Day Eight: Thursday, June 22, 2017
Our night at the Alpine North Loop Campground ended up being peaceful. Sometime in the night, we gained a neighbor. A motorcycle and a little one-person tent were set up on the other side of our double campsite. That seemed a little strange, but there hadn’t been many campsites left to choose from when we arrived, so perhaps that person took the first open space they could find. At least they were quiet! It didn’t matter, though, because we were packed up and ready to get on the road early. Our plan for the day was to drive through the Tetons and continue on to the Black Hills for the night. This was, after all, just a side trip to have somewhere to camp on the way home.
Our drive started off on a sad note when we saw a moose that had been hit being loaded into a truck on the side of the road. After that, we had high hopes of seeing a live moose on our drive, but no such luck. The drive was pretty and I noticed there would’ve been several other campgrounds to choose from if we had kept going a little further the night before. Jackson looked like a fun little town, but we did not stop. I wanted to get to the Tetons!
Finally, we arrived and stopped at the first visitor center. They had a giant board with all of the campgrounds listed with their numbers of available campsites. Low and behold, there were MANY campsites available for the night…hmmmmm! It was 9 in the morning, though, so we were not at all ready to be thinking about a campsite for the night!
I’m sure I don’t really have to say that the Tetons are gorgeous! I had a tough time choosing photos for this post because I took so many from every angle! Each view was better than the next. I was instantly in love with these mountains. Their jagged peaks were nothing like the mountains we saw in Rocky Mountain National Park earlier in our trip. What a way to spend a morning!
We stopped at all of the visitor centers and the kids worked on their Junior Ranger books. One of the requirements was to attend a ranger program, so we found one about the upcoming solar eclipse that would be visible from the park. The gift shops had merchandise proclaiming The Great American Eclipse would take place on August 21, 2017. I had never heard of such a thing, but it sounded like everyone who had, had been planning to see it for many years. The park hotels had, apparently, been fully booked two years in advance. The ranger program was interesting, but we left thinking we probably didn’t need to see an eclipse. (Not to worry! We changed our minds! Stay tuned for that story!)
One of the visitor centers had this map with magnet pins for people to share which parks they had visited. It was neat to see all of these pins for where we had been! I was so glad we had decided to make this side trip to the Tetons.
The kids were done with their Junior Ranger books when we stopped at our last visitor center at Colter Bay. It’s not hard to tell which National Park Service rangers love their jobs and Ranger Jerry sure seemed to enjoy his job. While chatting with him, I mentioned that I wished we could camp in the park. It was so beautiful and I wasn’t ready to leave yet, even though it was 3pm and we were just supposed to be passing through. He told us we should try the Colter Bay Campground if we decided to stay. Badges in hand, we were ready to either hit the road or go look for a campsite at Colter Bay. We chose Colter Bay!
We pulled up to the fee booth of Colter Bay Campground, asked if any sites were available, and were quickly assigned site D86. This was the first time we’d be camping inside of a national park! We drove around past hundreds of campsites and finally found ours, which was a pullout site with a large tent pad…and a bear box. We had tent camped in bear country before, but never on our own. Never mind that, though, since we didn’t have any food or plans to cook anything in our campsite.
Our tent was set up by 4pm, which had to be a new record for us! We set off to find ourselves a short hike and were able to get into the Jenny Lake parking area. That area had been full to the road when we had gone past earlier in the day.
Megan found herself up close and personal with a bee on her ankle when she stopped walking. We don’t know if she’s allergic to bee stings, but on a trail in a national park was NOT where we wanted to find out! Eventually, it flew away and she survived without an incident!
We crossed the river and walked down the trail for a bit, but we had not thought to grab the bear spray so I didn’t want to go too far. We went back to the visitor center area, which was under construction when we were there, and wandered around the paved paths for a bit.
I wanted a family picture of us so I asked an older gal if she’d be willing to take a picture for me. She said she would so I handed her my phone, thinking that would be easier than my big camera. She fumbled around a bit and commented on not being good with new technology. All she had to do was touch the screen or the round button and it would take the picture. As it turns out, she was one of those types who takes one picture and asks if that’s ok, so I looked and she had her thumb over part of the sky. I took that as my sign that she didn’t really want to take the photo in the first place and didn’t ask her to redo it. Thankfully, I was able to work a little magic on the photo!
Since we had not stopped to look around Jackson on our way through in the morning, we decided to go there for supper and a wander through the shops. Jackson also has an arch made of antlers, so perhaps this is a Wyoming thing? I have no idea how many deer have made a donation to these antler arches, but it has to be a large number of them!
We did not find any restaurants that didn’t have huge lines waiting outside the door or if we did, they were places that didn’t sound like our type of food. We really wanted a pizza and with a bit of searching on the phone, we discovered that we could get that back at Colter Bay.
On our way back, we spotted this herd of bison and Joey took our picture with them…well, more like a picture of our Durango’s shadow with them! Don’t pet the fluffy cows! If you look closely where the tree line starts, there are many more bison out there, enjoying their supper.
Speaking of supper, we found ours at the Colter Bay Village Cafe Court Pizzeria. Either we were incredibly lucky to get some really tasty pizza from a “cafe court” or perhaps it was just miles above the lackluster stuff they dug out of the freezer at the restaurant we chose the night before. I’m inclined to remember it as being a delight! For one, our pizza had a fun name. We ordered the Campground Special. How could we not?
Our pizza came with a view! We chose the bar-style seating along the windows, rather than a table. As for the pizza, the jalapeños may have been a bit hotter than we’d have liked, but I think it was the best choice on the list. I’d order it again! Overall, it was a really good experience.
After devouring our pizza, we were right in time to join the evening’s campfire ranger talk in the amphitheater. That night’s talk was about grizzly bears. As it turns out, bears like the Colter Bay Campground—goodie!
We learned about Grizzly 399 and how she teaches her young cubs to survive. She apparently likes to keep her cubs near people and roadways to avoid having her cubs killed by male bears who tend to live further out in the wilderness. She even teaches her cubs to look both ways before crossing the road. When we were there, they had wondered if she had been killed because there were reports from someone who said they had killed her, but she came out of hibernation that spring with one bear cub!
We also learned about safety precautions while hiking and camping in bear country, which was a good reminder for us right before going back to our campsite for the night! When the talk was over, we had planned to take showers since we had spotted a shower building earlier when we had stopped at the visitor center. I’m not sure why we didn’t shower at Colter Bay…maybe they close their shower house earlier, but we drove to the showers at Signal Mountain Campground, which was open until 11pm. Three showers cost $15, which when added on to the $30 campsite, wasn’t a cheap campsite, but we had such a lovely day that it was worth the splurge on an extra day.
It was well after dark when we arrived back at our campsite, fed, showered, and freshly knowledgeable about the grizzly bears who like our campground. We crawled into our tent wondering if we would get any sleep that night.
What a day! If I could’ve stayed more days in the Tetons, I would’ve, but we needed to get home. Find out if any of us slept that night and what we did on the way home in the next post!