Traveling with the Munschs: Grand Teton National Park

Well finally our last major stop on this years trip was Grand Teton National Park just a short 4-5 hour drive from Craters of the Moon. The truckster didn't like the drive all that much with a 10% grade over Teton Pass. It had to have been the most extreme climbs that we've pulled the camper over. I had to pull over for a while as we were going to overheat. Mostly my fault for not paying attention to the engine heat I was so worried about the transmission temperature. Anyway the truckster complained it was pretty hot so we cranked the heat and pulled it over right away. After we cooled down and got going again we were only a couple of curves away from the summit. Then it was 10% down and new set of problems. A old dump truck descending had a gear that was taking it down nice and slow but too slow for the truckster and the rest of the caravan behind it causing us to brake way more than was comfortable. The pass was a stressful little piece of road.

The Teton campgrounds don't take reservations but it says they usually fill late if at all so we weren't too worried about getting a spot. We pulled in to the Colter Bay Campground on Jackson Lake and they assigned us a spot which I liked more than driving around trying to find a place ourselves. They put us in the last loop and we pulled around and setup. On the way in everything looked pretty full so we were glad we got in when we did. About a 1/2 hour later after we setup I drove out to go buy firewood and passing the gate they had the campground full sign out. Pretty close, good thing we didn't sleep in any later than we did.

The Tetons are Amazing, this was the first time I had seen them. Becky had been before when she was younger. It's quite a sight and got me thinking again about our overnight backpacking trip we had planned for this stop but had decided we were going to skip after the Yosemite hike, no-one but Marcus and I were interested and after that hike we weren't all that interested. The beauty of the place really called to me to get into its wilderness. Anyway I didn't bring it up too many times... or maybe I did. I finally annoyed Becky enough that she had the idea that I should probably go take the (a) hike. Well we figured the hike I was thinking about was going to be too hard (of course) but I figured we could hike the 6 miles to our back country campsite reservation area and then just come down. We weren't sure we could go over the pass anyway with all the snow we could see still on the mountains. Since the hike was back on with only Marcus taking me up on the offer we had to stop by the ranger station and pickup our back-country pass. We went over to the visitors center and talked to the rangers to get our pass. She pulled up our reservation and gave a chuckle yeah you're not going to the upper paintbrush that's still socked in with snow. I mentioned that it was the only reservation available so looks like the decision was made for us. She said they only open a fraction of the spots up for reservations so she'd check the lower paintbrush. That was full so she kept checking and Bearpaw Lake was open so she switched us to campsite "A" at Bearpaw, a much easier hike at about 4 miles with pretty flat terrain. Really the type of hike we should be on, with that news there was one last check if anyone else wanted to go before she set our party size. There was a glimmer of interest but they decided against it so party of 2 it was. Well the hike would be tomorrow, so Becky really wanted to hit up Yellowstone again so we decided to run up there today and check a few sites on the lower part of the loop. Checking out Yellowstone again was nice and brought back fond memories of our first "big" trip 4 years ago. Only Samus claimed to remember old faithful so we decided to check that out again and then revisit the elusive mystic falls which was an epic fail the first time around. The boys remembered that part of the first trip and it was nice get some redemption. After checking out a few more places in Yellowstone we headed back to our campground and went swimming.

