1998 Northern Rockies Trip

Something to add to "Lessons Learned from Group Camping":
Some people are morning people. Some people are night people. Some people are night people at home and morning people while camping. Make sure you all agree ahead of time as to what you all expect of each other's vacation sleeping habits.

That said, humor can be found anywhere... especially after the fact.

The Tetons just spring up from a flat valley

One of our number stayed up 'most all night reading so that when everyone else was up and showered we were still trying to wake up The Reader. After The Reader was vertical, the rest of us went to breakfast while The Reader showered and packed. After we returned from breakfast we learned that The Reader had fallen asleep reading in "The Reading Room" ...if you know what I mean. We had to wake him again so he could take his shower while we packed for him. At least we had a nice leisurely breakfast.

Fallen logs and driftwood collected at the interface between river and lake

A mountain stream flows into the lake

Between Jackson and Yellowstone we stopped and took a nice, long hike in the Grand Tetons. There was still plenty of snow along the trail. Hiking on spring snow can be amusing. The areas in the sun are soft and slushy and really wet. The areas in deep shade are mostly still firmly packed snow. The areas that have seen some sun and some shade are ...um... unpredictable. There may be nothing but snow and ice where you set your boot down or there could just be a thin sheet of ice covering a void with a deep, wet puddle of slush underneath just waiting for you to break through up to your butt.

Melting snows contribute to the rush

Text on back of postcard:
GRIZZLY BEAR CUB (Ursus arctos)
Grizzly cubs, usually twins, weigh 16 oz. at birth. They
are omniverous, eating great varieties of plant and
animal foods. Adult grizzlies weigh between 400-600 lbs.

My note to the recipient:
Haven't seen any, but there is bear scat and paw prints thru camp.
Bought the card as we were leaving Jackson Hole to go thru the Tetons
to Yellowstone. Little traffic. Campground not FULL, but active.
Rained steadily from before midnight till now (7 AM MDT). Tent is,
oddly enough, at least as watertight as the old family tent
(i.e., there are a couple of places where water got thru the rain
fly during the heavy bouts), but the internal condensation is still
the larger problem.

Obviously, this is before we discovered the hole in the bottom...

An alpine lake with glacier-scrubbed Tetons in the background
Not the bottom of my tent!

Our camp at Yellowstone was on the outside of the road at the end of a cul de sac, so we had lots of open woods around us. That gave us plenty of room to roam, look for bits of fire wood, find bear tracks... The rangers require that you put not only your foodstuffs in bear-proof canisters and such, but your toothpaste and other toiletries as well! We were allowed to keep our stuff in the locked Jeep. Folks in travel trailers could keep their stuff in their trailer, but the folks down the way in the tent-trailer had to keep their stuff in their tow-vehicle or bear-canisters.

As I lay in my sack, with my minty-fresh, freshly-brushed teeth, I kept thinking about how different a sealed tube of toothpaste smelled to a bear than my own minty-fresh breath. While I'm sure my tent-mate appreciated it, I was just hoping the bears wouldn't.

And, yes, we saw plenty of bear tracks in the clearing behind our campsite that first night.

Yep! Losts of melting snow contributes to the rushing streams