater. I saw Joseph… at least 25 years ago! Maybe when I was 16? I had forgotten all the songs but they all came back to me so quickly!
Sam drove us home – J and I had both been drinking – omg, I will need to detox and fast after this. Hi Hawaii! Whoosh…
I got ready for bed and then had a present on my pillow. J had gotten me jewelry. I can’t remember the last time that happened. My Mom told me the next day that Sam was with him when he bought it, she was excited to see me wear it the next day.
The next morning was our last day – is our last day, as I type it up after having packed up…
Ahh, got my 3 mile run in before the awful part of the storm. The sun was out when I started and I got a 10 minute mile and then slowed down to 13 minutes for my 2nd. A little slower for the third!
Look at that rain!
So freaking beautiful. I was trading Marco Polo’s with Nicole, and missing each other on the phone, but I got my run in. Heard a little bestie news which made me happy. Ran into my Mom starting her walk… it started raining so I was done and cozied up on the couch as everyone was mostly still asleep.
The thunder was SO cool! Loved hearing it!
J got up around 9, kids got up around 1030 or 11. Then we all decided to head out on the tram at 1pm! It was supposed to be clear then.
The tram was so cool! All sorts of stats that I’m too lazy to go look up now. But it was 70d down here, and 50d up there! 10,000+ feet, so we were going up 4k.
Quick ride. Someone farted and whew it smelled, and the operator said, “Next time, please let us know if you fart!”. So strange, haha.
Oh, and the left side saw a grizzly bear! So many people moved over to that side and it was a little freaky thinking of the weight shift in that tram…
Anyway.
So gorgeous! G actually got freaked out on this walkway. He left pretty much immediately. I don’t often see him get freaked out about stuff.
We enjoyed seeing the Snake River from this vantage point after having floated it two days ago!
We ate at the famous “Waffles”. I did have one bite of my Mom’s – peanut butter and bacon. ZOMG.
J and G got the standard one, and Sam got the strawberry.
Sam and I had mimosas. I got the Alpine Glow. Way too sweet. I’ll take regular champagne, thank you! We both drank about half. I was SO tired after, haha.
Whoops, group shot!
The weather was so bipolar. Walking down, I had thrown another shirt under my sweater and almost sweated to death.
At the top it was windy and freezing with another part of the storm blowing through.
Then back at the bottom, it was clear and sunny again.
We had dinner reservations in the village – we switched them from the Blue Lion in Jackson. Blue Lion was supposed to be SO good but the 20m drive one way and parking was not jiving and when we asked G, he wanted to stay in the village. Plus, the Mangey Moose and burgers and fries!
Although, G got salmon. With his GI issues, I think he’s starting to try to eat healthier?
So curious.
It was REALLY warm in there though, the seats were hard, and Sharon and Sam left early to be sure they DIDN’T MISS THE USA SOCCER GAME, and then Gregg and JJ left after that – JJ was overheated… and then I walked back with Truck and J.
Not the best final meal but the ambiance was nice. Very cool decorations.
USA ended up loosing and I was sitting in the other room with Truck, reading and doing photos here.
We all agreed on a 5am wake-up time, telling G we may be LEAVING at 5:45 but that means we are DOWNSTAIRS and SUITCASE DONE at 5:30 and then HELPING everyone.
Sigh.
But I mean, I guess they have to learn at some point if they don’t just naturally freaking UNDERSTAND IT.
Double sigh!
Leaving at 5:30 and seeing the light peek through the trees… gorgeous!
Seeing the sun rise over the mountains…
Getting to see the Tetons again as we drove to the airport… Love walking on the tarmac to the plane! Bye Tetons!
Hi Sam! Sam and I walked ahead because I was nervous about getting room for my backpack!
And the flight home was easy. I sat inbetween the kids. GG slept.
Two hour flight. Kerrie picked us up at the end.
What a trip!
I’m doing a fun reel of all the animals we saw and then I want to recap what everyone’s favorite thing was – if I can remember it. We talked about it last night at dinner!