The next day Marcus and I had to get our bags packed for our hike in the morning and then got dropped off by Becky and the other two early afternoon. It was a nice hike, we were a little worried about bear and moose, there were some warning signs up about an aggressive female moose, and then a nice elderly couple coming back from the trail had stories of a giant grizzly bear they saw that morning at trappers pond and reports from other hikers of bears seen at the group campgrounds. But I don't think we had much of a chance of seeing any wildlife on the trail. Marcus had his "HEY BEAR" call going loud and clear. There were a lot of little bends in the trail where you couldn't see what was around the corner so he had many opportunities to belt it out. The scenery was amazing and we made it to our campsite after a couple hours of hiking. It was a really nice site with a stream running next to it into the lake. We got setup and found a way down to Bearpaw lake to take a quick dip and cool off. The lake was hard to find a place to get into and pretty muddy at the bottom. It wasn't too cold but we swam over to the inlet from the stream and that was freezing. Later that night Marcus took another soak in the stream, I sat that one out. We had a lot of day left so we decided to hike down to Trappers pond which was just 0.6 miles down the trail. It was well worth the trip with the trail opening up to the pond that appeared to be right up against the base of Mount Moran. After the little walk we got a fire going to help with the mosquitoes and had supper and just hung out for a while. We kept walking across our stream so we could get down by the lake and check it out for any wildlife. We saw a bald eagle swooping down over the lake and hoped we'd see it attempt to get a fish but it never did. When it started to get dark Marcus wanted to get into the tent and play a game. We just got the game going and all of a sudden a huge gust of wind rushed through the campground. I jumped up to go put the fire out and it started to rain. I hurried up and got that out then dove back into the tent and we were in for the night. It rained for a couple of hours but the tent kept us dry. We heard one tree fall which was a little nerve wracking (there was about a dozen down over the trail on the hike back out) but otherwise wasn't a big deal that it rained. I was just glad it waited until bed time. The next day we got up and decided to break camp and eat breakfast on the trail since the bear box was back up the trail away from our site. We'd just pick up the food on the way out, easy cheesy. We got to the bear box and started sorting out a few snacks for later and I was trying to talk Marcus in to taking a breakfast bar to eat when we heard some crashing in the brush right behind the bear box (maybe 10-15 feet). I saw a brown mass moving behind the trees and thought oh crap a bear and yelled out "HEY BEAR!". That's when a head rose up and I could see it was a female moose just standing there looking at us chewing on the brush. I wasn't sure if that was better or worse... maybe worse. We were freaked out and Marcus said we're supposed to stand still and I said yeah sure that's great lets get out of here and I grabbed the strap of my pack and our sack of food and we backed slowly down the trail and headed back to our campsite. The moose didn't seem to care about us at all but back at the campsite I told Marc to watch the trail as I shoved everything into my backpack. As I finished he said here's the moose and we got a good look at the whole moose as it walked across the path heading the right direction which was the opposite of where we needed to go. We waited a couple minutes and headed out the other way. Unfortunately we left the bear box open and I had to scramble back up to close it. Then we headed out, very quickly with that adrenaline shot we covered the first couple miles in no time. So that was our wildlife encounter, the night before Becky and the other guys saw a bear with cubs that wandered up to the beach area they were at. Later that same bear made it's way down and was in our campsite loop for a while. They didn't see it there but there was a lot of activity down the road from our trailer. After hiking out and waiting for our ride to pick us up the rest of the day we drove around a little and then went back to the camper as we were starting the 2 day trip back home the next morning. Lucas really wanted us to get home in one day but I didn't feel like driving for that long this year and we already had reservation at the Devils Tower KOA. That next day we drove to Devils Tower and just pulled in and didn't unhook anything so we could just pull out quickly the next morning. We got home with no trouble and just like that the trip was over.

This was an awesome trip, right up there with the best. It got a little long for a few of the adventurers and we were happy to be home but everyone had a lot of fun. Right now sitting at home two weeks after getting back I'm about done with real life and would love to head out on the road again. Well there's always next year to look forward to. Should we head northeast, or northwest?

Becky in Jackson Lake

In Yellowstone

Mystic Falls Trail, we'll make it this time

On the trail

Mystical

We picked up a explorer 200 toy raft from the last grocery store stop. Marcus was just dying to get it on the water.

Evey one had a turn on the boat

Even me

Mount Moran from the car. Check out my old Windows Phone still kicking it and leading us around the country. Becky decided to not 2nd guess routes with her phone this year and just go with the flow. We didn't have any arguments (over routes at least).

A lot of people ask if Becky ever drives, normally no but here she is driving Marcus and I to our trail head.

Bearpaw lake here we come

Amazing views of Leigh Lake and the Tetons along the trail

Made it to the campsite

Here's the stream by our campground. We had to walk this tree bridge to get access to Bearpaw lake

Getting ready to swim

Hiking up to Trapper pond

HEY BEAR!

It opened up quite a bit before the pond

Made it to the pond

The stream feeding the lake

Pond was Amazing we should have brought our swim suits

Time to head back

Bearpaw again, clouds were building up a bit, we kept going back to the lake to look for wildlife

Marcus working on his Teton ranger badge

Deer has found Marcus' bathroom

We crossed this stream a dozen times at least, thought I was going to go in each time but made it without getting wet

Collected firewood and got the fire going

Marcus wanted to take a dip in the stream

So he laid down it it.

Trails from our campsite back to the main trail. The one on the left is the quickest to the bear box and where watched the moose walk across the next morning.