Roving Cooks

May 14: West Yellowstone, MT to Flagg Ranch, Grand Teton National Park, WY. 72 miles, 2 hours.

May 14-18: Grand Teton National Park. May 18-22: Wilson, WY outside Jackson Hole, WY/Grand Teton National Park

After leaving West Yellowstone, we drove through Yellowstone National Park to get to Grand Teton National Park. This was our first time staying at a campground inside the National Park, and Greg had the week off (anticipating a lack of cell signal and internet access). Overall, taking a short drive through one beautiful park to get to another beautiful park was a great moving day (and we got to cross the Continental Divide)! As it was campground opening day at Grand Teton, we settled in with a number of other spring campers. Grayson and Madelyn squashed a few remaining snow piles and met all dogs in the area.

Over the weekend, we hiked around Colter Bay for a couple hours, spending most of the time collecting smooth stones and skipping them across the water. And then, Nana and Papa Cook joined us for the week!

We took a gorgeous boat shuttle across Jenny Lake and hiked up toward Inspiration Point. We made it pretty far before deciding that we were best served returning down the snowy trail (some sections hard and slippery, some slushy). Grayson sprinted ahead, reporting back occasionally on extra tricky parts. We enjoyed PB&J in the sunshine waiting for the return shuttle and somehow managed to prevent Grayson and Papa from feeding a friendly and hopeful ground squirrel/chipmunk. Back at our campground, Madelyn and Nana built fairy houses and two little mouse houses (residents did not appear to move in while we were present). Papa and Greg attempted to rest in the hammock; a difficult endeavor with Grayson around.

Greg and Papa spent a clear sunny day learning fly fishing with a guide on the Snake River. It was off-season for typical fly fishing in the area…so we’ll just have to come back in late summer/early fall another year! Nana, the kids and I enjoyed “guys fishing day” with a visit to the hotel where we ate second breakfast and jumped on hotel beds for about an hour. We then drove into the park, where we examined spider webs along the top of Jackson Dam and picnic’d on Signal Mountain with gorgeous panoramas of the Snake River and Tetons. We guessed at Signal Mountain’s name – smoke signals or best cell signal? – and I was interested to find out that the isolated peak we ate on was formed by ash from the Yellowstone volcano eruption (not by tectonic plates crashing together).

After a slow wind down the mountain, we joined a crowd to watch Grizzly Bear 399 and her cubs! Yep, she has her own Wikipedia page. From our position on the side of the road, this bear crew was probably about a football field away.

We moved sites halfway through the week to the Fireside Resort near Jackson Hole (Hole = Valley). This was a great site, where we had an RV spot and Nana and Papa had a tiny house 1 minute walk away. We spent a morning hiking around a quiet Teton Village, which was post ski season and not quite into their summer activities. We drove through the National Elk Refuge where we saw no elk…but did see a few bighorn sheep. And we spent a glorious afternoon window shopping, an activity that I had all but forgotten about in this last year.

The favorite activity of the week was the Chuck Wagon dinner, a wild west experience complete with covered wagons, cowboys and outlaws. Dinner of meat, corn, beans, bread, circulating old canteens of coffee and pitchers of lemonade was emceed by the energetic Bar T 5 band. In addition to some light roasting of fellow bandmembers and an occasional outlaw on horseback riding past, the band had a truly excellent fiddle player. There is nothing like live music! And somehow, after all the excitement of the evening, we still had room for ice cream.