Our first wildlife siting was in a field spattered with buffalo lazily munching on grass. They were massive creatures. The sunshine finally decided to appear and Chris mentioned that a little sunshine on his leg while driving felt great. That blossomed in to "Sunshine...on my shoulder..." and I just had to find the John Denver song on my iPod. Amy, as an opinionated and happy-to-share-it twelve-year old said we were listening to old people music. Pssshhhh. Chris and I sang along.
We turned the car and the music off when we reached Old Faithful in West Yellowstone. Lucky us, we arrived right in time for an eruption. Kristen was fairly young the last time we were here so it was nice for her to make new memories. Since it was lunchtime and our peeps were hungry, we walked over to the cafeteria at the lodge.
We didn't spend too much time in Yellowstone since we had been there last summer, but drove through on to Grand Teton National Park. And Kristen. Dear Kristen. "I have to go to the bathroom!" Child, can you not tell the difference between an urgent need and an I-should-tell-my-parents-that-I-could-use-a-bathroom-in-the-next-twenty-minutes need? Fortunately, we were close to a marina equipped with restroom facilities for her use. The view just happened to be a bonus.
We saw a cool electronic sign that read, "Bears with cubs crossing next 10 miles. Slow down Cowboy." Sadly we weren't able to add to our bear sitings of four for this trip. Chris had checked a map before leaving Bozeman and chose South Jenny Lake for a stop and hike. We took a boat launch across Jenny Lake where the last return launch of the day was 4 pm; we arrived around 3 pm. We didn't have a lot of time. However, there was a two-mile hike along the shoreline that would return us to the marina if we happened to miss the boat. Two miles was nothing. You'd have thought we told Kristen that she would have to hike for days if we missed the boat. She hightailed it up the path and the mountain and was determined to be first in line for our return trip at four. Ohmygosh, she whined the whole time about needing to be on time. She said to me as we hiked, "This is just not my element." I was amazed that she knew how to properly use element in a sentence. We quickly distanced ourselves from the rest of the crowd and hiked first to the waterfall and then on to Inspiration Point. Kristen thought we were just going to the falls. Talk about frustration with her parents. She reconciled herself to continuing on and pointed her hiking shoes up the mountain; we were obliged to follow her pace.
When Chris started walking past Inspiration Point and wanted to continue on...well Kristen's frustration level was off the charts. She wondered why I couldn't just let her find her own way back down to the dock. Um, no. We finally decided to turn around, much to Chris' disappointment, but Kristen breathed an audible sigh of relief. We came across two marmots (maybe) on our descent. Amy and Misha rushed ahead, but either Chris or I had a hold of Kristen's hand all the way down. She was still worrying her little head off that we weren't going to make it.
And what do you know, we didn't.
We heard a boat leaving the dock just as glimpses of lake showed through the trees. We hoped Amy and Misha were not on the boat. Kristen broke down. As we continued on down, Amy and Misha ran back to meet us. "We told them you were coming but they didn't wait. But there's one more boat coming back." Hallelujah! If Kristen knew the words, she would have sung it.
Kristen was the only one who finished her Junior Ranger packet from the day before and since we weren't close to the Visitor Center in Glacier, she was able to turn her packet in at Jenny Lake visitor center for a sew-on badge. Not sure yet what it will be sewed on to, but she was pretty proud of herself.
Everyone climbed back in the Pilot and we were on our way again toward Jackson, WY. We came upon lots of people along the side of the road at the Taggart Lake Trailhead. There was a whole group of people with massive lenses pointed toward the brush. Just as we walked up, I spotted what was a baby moose disappearing in to the bushes. His mother was not too far off, hidden in the bushes and munching away. Maybe with those huge lenses, they could get a better shot, but the branches obscured a lot. Ah well, I saw her head.
We didn't have to drive too far to reach our destination for the evening at the Homewood Suites in Jackson. Chris checked us in and then we went in search of a restaurant. I was hoping for some good Mexican, but the address we searched for was nowhere to be found. We parked in downtown and searched on foot. Plus there were a lot of touristy t-shirt type shops that my girls were hoping to find a treasure in. We dined outside on the patio at Mountain High Pizzeria, after which the girls were successful in finding shirts and a pair of sweat pants for Amy. Happy day.
