When I tell people about my various trips to Yellowstone, I am often asked whether or not I also drove down into Grand Teton National Park at all while I was out there, and—until now—my answer was always “no.” But Mom and Dad had wanted to include the Tetons in their trip, and so, in the pre-trip planning discussions, it had been decided that we would all drive down there on Wednesday. More specifically, I think (?) it was Carl who suggested the plan of going to Lake Jenny, taking the ferry across the lake, and then doing a bit of hiking. So that—with a tentative plan to then drive a bit farther south, to Moose, WY, for dinner at a place that Mom and Dad had been to and liked on a previous trip—became the agenda for today.
Once again, the day began with me driving down to Fishing Bridge to meet up with the rest of the gang. Fortunately, this time I knew what campsites to find them in—and if memory serves, I even showed up at the agreed-upon time! We had at least a couple hours’ drive ahead of us to get all the way down to Lake Jenny, and since I didn’t have any specific plans of my own or anticipate wanting to go anywhere different from anybody else, I opted to leave my car behind and ride with Carl and family today. I was happy not to have to do all that driving, not least because I ended up feeling sluggish and low-energy for most of this day. (Or maybe the causality was reversed, and I was low-energy because of all the sitting in the car as a passenger? Who knows.) In any case, although I snoozed on and off during the drive down to Grand Teton, I was wide awake when we encountered this guy (still well within Yellowstone):
Once we got down into Grand Teton, we paused at a scenic viewing type area to stretch our legs, enjoy the view, and take some pictures:
Eventually, we arrived at our destination, and I took some pictures looking across the lake:
I was too busy enjoying the ride to take any pictures on the boat ride across the lake. Once across, Mom and Dad detached themselves from the rest of us so that we could do more hiking around than what they were up for, and we set off—uphill AGAIN!—along the trail toward Hidden Falls and other scenic points. And while we walked, I did take a bunch more pictures:
Okay, so those photos pretty effectively document our Jenny Lake hiking experience. In due course, we retraced our steps back down to the boat dock, met back up with Mom and Dad, and rode back across the lake. We all then decided to head onward to Moose and have lunch, rather than dinner, at the place where Mom and Dad had wanted to eat together. This was nice, though I sort of gathered that the place didn’t entirely live up to their fond memory of it from their previous trip (and for my part, I really enjoyed my sandwich but wasn’t, I guess, notably wowed by the place otherwise). After lunch, Mom and Dad had additional plans of some sort (what they were, I don’t recall), but the rest of us hit the road back to Yellowstone. Also of note: Mom and Dad were leaving for their homeward journey the morning after this, so once we parted company this afternoon, I didn’t see them for the rest of the trip.
En route back to Yellowstone, I believe Carl and I talked a little about how we wanted to handle the logistics for the big hike that we still intended to tackle before the end of the trip (which we had tentatively scheduled for the day after this). The conversation didn’t really arrive at any solid conclusions, though; we talked about maybe driving a vehicle around to the ending trailhead on the far side of the park and leaving it there this evening, but not with a lot of enthusiasm for the prospect, as we had already spent so much of the day in the car, and also because of how long it would take and how late it would be by the time we got it done and got ourselves back to our respective campsites. Also, in my case at least, I was sort of too tired and sleepy to think very hard about it. And then, when we got back to Fishing Bridge, a distraction presented itself in the form of Carl noticing that the rear, passenger-side tire on my car (which had been sitting there at Fishing Bride next to their camper all day) was basically flat!
Even though Ridiculously Prepared Carl sprang immediately into action and was actually able to find and patch the small leak, thereby effectively fixing the tire problem, this marked pretty much the low point of the trip for me. Until it was finished, I didn’t know, of course, whether the repair effort would succeed, and I wasn’t looking forward to having to devote time and money to getting a tire replaced before driving home (a hassle that Carl and Cassie had already gone through on this trip!). Plus, even if the patch job succeeded (which, in the event, it fortunately did), we still hadn’t figured out or done anything about getting a vehicle to the end of the trailhead for our hike, and spending time patching a tire made doing that still this evening even less feasible than it already wasn’t. And, of course, I also still had my C-PAP battery problem to solve, and that was weighing on me as well. But the tire problem got solved (thanks, Carl!), and that helped…and then, in thinking over the rest of it, the notion that emerged was to postpone the big hike for one more day, and plan it for Friday—our last day at Yellowstone. This would give us the opportunity to leave a vehicle at the end of the trail tomorrow still. Carl also mentioned that he would like to take tomorrow as a day for his family to do their own thing, so we decided that we would go our separate ways for the day, then meet up at the ending trailhead for our hike at 5:00 pm, where I would leave my car overnight and hop in with them to be chauffeured back to my campsite. Whew. Okay, plans settled.
Meanwhile, my freshly patched tire was being inflated via Carl’s portable air compressor, which gave up the ghost well before the task was done, but did get enough air into the tire for me to be able to drive the car. Good enough; I could stop at the gas station, either here at Fishing Bridge or back up at Canyon, to inflate it the rest of the way. I thus took my leave for the evening. With tomorrow now planned as an “on my own” day and free of any specific plans (apart from meeting up in the evening) as yet, I figured that I would be able to get the C-PAP battery taken care of, too—so I might as well put off airing up the tire until morning, and drop off the battery to be charged at the same time. Maybe everything was going to work out all right after all. Feeling better, I spent another nice evening at my campsite, cooking my food over the fire as usual and, as I recall, finishing the book that I’d been reading.
Of course, the pendulum swung back the other way somewhat when, around 2:00 in the morning, my second C-PAP battery died on me.